Me and my Faults
      by Douglasin Reimer

And the following incidents acquaint you with me. With what was devious and dangerous about me and what was not. I may have sounded critical and self-righteous in my description of Harvey and Jake but I include myself in their group, in their attitudes. My faults may not be identical with theirs but they are and they are real. We’re all human, in other words, even adolescent males. A great statement about human nature that startled me with its accuracy the moment I read it goes as follows: “Treat every man as he deserves and who shall escape whipping.” I deserve whipping. Okay, I didn’t pull the wings off of flies, far as I can recall (though I remember burning a fly/flies with a magnifying glass). Nor did I blow frogs into balloons (I saw it happen, but never blew into the straw). I failed to plot apple-stealing scenarios for anyone, including Harv and Jake. I simply couldn’t hit a bird with a slingshot no matter how hard I tried. Bicycle spokes survived my plans and presence, and my female peers were in no danger ever of my hands invading their personal space (whether encouraged to or not) because as I remember it they seldom allowed themselves to be found near enough to me to find out (though I would never have harmed what I loved most, more by far than I loved myself). I was timid and self-reproachful in all of my dealings with people except close friends. I always felt sick with guilt whenever I thought the word “should.” So, when it  came to people-hurting, I posed no great danger except accidentally. So, to all intents and purposes, I wore a sort of halo. Not. My greatest “sins” were all fathered by deception. In case you are beginning to think that this smacks of confession—“O geez, here he goes, whimpering about himself, scared of everything and hoping for easy absolution and God’s forgiveness!”—you are bound for a minor disappointment. We boys were all biologically human with all the appetites and mischief that is in boys and has been since time began. It is always said with such certainty by most backward-looking non adolescents that adolescent males’ brains reside way too low down in their persons to be of any use whatsoever. I say, however, that we young fellows did have brains, only they were unafraid things, not easily convinced of the divide between what we did and what we were taught we should do. We saw, we looked, we wanted, we did. At least wanted to do. Now, however, older, in our early seventies, having fully succeeded in leaving the feelings of human biology behind, we are each one of us instead fully the products merely of culture and teaching, of Western fear. We no longer understand the impetuous, spontaneous joys of Eden.
      No, I list my early weaknesses happily and willingly stand shoulder to shoulder with Harv and Jake as an equal. Some of my weaknesses: I secretly loathed my parents’ version of Christianity; though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I took no pride in my sister’s accomplishments as a star athlete, and was in fact hardly aware of it or her existence (all my time and thinking devoted almost exclusively to Dougie, “Big Doug,” Big special Dougie; I pinned my brother Rudy down whenever I felt like it and let my spit stretch down toward his face, though he hated it and tried desperately to turn his face away because half the time I couldn’t pull the spit back up (he begged me and I’d care less, it being so much fun); I would play ping pong with Rudy and win every game, five or ten games in a row, and laugh at him until he’d be so frustrated he’d fling the heavy plywood paddle whizzing across the table as hard as he could, me ducking just in time, and then he’d chase me to try to catch me and hurt me; I’d be laughing the entire time; I stole quarters from my older brother who had won a roll of them in Vegas, and he found out eventually, even though I tried to disguise the theft by taking only one quarter a week; at fifteen I stole jars of cherry, crabapple and raspberry preserves to brew wine, being careful to arrange the jars in the pantry to make it look like they were all still there; i stole a carton or three of cigarettes from a local store, I stole LPs and suede jackets in Winnipeg, I made jokes to my friend about two unfortunate girls in my grade who it was popular to ridicule for their plainness and poor clothes (poverty); and so much more. Treat me as I deserve and, yes, I wouldn’t escape whipping, not by a long shot.