My friends amused me. First, they’d pushed me to date someone at Lincoln High so I could enjoy my senior year. I imagine Tim and Wolf had visions of double-dates where I picked up the tab.
Well, that wasn’t really the whole reason. They also recalled that I tended to do fun things, like motocross with Brook. I could always just plan a guys’ outing, and we’d do something like that.
But with this new development, the girls were confused. Sun wasn’t the typical cheerleader type I usually spent time with. I guess most guys have a type. I liked smart, athletic girls who have outgoing personalities.
Sun was more of a quiet nerd who I suspected didn’t exercise other than when forced to in PE. I guessed her to be probably five-two and weigh about a hundred pounds. Me being over a foot taller and more than twice her weight made people wonder.
I’d picked Sun precisely because she wouldn’t be my usual choice. Most people forgot that in middle school, I was the guy version of Sun. None of my friends from my former nerd life were still around. Tami and Alan went to Wesleyan, and Jeff was no longer with us. Sun reminded me of what my life might have been like. In some ways, I missed that.
The deciding factor was that my former nerd self would have totally been into Sun.
◊◊◊
After Joey and Cassidy abused me, Cassidy and I met up with JD, my James Bond spycraft consultant, to do more training.
“Have you been working on your skills?”
“Each day I try to pick the locks you gave me for a little while. I’m starting to get pretty good at it,” I said.
“I’ve been working on fox walking,” Cassidy shared.
That concerned me, and I looked at her sideways. The last thing I needed was for the little ninja to learn to sneak up on me.
“Good,” JD said. “Today, we’ll do a field trip and test out your skills. Before we do that, I want to share with you the mindset needed for a good spy. Chubby wants you to be able to fall into the role naturally and asked me to share this side of the business.”
“You were a spy?” Cassidy asked.
JD gave her a noncommittal look and then looked at me to let Cassidy know she wasn’t going to answer that question.
“A big part of the tradecraft is analyst work. You have to wade through piles of information that can be both contradictory and ambiguous to find the one key item that is relevant. The other side isn’t going to make it easy for you and will try to mislead or outright lie.
“That’s why a systematic approach that considers a range of alternative explanations and outcomes is the best. Let me give you a few tips when looking at something to try to get to the truth.
“Try not to go into a situation with an expectation of what you’ll find. When we do that, we find what we expect. We also fall into the trap of resisting the truth even when faced with new evidence,” JD taught.
“I totally get that,” I admitted.
“Another trap is to think that a small body of consistent data means it will hold true across a wider sample.”
“Can you give us an example?” I asked.
“Do you play cards?” JD asked.
“I’ve been learning to play poker.”
“Have you ever noticed that certain cards seem to keep coming up?”
“Now that you mention it, I have.”
Last time I played, it seemed a six came up on every flop. I’d actually hit trip sixes, which reinforced my belief that if I had a six in my hand, I should play it, even though that wasn’t a winning strategy.
“The truth is that, over the long haul, the odds are equal for all the cards in the deck to come up,” she explained.
“That makes sense,” I admitted.
“What I’m trying to point out is that you need to be careful not to allow your bias to creep into your thinking. To help prevent that, challenge critical assumptions. Examine alternative outcomes, even those with low probability, to see if available data might support one or more of these outcomes.
“Here’s a real-life example. In 2002, there was a sniper shooting people in the Washington, DC area. After the initial flurry of shootings, an operating assumption emerged. They believed that the shootings were the work of a single white male who’d had some military training and drove a white van.
“Suppose that working theory had been locked into. In that case, they might have ignored new information that contradicted those key assumptions,” JD said.
“What actually happened?” Cassidy asked.
“Ten people were killed and three others injured. It turned out to be a two-man team. One was a 17-year-old from Jamaica, the other a black man who was a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and an expert marksman. They were driving a Chevrolet Caprice which had been modified so that a shooter could lie prone and fire, undetected, from inside the car,” JD shared.
“So, the only part they got right was the military training,” Cassidy said.
“And the other takeaway I’m getting from this is an example of why we should question assumptions,” I added.
“Yep,” JD said and seemed happy that we’d understood her lesson. “Ready for a field trip?”
We both nodded.
◊◊◊
“You want me to do what?” I asked in shock.
