Congratulations to the students who put on the one-act plays at Esterwood this past weekend—fine blossoms of springtime silliness for sunny-drizzly April days.

Initially I had not planned to go: Friday evening requires a long, trafficky schlep back to Masters from Stamford. But Asher reminded me in the hallway Friday afternoon that I could instead come to the Saturday performance.  Thanks, Asher; funny how quickly I assume things based on my routine without thinking through all the (fairly obvious) possibilities.  All I would have to do is get my 7-year-old son, Kai, interested in making the play our Saturday evening activity.

He’s been to a few Masters performances before and liked the funny ones, so I figured that persuading him would not be too challenging.  And to make sure, I decided to present the plan with the lead-off incentive of a visit to the Dining Hall.  He loves the opportunity to choose his own food from an easily-visible range of options.  That’s the experience I figured would really get him interested.  “Hey, Kai, what do you say we have dinner at the Dining Hall tomorrow?  And while we’re there we could see some funny plays.”  Notice the banner headline, followed by the fine print.

Looking back on it, I wonder about the way I presented the proposal.  Was I being unfairly manipulative or just putting the idea in a positive light?  Maybe the distinction appears more distinctly with an analogy to packaging and contents.  If the packaging was deceptive, if it presented a misleading image of what the actual evening would be, that would qualify as manipulative.  If the packaging showed the contents honestly with a bit of polish, if it added luster without obscuring, that would qualify as persuasion.  In those terms, I was being more strategic than deceptive.  Still, do I want to reduce personal interactions to strategy?

Well, the fact that I was giving him a choice at all matters, too.  If he had said no, then we’d have found something else to do.  I could simply have said, “Kai, I want to see the one-acts, so we’re going to Masters.”  That would have had the virtue of being straightforward, but I wonder how many of us would prefer that sort of clarity if we have no say in the matter.  So does that mean that persuasion, manipulation, and advertising all fly like imps into the world when we open the Pandora’s box of choice?  Is putting up with others’ spin a consequence of our free will?

Hmm…come to think of it, there are two ways to persuade: by altering the package and by altering the content.  In this case, I was altering the content—including something I knew Kai would like—rather than fiddling only with how I packaged the plan.

Nevertheless, I’m coming to see that a better way to present the idea combines a little from each of the approaches I’ve considered.  How about this: “Kai, I really want to see the one-acts.  Tell you what, if we go, we can go to the Dining Hall before the show.”  That approach is up-front about my own motivation while still recognizing that his preferences matter, too.  Alright.