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The number of boys – and to a lesser extent girls – who were teased to trauma in school is legion. I mean teased in the worst sense. That’s the word we used to use. Others would say bullied or ridiculed or picked on. The sense I’m using is where you, standing by, could’ve cried yourself because of the pain being inflicted.
One boy would put his head down on his desk and cover up with his arms to hide and make animal noises to himself to keep from crying and to drown out the teasing and laughter and mocking. Another would curse his glasses and throw them at the blackboard, and everyone would erupt with joy and laughter. One girl actually laughed along while they teased her; then she would walk alone home after school and be alone in the afternoon and evening and come back for more the next day. I will not tell you what they did to me. I will not tell anyone anymore what they did to me. Nor what I did to others.
Above me here now are my bookshelves. I put them up, and they are, being mine, overstuffed and under constructed. I have my books, and my poetry to protect me.
There’s a book on ginseng. That is next to my guide to mushrooms, which is dog-eared on the pages for the choice edibles (I pick chanterelles or lobster mushrooms every year), and the lethal (for future reference), and the psychotropic (likewise). There are two books on grasses; only one of which is helpful.
The trapping library consists of thin, black-and-white, self-published how-to books by famous trappers (Russ Carmen or Hal Sullivan) and blowhard wannabes; with titles like “The Dirt Hole and It’s Variations” and “New Age Coon Trapping” and “Foxology.” The number of titles is long, but they only take up a little space.
I have a small library of In-Fisherman DVDs. I haven’t watched them. They seem to be more for entertainment than instruction purposes. If I’m going to listen to Al Lindner talk about Jesus, he better include some tips on catching walleye on hot, sunny, dead-calm afternoons in July.
Here’s “Big Bucks the Benoit Way.” The Larry and Lanny Benoit way is getting up and in the truck around 3:00 a.m., which I cannot do, to look for buck tracks crossing the roads. It also involves a Remington Gamemaster 87 (pump action) .30-06, which I can do. And tracking bucks in the snow in the big woods, which I like to try and fail to do.
There is “Brown Dog” by Jim Harrison, which I highly recommend, and a few Hemingway, which I don’t recommend.
There’s a beginners’ book on tying fishing flyers, which I refer to still, and often, and an artsy book of photos of artsy and superlife like fishing flies that is entertaining but gives no guidance, just carefully framed, modeled photos of the flies. And an old, discolored tome: the Herter’s bible of tying flies and making your own lures.
“Gun Dog” covers upland birddog training: pointing, flushing, retrieving, sit, stay, urinating and defecating, kenneling etc. “Game Dog” covers the waterfowling dog training: retrieving in water. With these books, my four dogs and I have achieved about a .500 batting average. Not too shabby. That’s a Mr. October number.
I have a small library of trapping DVDs. These are entertaining. For me these are like the first time you watched the “Wizard of Oz,” or “Star Wars.” There’s a DVD on skinning skunks; it shows the extracting of the skunk essence from the glands alongside the anus. There’s a DVD on tanning hides; it shows the tanning of a deer hide, a coyote hide, and a mink hide. Of course, there’s one or two DVDs on muskrat dropping. You know I love to watch them.
On top of the trapping DVDs, lying open to the middle, around pages 456-457, is Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend,” which I am reading now, and which will – when I finish it in the next few weeks – complete my reading of all of Dickens’ major works. I started in the eighth grade (Mrs. Cassett should know that I never did finish “Great Expectations” during her class – but I have read and re-read it a few times since).
I’m afraid I will go to my grave with regrets; and that those regrets will often involve my inaction – my inactivity – in life. That my greatest time will have been spent passive, in passivity. A spectator. Standing by.
I often think about having stood by while my peers, or greater than peers – kids, individuals who were gentle and kind and well-loved had great capacity to love others, were made to feel pain. Tonight, I’d give all my books and learning and escape for another chance and greater courage to stand not aside, but alongside.
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