Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

‘It was a good (Saturday Night) call – fun and informative. In spite of us leaving tread marks all over one another, lol’ (Denise)

Fun Doctrine Fact: one of the indicators of two, (or more), clarks participating in a conversation is the frequency and/or tendency to ‘bump into each other’ conversationistically-speaking, that is. You know, the synchronized pauses and then starting to speak at the same moment; (and the ‘clincher’: ‘Sorry’ You go first’ ‘No, you’).

Do we care about the ‘Why’ of this phenomenon?

Of course we do! This post is about clarks. the Outsider. The congenitally-curious.

Hey! Example from ‘real’ life of identifying a clark. Friend of the Doctrine, Glenn and we were talking one Saturday night. And, occurring as it did in the parking lot of the Wakefield Mall, the topic of windshield flyers  came up. In fact, there may have been what our writerly friends might refer to as ‘an inciting incident’, as upon our return to the car, someone had stuck a flyer under the windshield wiper. Being a scott (with a secondary clarklike aspect) Glenn got to the car first, spotted the piece of paper and, without comment, grabbed it, balled it up and threw it somewhere not on the car.

We laughed.

Riding away, Glenn said, “I remember, it used to make me crazy but when that happened and my father was there. He’d take the fuckin thing out from under the wiper and…. read it! Made me crazy.”

(a beat)

“What a fuckin‘ clark he was.”

We both laughed.

There you go, A short little post illustrating the characterisitc behavior of both a clark and a scott.

That’s how it works.

ok, but just one Hint: each of the three in the Doctrine relate themselves to the world around them and the people who make it up in distinctly different styles. Reading stories like this helps a New Reader to get a feel for each of the predominant worldviews, aka personality types. The simplest approach to identifying the person’s type), is:

• throw out the ‘no-fricken-way they’re a (clark, scott, roger)’ of the three. In our example above, the key was the public littering. Glenn threw the flyer away. Enthusiastically. Had someone, driving or walking by at that moment stopped to take issue with his action, well, icing on the cake yo. Since we knew that about Glenn, we could infer that the person in the story, you remember! his father? took the flyer and read it? The opposite of littering?
• that leaves us two possibilities: (he was) a clark or a roger. Now we’re into the fun, optometrist metaphor: looking at our ‘scene’ through the lens of a clark or a roger, which is ‘clearer’. Reading the flyer? Sure either one might do that. Their reaction, their apparent state of mind to this occurence. Was he,(Glenn’s father… come on! Try and keep up!) exhibiting a lot of emotion or a little. Did he seem happy or mad. According to Glenn, his father just read it. The whole thing. Not just the title or the illustration. Like he was browsing in the bookstore, (like the one that was no longer in the aforementioned Wakefield Mall), where we were parked. a roger would have reacted with emotion. (ProTip: “clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel“) He did not. quid pro kokom, his Dad was a clark!

ok that was fun