The Mollmann Call

When I was in grad school, I used to workshop my creative writing with a group of fellow graduate students. I think it was when we were doing my novel about Doctor McCoy, that one of my friends observed, "Doctor McCoy is the quintessential Steve Mollmann protagonist: in love with the world, and in love with complaining about the world." Like so many things people say when critiquing your work, I immediately realized it was true even though I'd never thought of it before; many of the characters in my attempts at original sf could be described along similar lines.

I think this is the location the song was coined, St. Mary's Falls in Colorado.

This is something I picked up from my family. (Though I think maybe I'm more in love with the world than they are.) My mom once changed the lyrics of the camp classic "The Beaver Song" to be about the Mollmanns:

I'm a Mollmann,
You're a Mollmann,
We are Mollmanns all,
And when we get together
We do our Mollmann call:
Whine whine whine whine whine whine
Crab crab crab crab crab
Whine whine whine whine whine whine
Crab crab crab crab crab.

I'm not exactly sure what this can be blamed on. Like, I don't think my father is responsible; I think it used to frustrate him how much we call complained, which we did sort of as a default reaction, not necessarily meaning anything by it. So I guess that means my mother's to blame?

Sometimes I worry that happiness expressed via complaining is just, like much irony, a way of refraining from the danger of earnestness. If you don't directly say what you like, no one can attack you for it. As Augustine St. Clare says in Uncle Tom's Cabin, "I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone." Sarcasm is, of course, often a defense mechanism, and I find I go overboard on it when I'm nervous about something, like when I first became a student manager at the dining hall, or when I went on a cross-country road trip with someone I'd only known for a couple months. I find that as I've gotten older I've engaged in it a lot less, and it's sometimes jarring to go back home and step into it all over again. I don't think I complain as much as I used to.

Once my brother texted me and asked if he and his fiancée could copy what me and Hayley did for wedding rings. I said, "Sure, but I reserve the right to complain that you copied us." He texted back: "Like a true Mollmann." But I was happy.

#32: What makes you happy?