(Her mother, in fact, gave permission for the laundry-chute drops.) She lived her life - all the many lives in one - in a constant blur. We must imagine the child’s excitement, picking up speed as she drops, the adrenalized feeling of velocity and acceleration, of near-free-fall, and then, energetic bundle that she is, shooting back into the light, in a blur, the dirty laundry acting as an airbag, the yelp of joy as she lands on earth again.įrom the start, there was nothing illicit about O’Neil’s daredevilry. In the upper reaches of her grandparents’ Texas mansion, she climbed through the trap door of a laundry chute, hovering between brightness and the dark industrial maw, then simply let go. The very first stunt performed by Kitty O’Neil - or at least the first one she could remember - came when she was 4 years old. She last wrote an essay about grief as a muscle memory. Susan Dominus is a staff writer for the magazine. What about the boy’s character? Was he distractible, his urgent task so easily interrupted by a shiny bit of foil? Or was it the opposite - was he a child who, even in a moment of panic, could pause, wait, show self-restraint? The boy’s family was well off at that point. A psychologist might analyze the story through the prisms associated with what researchers call positive life outcomes. The document is a revelation, proof that he had become an American citizen before returning to Vienna, and it will be their salvation.Ī flash of gold, a moment’s hesitation. The man in the photo, he learns when he shows it to his parents, is his maternal grandfather, who once lived in the United States. Now the boy, about to throw another document into the fire, stops: This one has a gold seal and a photo affixed. Hitler’s troops have just rolled through their streets to cheering crowds. In their gracious home in Vienna, they are throwing family documents into the fireplace, trying to erase their Jewish identities in the flames. Picture a boy, 8 years old, assisting his parents in a strange and somber task.

The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel