Wednesday, April 13, 2022 // The Statement — 4

BY OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI, 
STATEMENT COLUMNIST 

Mixed strategies at Scorekeepers

BY TAYLOR SCHOTT, STATEMENT DEPUTY EDITOR

However lame it makes me to say so, I don’t like 

going out. It is, to put it simply, a lot of work. It’s physi-
cal work — the walking to, the dancing at. Constant-
ly adjusting my bad posture. It’s mental work — the 
middling conversation, if it could be called conversa-
tion, the scheming involved in getting a drink, or cut-
ting the bathroom line. 

Needless to say, ‘going out’ is not a game I’m good 

at playing. The dusty, blue-vinyl book I checked out 
from the library titled “Studies in Game Theory” 
suggests that the type of game played at a place 
like Scorekeepers — affectionately referred to as 
“Skeeps”— can be “non-cooperative” (a competitive 
social interaction, each player aiming toward their 
own goals) or “cooperative” (non-competitive, with 
unknown payoffs).

But if Skeeps is indeed a game, who are the play-

ers, their ranks? What defines a win, and what 
defines a loss? 

I don’t have social anxiety, I always begin with 

as some sort of disclaimer — my mental and physi-
cal faculties, though strained by socialization, typi-
cally remain intact. But I am easily worn down by 
long stretches of talking, navigating large groups 
and maintaining an approachable attitude. I have to 
force my mouth out of its slack, draw back my shoul-
ders and, well, act. 

Breaking my introverted habits by going out to 

Skeeps, then, required some planning — not just the 
outfit I should wear, but the personality, too. What 
kind of things should I say? What kind of tenden-
cies should I adopt? How high should my eyebrows 
arch, how wide should my smile stretch? There was 
a long list of choices for the kind of player I could be, 
each with their own taxing responsibilities. I had no 
idea what the payoff of playing would be, though I 
imagined it would resemble something like enjoying 
myself. 

The night arrived. Briefing a trusted band of close 

friends with my plan to adopt extroversion for the 
night, I downed a shot and fumbled to lace my shoes. 
It’s so much easier when I drink, I whisper to my 
roommate, to say whatever’s on my mind. She eyes 
me and laughs. Our other friend across the room 
laughs too, her vocal chords animating her silver 
pendant inscribed with the word fuckoff.

We arrive downtown at the fashionable hour 

of 11, taking our place in line. As we wait, I cannot 
stop thinking about the French word for stranger — 
l’étranger, phonetically lay-tchron-jay — that stifled 
gargle so specific to its pronunciation. I play with the 
word’s letters on my lips and in the back of my throat. 
How else am I supposed to entertain myself? I stand, 
fiddling with my rings, asking my friends in random 
intervals how much longer they think we’ll have to 
wait under the oppressive, but welcome, overhead 
heating system. Rain fell. 

Once admitted inside, I marvel at the vaulted 

ceilings as my wrist is pulled towards the coat check 
table. I shed my jacket, revealing my bare shoulders 
and a borrowed top. There is no “right way” to be a 
woman, but it is in these sorts of spaces that I begin 
to feel as if my shapeless sweater, albeit low-cut, isn’t 
exactly following dress code. Leather pants swish 
past me. Tight, animal-print tops populate the dance 
floor. I eye them all with hardly any subtlety, each 
returned look an appraisal of my own appearance. 

Refreshing ourselves at a countertop, the bar-

tender smiles at my roommate. Was that attraction 
or charity? I smile at my roommate. “Remember 
your notes!” She turns to remark, her long hair skim-
ming the top of her drink. 

Draining another cup of rum and coke, I find 

myself declaring loudly, with a few misplaced verbs, 
about how the word fish is an overgeneralization 
— we say many animals are fish when they are in 
fact not fish: jellyfish, crayfish, starfish, cuttlefish, 
despite their names, are not fish. Which me is saying 

this completely unessential fact? My mortgaged per-
sonality is worn out already. In the refuge of a text 
conversation, I slink toward the nearest wall. My 
phone buzzes again: “No wallflowering,” my room-
mate nags, lovingly. 

Might my introversion be a genetic facet of 

myself that, no matter how much I pretend, I cannot 
reverse? Research into temperament and person-
ality as innate traits suggests that I could be right. 
Jerome Kagan, one of the great developmental 
psychologists of the 21st century, conducted a lon-
gitudinal study in which he exposed 4-month-olds 
to an array of new stimuli: balloons popping, colorful 
mobiles, foreign scents on cotton swabs. The babies, 
based on their reactions, were then divided into two 
groups: high-reactive and low-reactive. Kagan held 
that the high-reactive group would grow up to be 
classically introverted, and the low-reactive group 
classically extroverted. Kagan was determined to 
follow these children well into development, testing 
his theory on temperament as an innate reaction to 
stimuli.

In the throes of their adolescence, the no-longer-

babies were brought in for interviews. Did they pre-
fer a few close friends or a large band of them? Were 
they eager to introduce themselves to people they 
didn’t know or would they wait for an introduction 
to happen? Amazingly, Kagan had predicted the 
temperaments they would develop with incredible 
accuracy: the low-reactive babies who displayed 
little concern with the new stimuli were more likely 
to become calm, assured extroverts, while the high-
reactive babies who cried and pumped their tiny 
limbs at the stimuli were more likely to become 
reserved, cerebral introverts. 

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF TAYLOR SCHOTT/STATEMENT
PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG

