Chutes and Ladders

My roommate (Bobbie) and I often end up staying up late when we're supposed to be writing papers. Generally, 2am is when my genius is at its highest.

One time in particular, we came up with a theory for stereotyping: Chutes and Ladders.

It's a classic childhood game, where you either advance by going up ladders or fail miserably by sliding down chutes. (Let's ignore that, in real life, going down the slide is more fun than climbing up.)

Like in the game, you can either take the gradual steps necessary to truly learn who someone is; or you can plummet quickly into a preconceived notion.

The chutes are stereotypes- when someone takes some facet of another person and groups them together. They take this immediate one-way slide and they're probably going to give up because the ladder is four goddamn spaces away and there are already two people one ladder away from the top.

Then there are the ladders.

We tried really hard to define how ladders work...we ended up using a computer analogy. There's a drive, then directories, then your folders, and folders within folders, and that unfortunate zipped folder that's labeled something like "Profit Margins 1996" but is actually porn, and then the files.

You start by defining them by gender, then maybe their clothing/accessories, then their physical qualities, their major, their minor, their job, and so on until, finally, you reach what is ultimately that person.

So often, we're willing to stop at even that second or third level- all the superficial crap.

We see a girl with glasses and assume she's a nerd who likes to read.
Maybe there's a boy wearing purple or pink- of course one assumes he's gay.
Hot blonde chicks wearing tight clothes are cheerleaders.
Fat boy with acne works at McDonald's and plays D&D three nights a week and World of Warcraft the other four.

The list is endless...but none of it is necessarily true. Sure, some of the time it might fit. But none of that really tells you anything about that person All it tells you is one, maybe two more levels into who that person is.

The great part about all this? It means that we can overcome stereotypes. We just need to move those four spaces and hop on the ladder again. It's not the Game of Life where reaching the end fastest is the only way to win. It's Real Life, where reaching the end is all that matters.

One of my favorite quotes "It's gotta be the goin' there, not the gettin' there that's good." (Harry Chapin, "Greyhound") really applies to this. It's not about "knowing" someone quickly; it has to be about getting to know someone and how you go about doing that.