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Updated 11:31pm - Mar 18, 2010
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Gopher Gulch: Simple, painful truth
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I’m not an expert at anything. I’m a perpetual student at the School of Enthusiastic Bumbling. No one ever graduates; we eventually drop dead, still attending classes with titles like “The Skill of Objective Observation,” or perhaps, “The Hardest Way to Do Anything,” which is primarily a lab class. There’s a rather high mortality rate in that class, but I’ve survived it several times and have the scars to prove it.
Nevertheless, the world is full of experts. Many of them will tell us, with great authority, exactly what separates human beings from other mammals. Some experts say that what makes us different from other animals is opposable thumbs. Others say the difference between kids and cats is the size of the prefrontal lobe of their brains. Me, I think it’s our capacity for denial. No other animal is capable of selective awareness. To a dog, what is, is and what ain’t doesn’t even exist. Of all mammals, only humans have the ability to deny the obvious. And we’re capable of some amazing techniques in order not to see or hear anything that might make us face an unpleasant truth. I saw something a couple of weeks ago that totally cracked me up, and I’ve been giggling about it ever since.
I said something true and obvious that a man didn’t want to hear.
This wasn’t just any man, but one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever
known, a highly skilled craftsman, a true artist in his profession, and
so tall he has to stoop to get through my door. He actually put both
hands over his ears and hollered “La-la-la-la-la,” until he could see
that I was laughing too hard to talk.
And what are a whole lot of people, including me, trying to deny these days? Summer is over, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore. Once the Noll Longboard Classic and the Sea Cruise Car Show have come and gone, when I can hear the winter surf clear out here and the morning temp is in the 30s, denial becomes more and more difficult. I can fool myself during sunny days, conveniently forgetting the extra layer of clothes beneath the ones that show. The air is full of leaves that I blithely call mulch, and at the mailbox the apples on the ground have become sauce. I slither through it, ignoring the deeper meaning. That isn’t a cold wind, it’s a brisk breeze. This is why I’ve flunked the class on “Objective Observation” so often. It’s harder to ignore the need to schlep stove pellets into the house more and more often. The sun is coming up in the south instead of the east. The crickets have gotten awfully quiet and the young forked horn deer has a dangerous glint in his eye. OK, I give up. We can only wallow in denial just so long without looking like complete idiots. The simple and painful truth is that summer is over. |
