The Coral Gables Times

Travelmanship

BY STEPHEN POTTER The famous authority on "Lifemanship" explains how to be "one up" on your friends, no matter who has taken the trip STEPHEN POTTER, master strategist at gettiing the better of one's opponent (without actually cheating), is the author of "Lifemanship," "Gamesmanship," and "One-upmanship," all three of which have been republished this fall in an omnibus edition called "Three-upmanship" (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston). In these three unique works, Potter suggests a series of intricate oral maneuvers—his famous "ploys"—to discomfort or outsmart other people in a variety of social situations. The player who follows Potter's tongue-in-cheek advice is always "one up" on his adversary, but the playing is good-natured. Potter is a Britisher completely at home in our American suburbs. We've asked him what he'd recommend to squelch the overly enthusiastic returning traveler who'll bore you with his adventures and never give you a chance to tell about your own—and what you can do, if you're a traveler, to impress everyone with your aplomb. In a word, this article tells what to do if he's coming, or you're going. I. HOW TO BRING A RETURNING TRAVELER DOWN TO EARTH HOLIDAYS AND TRAVELS are of total benefit to one's social standing. University education is fine, too, but written over the doors of the non-lecture room at our Lifemanship College is the phrase "Without meat, there can be no digestion." Travel refreshes the spirit, enlarges the intellect, and widens the soul. More important still is the fact that to have just come back from a holiday is a classic one-up position. The returning traveler is bubbling with desire to lord it over you. Whatever the facts, Just Back will let it be known that he has been fortunate in the weather and that he is either (a) bursting with health or (b) deliciously wearied by a series of fantastically late nights. ("In Madrid, we never get up till four in the afternoon.") Extraordinary distances will have been swum by his quite young children, and there will be at least two signed menus from five-starred restaurants. Unbelievably coincidental meetings will have been achieved in the Golf Hotel, Marbella, with a couple of old bridge opponents, although, with certain qualifications, he has been originally personal in his choice of route. Films and photographs will tell his "unmatchable" story. It is in just this kind of situation that Lifemanship can be valuable to you. Our basic defense is prepared for you, the Still There, the man who hasn't been away at all. Just Back versus Still at Home. That is the classic battle. Still There should begin with a strong "Well, tell us all about it," and then throw out slightly off-putting phrases—"ployish ambiguities," we have called them. Say "Deductible, I suppose? No?" Or "Well you are a tremendous color—brown, I mean" (as if it wasn't totally brown). Or you can say "I can see you're tired . . . peaky . . . the journey back." An alternative opening is to say "I suppose you've been away . . . isn't that like life? . . . this is my time for 'At Home.' It's not that I loathe holidays, but do you know when it's empty I begin to love this place?" Just Back will be at his most unassailable if he has returned from basically desirable and famous spots such as Ischia or Antibes. Start by saying to him, "It's not true, is it, that it's completely spoilt . . . that it's a sort of ant's nest? Tell me, are people now beginning to troop a little bit farther south to Rischia (presumably the next island), where one little tugboat steamer calls only once a week? Who was it who was raving to me about it?" It is always possible to suggest that it is the other place next door which has not yet been discovered by the masses. Suppose your friend has gone to his favorite beach in Western Europe. You, too, when you were a child, loved La Zoute and the little shop with the 150 different kinds of ice cream, but when you got older you discovered the long, uninhabited beaches of Normandy, at Omanville. "You know it? But that's where you went? Ah, for me the firm white sands of Benodet, which has the additional advantage of facing south." Or you can switch to Spain. "But you did not surely bathe in the Atlantic? Superman. I can't put a toe in the Atlantic north of Mogador." Then there is a special way of inquiring about the Mediterranean. "You bathed in the sea at that place?" If Just Back has been to a truly desirable and fashionable spot, it may be better to assume a knowledge of it which goes a good deal deeper than anything the flitter-by-night pleasure visitor can achieve. Say: "Did you meet Father Dominic?" "No—who is Father Dominic?" Reply irrelevantly either (1) "I worked for six months as a waiter in the Ritz-Blakeney . . . that was my father's idea of getting to know things from the bottom," or (2) "I never go there now: my father lost half the family fortune there in 1932—some venture." (Note that put-off trips should be founded however tenuously on fact. The Lifeman is truthful. "Some venture" could refer to the loss of 50 francs playing boule.) At some point, Just Back will show photographs and films of his holiday. There are various ways of dealing with this. A decent method, if one has the nerve, is to make absolutely no comment whatever. My friend Odoreida, never to be imitated, was yet quite effective when, after seeing a film of one of the very youngest children playing on the sands, he used to say, in a small compressed voice: "Funny little run she's got." Since all young

10 Suburbia Today, November 1962