For those readers wondering what an epistolary exchange between Dossier‘s own Jared Killeen and his mother might look like, we offer the following missive, in which Mrs. Killeen prods gently at her son, whose filial task it is to answer five maternal questions, all of which help to shed some expository light on the vaguely limned thing Jared calls a personality.

Q:  I’ve never been a Q before. I’m a little worried about coming up with good questions.  People always say, “What are you worried about?” So let’s start there. What do you worry about?

A: I worry about lots of things. I’d say roughly 40% of my waking life is spent worrying. This, in my case, is almost wholly attributable to genetics. I have the worry gene. I do not need to tell you about the worry gene. (Two winters past you dissuaded me from buying a scarf for fear that I would suffer some bizarre scarf-strangulation-type accident a la Isadora Duncan.) I imagine that if a geneticist were to examine my DNA, he’d find at least one very uncomfortable-looking gene huddled among the rest, its little chromosomal brow crinkled with fret. But here’s the weird part. On the whole, I am dissatisfied with my worrying. This leads to a kind of meta-worrying: I actually worry about the quality and content of my ‘normal’ worrying. Usually this entails worrying that I am agonizing over the wrong things. I worry, for instance, that I spend too much time worrying about myself. I am aware that the prospect of saying something stupid at a party weighs heavier on my mind than do most of today’s pressing socio-political problems. Why aren’t I worrying about nuclear catastrophe or global warming or civil liberties every night when I go to sleep? Instead, I’m afraid that I’m going to show up to work the next day with my pants on backwards, or use the subjective personal pronoun when I ought to use the objective. In short, that which I worry about is worrisome.  

Q: DNA-ya gotta love it.  Three gens back along the gene line, Grandma Bertha was the matriarch of mind-wringing.  We used to say that if she somehow found herself without something to worry about, she’d worry about that.  Now, with the meta-fretting I think you’ve taken the family legacy to a new level.  (Way to go!)  And yes, the personal pronoun pitfall is a killer (he/him, thou/thee, s/he, etc.), probably even outside the species…. So, what’s the most significant relationship you’ve had with a non-human being?

A: I’ve had pets to which I’ve been quite attached. In college my housemates and I had just about the most likeable cat on campus. We adopted him prematurely (i.e., before he had been weaned), and some nights I’d wake up to him suckling pathetically on my chin (as you can imagine, this led to a complex psycho-emotional relationship between the cat and me, which some of the housemates found odd). The cat himself was peculiar. He never got bigger than a large gerbil. Notably, he had a sixth digit on each paw. We called him Thumbs, which he didn’t seem to mind much.

Q: Cats-ya gotta love ‘em.  So, beside pets of the furry persuasion, do you have any pet peeves?

A: Before I answer this question, let me compliment you on your effortless segue…. I’m bothered by the same things that bother everyone in NYC. E.g., people who don’t use headphones when listening to music on the subway or car alarms that go off every 10 seconds for no apparent reason. Personally, I find myself peeved by behavior that indicates a lack of consideration on the part of the peever. Not washing dishes; a failure to capitalize the first word of a sentence in an email; shouting in a theater. Boobishness also quickens my pulse. The sight of someone taking a photo of Starry Night with a cell phone is enough to send me to the men’s room in a dark rage.

Q: Boobs – not much to love about them.  It’s good that you fume discreetly (and considerately) in privies, lest you be maligned as an anti-boobite.  In-your-face raging at headsetless audiophiles and shouters and blaring car alarms would only fall on deaf ears.  Like tilting at windmills.  Which, by the way, have you tilted at any lately?

A: I have tilted at the sidewalk several times this month, but in no way was I being quixotic.

Q. Did the sidewalk appear to be vertical at the time?  As you have lived to tell the tale, I picture an animated sequence, perhaps enlivened by dust swirls, flashing stars, and some !@#$%^&*!…which inspires me to inquire: Which cartoon character has influenced you the most?

A: This is a tough Q. I’ve spent hundreds of formative hours watching cartoons and consider myself a connoisseur of the Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and Disney characters. Not to mention a whole slew of less-iconic Saturday-morning types, all of whom inhabited various real-world action figures, candies, cookies, cereals, juice boxes, comic books, movies, video games, festive napkins, lunch boxes, T-shirts, sweatshirts, underwear, toothpaste, etc. Only as an adult did I realize that these cherished characters were conceived of by corporations as clever ways to sell stuff to kids. I submit, for instance, the “Gummi Bears,” who started out as sucrose globs only to become ‘characters’ in an animated series, less a narrative than a 30-minute advertisement (the quality of which may be compared to the nutritional value of the candy it helped to market). This is the unpleasant truth. So I guess it’s tough for me to look back upon a lot of the cartoon characters I was reared on without feeling slightly betrayed. That said, there was something wondrous about the higher-grade Disney and Warner Bros. characters. I never felt much affinity with the ‘classic’ Disney set-Bambi, Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo-whose ten-inch eye-lashes and oafish cuteness always struck me as false and cloying and even a bit creepy; but I was raised on The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and consider the former to be my first real introduction to the female psyche, as sad as that may be. Wile E. Coyote was also important to me. He was an interesting character: pathetic, lonely, devious, tormented by his own intelligence. The fact that he was both villain and victim always struck me as meaningful and true.

Q: Yeah, we all have to be careful about ordering oversized anvils from Acme Co.  Not being innately 2-D (or inveterately dour), we do have the advantage of perspective, of stepping back and chuckling at our own flubs and foibles.  Then again, Wile E.’s one-up on us is that he can slither out from under the annihilating anvil to scheme again.  One could do worse than learn to emulate that trick!

Well, my Qualms have been Quelled-my Q-debut has been a piece of chocolate cake.  Thank you for your savory A’s!

A: Absolutely.