The Tutors -- Session One
Session One -- The First Wednesday:
"Okay, now that you've shed your hats and coats, on behalf of me and my brother, I'd like to welcome you to our mother's home and thank you for coming today. As we said after last week's chatroom conversation in our DMs to you, this first session will be devoted to preliminary things like filling out the questionnaire, going through a rough outline of the next-in-line session, and basically trying to answer all your questions as best we can."
"So, your name's Phoebe, right?"
"Yes. And it's not an alias. Chet is my brother's real name, as well. He's getting the forms and some pencils for the six of you. Ah, and here he is!"
"And here I am... As you heard my sister say, this afternoon's focus is mainly on you filling out the questionnaire..."
"What do you want to know?"
"Your name's Paul, correct?"
"That's right."
"Well, Paul, the questionnaire is designed to gauge how well you and your sister get along. The program the two of you signed up for doesn't work well..."
"Or, at all, really," Phoebe added.
"Right! Or at all... if you and your sister harbor unresolved animosity toward one another."
"Paul and I are really good friends. My name's Anna and I'm one year older... we share the same birthday."
"I remember you from the chatroom, Anna. Cool!" Chet voiced. "We don't see that very often, do we, Phoebe?"
"Only one other time before today. So, let me add that this questionnaire works best if the person filling it out can be as accurate as they possibly can be..."
"You mean, as honest as they can be."
"Not really. I'm sorry... I don't remember your name," Phoebe probed.
"David."
"I can understand, David, why you'd say that. But, Chet and I have learned -- from the last four years of teaching this course and from our own experience -- that truth is a poor metric when it comes to gauging one's relationship with your sibling..."
"You can say that, again!" David's sister intoned.
Laughter filled the large, well-appointed basement as Chet and Phoebe motioned for everyone to grab a place to sit. David looked at his sister and shook his head in resigned defeat.
"It is kind of ironic," Phoebe continued after the laughter faded, "but truth requires facts and there are few such thing as factual feelings which one sibling has about another."
"On the other hand," Chet added, "Phoebe and I, together, can establish facts about our relationship whenever we talk and agree on some particular aspect, but you six will be filling out this questionnaire alone, so it's important for you to think about accuracy more-so than truthfulness."
"So, the truth of my relationship with my brother Dave doesn't matter?"
"Am I right that your name is Beth?" Phoebe asked.
"Close... I prefer Bethany."
"Well, Bethany," Phoebe, continued, "you must be very astute, because truth is, in fact, the ultimate goal of what each of you has agreed to achieve along with your sibling."
"What truth is that?"
"Monica, am I right?" Phoebe asked.
"Yes, Monica, or I answer to Moni, too."
"Great, Moni!" Chet said, picking up the conversational thread, "As I'm sure you and your brother Henry remember, last week's chatroom discussion was mostly about how it's so difficult for twenty-something people like us to establish and maintain healthy relationships across all domains of our lives."
"What my brother means," Phoebe added, "is: across our emotional, physical, intellectual, and even our spiritual dimensions as human beings."
"Therefore," Chet concluded, "getting to the truth of the connection to and with your sibling is the goal of this course; because doing so will help you recognize that same truth later on in the person with whom you want to form that primary, long-term, stable relationship. And as Phoebe said last week, trust and unconditional love are the two pathways to get you to this goal. Okay, thanks for your questions. There will be time later for more. Right now, Phoebe and I would like you to fill out the questionnaire -- Anna," Chet said, "would you please hand these out?"
"Sure, I'd be happy to..."
"Thank you, Anna," Phoebe replied. "Okay, there's plenty of room and good lighting down here, so spread out and get comfortable. Remember to write your initials at the top!"
"You may find some of the questions weird or even funny," Chet intoned. "It's okay to laugh or whatever, but we don't want you to ask for help from your sibling or from Phoebe and myself."
The six participants began to do as instructed, except for Anna who looked around to see that the others had spread out away from her, so she shrugged and stayed put. Chet continued...
"There are fifty questions each with five possible responses. As we said earlier, try to be as accurate as possible. There's no such thing as a wrong or right answer; there's only the one response within each question which is most accurate for you in this moment."
"After everyone has finished," Phoebe added, "I will score them -- it will take me a few minutes. So, while I'm doing that, there are refreshments over near the bathroom suite. It's that individual score Chet and I are looking for, so after I've determined each score, we'll give the questionnaires back to you."
"What are we to do with them?" Paul asked.
"Anything you like. Phoebe and I framed ours and hung them on the wall over there." Chet replied, pointing to his left.
In short order, six sets of eyes began to peruse six documents like some super-mini version of a SAT test site. From Chet and Phoebe's experience, it usually took somewhere between one and two minutes for the snickering to begin. This cohort of students was no exception...
"What the actual fuck!" Paul spat out to no one in particular as he raised his eyes to look at his tutors. The look on his face seemed to Chet to be one part humor and two parts horror. After it became clear to Paul his hosts were not interested in taking his bait, he resumed his reading over and marking of the questionnaire.
Soon, there were frequent light chuckles and two or three really good belly laughs. Phoebe noted how the tongue-in-cheek structure of the questions always had the effect of erasing their students' nervousness and thereby propelling them to the finish line...
"I'm done," intoned Anna, and then added almost under her breath. "And all this time, I thought I had a weird sense of humor... You two take the cake!"
Phoebe came to her and lifted the form and pencil from the young woman's hand and immediately went to an office desk located against the south wall of the basement. Once there, she began to score Anna's document. Soon, there were five other hands offering up the rest of the questionnaires. Chet always stepped in at this point to gather them for his sister. Coming to Phoebe's side, he deposited them next to her and placed the now-used pencils into an old, over-sized coffee mug...
"That went faster than usual, sis. It will be interesting to see if it's reflected in the test scores."
Phoebe nodded her head slightly but gave no verbal response. Chet looked up to see that Anna -- the first student to finish -- was already reaching for a slice of their mother's coffee cake to go along with the lemonade she had moments before poured for herself. It didn't take long for the rest of them to also rise and go grab something to snack on. Chet watched as the three pairs of siblings resumed sitting next to one another. While they ate and drank, quiet conversations were in play accompanied by the standard head-shaking and muted laughter as the brother-sister pairs traded their recent test-taking experiences.
After another five minutes had passed, the next typical event took place: students beginning to head to the bathroom suite. The first to reach it -- Bethany -- turned to look at her brother and said...
"Dave, come look at this! You won't believe what's in here."
David shot up from his seat and quickly went to see what the fuss was about. When he peered inside, what he saw was a large bathroom with five shower zones each separated by a tiled wall depicting artwork of people making love in as many different ways as the young man thought it possible. Ten feet away on the other side of the suite were five sets of bidets and toilets not separated by anything. One long counter embedded with five sinks completed the room. Soon, the other students joined them and, one by one, began entering the suite. Echoed whistles and comments emanated from the space as Chet and Phoebe ambled over and themselves peeked in...
"Pretty chill, huh?" Phoebe asked them. "Chet and I did all the renovations ourselves. This used to be a musty storage room with a dirt floor."
"Though the quality of the installation seems top-notch, I believe we're all jacked about the artwork and layout -- pretty risqué and not much privacy," spoke Anna.
"More like a locker room than a bathroom," added Henry.
"It's actually patterned after a communal en-suite located in Paris," Chet informed the group. "That one in France doesn't have the artwork this one does because it's gender-specific. This en-suite is for mixed genders. Phoebe did all the paintings of the love-making; it's based on actual events from some of our earliest tutoring sessions."
