Who am I?
Why do I do the things that I do?
No man is an island. John Donne the English poet stated that. And Ernest Hemingway quoted it… and wove it into his stories as a major theme… and proceeded to try to disprove it. We need other people. I married an island girl from the island of Luzon in the Philippines. She may have actually needed me too, though she will never admit it.
When I was a young junior high school teacher in the early eighties, they called me Mr. Gilligan. My classroom was known as Gilligan’s Island. This came about because a goofball student in the very first class on the very first day said, “You look like Gilligan’s Island!” By which he meant I reminded him of Bob Denver, the actor that played Gilligan. But as he said it, he was actually accusing me of being an island. And no man is an island. Thank you, Fabian, you were sorta dumb, but I loved you for it.
You see, being Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island was not a bad thing to be. It was who I was as a teacher. Nerdy, awkward, telling stories about when I was young, and my doofy friends like Skinny Mulligan. Being a teacher gave me an identity. And Gilligan was stranded on the Island with two beautiful single women, Mary Ann and Ginger. Not a bad thing to be. And I loved teaching and telling stories to kids who would later be the doofy students in new stories.
But we go through life searching for who we are and why we are here. Now that I am retired, and no longer a teacher… who am I now? We never really find the answer. Answers change over time. And so do I.
If I’m Being Honest…
If I’m being honest, I am a liar. And that is not really a paradox, because I don’t always lie. In fact, I often lie in order to reveal a deeper truth. (I know, I know… rationalizations are simply another kind of lie.) I lie because I used to be a school teacher. You know that teachers have to be liars because you can’t say to a parent, “Your kid is ugly and stupid, and I have documented proof.” You especially can’t say that if it really is provable. Instead, you have to tell the lie that any kid can learn and do and be anything they want if only they are willing to work hard enough. And you have to tell that lie often enough that the kid, the parent, and even you, the teacher, believe it to the point that it becomes true.
And now that I am retired and not telling the school teacher’s lie any longer, I have become a novelist, and I have now made it my business to make up fiction stories and compile lies into book form. And though the people or characters are based loosely on real people I have known, they are really only a narrative trick to make the reader think about and possibly accept as truth the themes my writing puts forward.
(Boy! I sure am an ugly old hairy nut-job, ain’t I? = a lie in question form.)
But if I’m being honest today, there are a few things I need to say truthfully, straight out without irony or falsehood or exaggeration. Let me offer these truths.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, education, goofy thoughts, humor, lying, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, teaching, telling lies
Tagged as lying, teaching, writing fiction