My father was an Introverted Thinker* by preference.

He fell for my mother and drove his MG to my maternal family's summer cabin on a lake in Ontario.

My mother's two older brothers welcomed my father, one eight years older and one twelve years older.

First, the mathematician brother challenged him to a game of chess. But my father was also a mathematician, on a full scholarship to Princeton. His family had little money, so his "pocket money" at prep school is what he won playing bridge. He had studied chess as well. My father won.

Then the older brother invited him canoeing. No, not to paddle a canoe. To gunnel jump. You stand on the gunnel of the canoe at the end and propel yourself by bouncing up and down. First, you have to have the balance to stand on the gunnel.

My father had grown up on Long Island Sound. At night he had the light from three lighthouses coming in his window and in the day he rowed and sailed all over. There were waves and tides there. The lake was easy. Gunnel jumping was easy.

Then the oldest brother invited him to a trial of staff fighting. Yes, like when Robin Hood and Little John meet on log crossing a stream and neither would give way. My father was 5 foot 8 and 140 pounds. My mother's brothers were 6 foot and 180. But my father was an athlete, tennis, swimming, sailing, rowing. He did well and defended himself.

Lastly the second brother invited him to leg wrestle. They lay on their backs on the pine duff, with the oldest brother as referee. They linked one leg. "Go!" shouted the oldest brother. My father flipped the second brother over.


*I put Introverted Feeler in the title... so which did he prefer, thinking or feeling? He is dead so I can't ask... I think that the title is correct, Freud's slip, but our culture currently thinks that males should not prefer feeling. And it is considered lower than thinking, in men or women.

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