Looking for a Wise Guy or Two (Krell)

I know I ain't wise. No matter what Krell says. Yet Krell did definitely say that no-one was wiser than me. For the next couple of days I took a look around, a close look.

Particularly at the guys.

I was looking to find a guy smarter than me. If I found that guy, I could ask him what Krell meant when he said that nobody in town was smarter than me.

If the guy was smarter than me, then that would disprove the thesis of Krell, that nobody was wiser than me, which the guy smarter than me would be trying to explain while at the same time debunking.

I was smart enough to know that I wouldn't be able to pick out a guy smarter than me simply by the way he looked. Everybody looks smarter than me. I had to have  standards other than appearance.

I started with three standards. 

I figured that a guy wiser than me would be older than me, would be married and have kids.

Most of the guys who I knew in that boat were your typical hard working Joes. Guys who did their job when they could find one. Guys who paid the bills when they had the dough. Guys who raised good, pain-in-the ass type  kids. Guys who went to church as often as the wife could drag them there. Guys who bowled Wednesday nights and drank Buds before dinner. Guys who were easily exasperated but not easily defeated. These guys were especially hard to defeat or discourage when defending a half-assed scheme. Guys whose character shines through most clearly when the thin ice is crackling beneath their skates.. A leaking roof, an unexpected complication at work or the growing pains of their kids are enough to throw these guys into freak city. A Hummer from out of nowhere smashing through their front window and planting itself in the hallway during the ball game? No problem. 

These are the guys who can turn a minor problem into a nuclear disaster and a nuclear disaster into a walk in the park.

These are the guys that everybody watches with mixed awe;half fascination and half apprehension. These guys are capable of fixing anything or breaking it into smithereens. You never know when these guys are going to over-react or be oblivious. 

I hoped that one day I would be wise enough to be amongst them. In the meantime, I wanted to ask them questions about justice, courage, love, temperance, faith, hope and charity. I was looking for a wise man in America. 

I didn't have much time. 

I needed some answers before the next class.

Once again, I made my way to the library. I spotted a guy who seemed to have the standard qualifications; two of them for sure based on his age and the wedding ring on his hand. I asked him his name and told him that I had some questions I needed to ask for a college course. I was prepared to take notes. I took out my pen and paper

The guy told me his name was Otto.

My name is Ovid.

I tried to remember the last time I talked to another guy whose name began with an O. It's not often that two guys whose names begin with O get to talk about the Lone Ranger. Especially if one of the guys names is a palindrome. I learned about palindromes in eleventh grade English when my teacher, Mr. Sagan, wrote the most famous palindrome on the board  "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama". I've been palindrome sensitive ever since. A goddam mad dog.

So there we were, two O guys, one a palindrome, who had met two minutes ago, sitting at a table in a library getting ready to talk about courage, justice, life etc.

Otto reached into his wallet and pulled out his own piece of paper. His piece of paper looked like it had been through a war or two, which I found out later that it had been.

"Let's start here" said Otto. "It's the beginning"

"Always I good place to start" I agreed.

Otto read from his paper, "with his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order, in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yester year......From out of the past come the thundfering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again"

"What the heck was that" I asked.

"That was the way the Lone Ranger radio show began every week. I'll read it again. Listen and ask your questions"

Otto read it again.

I asked my first question "why did he wear a mask"

"Good question" observed Otto. " His real name was John Reid. He was a Texas ranger. Before he became a Ranger, John and his brother Dan had been partners in a rich silver mine strike...."

I interrupted. "Is that why he named his horse Silver"

"Yup and that's also why he fired silver bullets which he made himself at his silver mine. One day John, his brother Dan and four other Rangers got ambushed in the badlands by the Butch Cavendish gang. The Cavendish gang fired down on the Rangers with high-powered rifles. The Rangers were trapped. All six were hit. The Cavendish gang lingered to make sure everybody was dead, then they rode off"

"Five of the rangers were dead but......."

I jumped ahead "one of them miraculously survived which made him 'The Lone Ranger' and he decided to wear a mask to hide his identity while he hunted down the Cavendish gang"

"Damn", said Otto, "You are one smart kid"

"Am I ?" I asked thinking maybe Krell was right after all.

"And you're getting smarter every time you ask a question about the Lone Ranger"

"Okay" I agreed and continued my pursuit of wisdom. "How did Tonto get into this?"

"Good question" said my guide with a twinkle in his eye. I figured it had been awhile since anybody had asked hin that question.

"After the Rangers were bushwhacked by the Butch Cavendish gameTonto came upon the badly wounded Ranger. Tonto nursed the Ranger back to health and they road together from that point on. The real story though is for the show to continue, the Lone Ranger needed someone to talk to so that his inner thoughts and plans could be related to tge audience in a form other than monologue." my guide explained.

"It was convenient to make the character a noble Indian to amp up the irony a little bit. The real kicker occurred when they decided on a name for this noble savage. They chose Tonto which in Spanish means fool. Now depending upon your meaning of fool, Tonto was either a wise warrior whose words always contained a double meaning and thus an element of truth or he was the doofus who walks into every trap and has to be continually saved by the Ranger. You could take it either way or both."

"So the Ranger was calling Tonto a fool every time he spoke to him?"

"You could say that" Otto replied

"Well what did Tonto call the Lone Ranger"

"Yeah well Tonto called the Ranger ke moh sah bee which means "best friend" in the language of Tonto which unknowingly to Tonto are the words of a fool." Otto said.

"So" I reasoned, 'when you have best friends one of the friends is usually a fool?"

"Usually", said Otto," but lotsa times they both are. Like me and my buddy Lights Out. We been friends and fools for a long time. He's in the conference room. I want you to meet him"

Otto returned before Lights Out.

"He'll be here in a minute. Before he comes in though, I wanted to give you my definition of courage. Courage is knowing what not to fear."

"That sounds a litttle bit like ignorance is bliss' I said.

"No son, ignorance is not knowing what to fear and courage is knowing what not to fear. There's a big difference"

I understood incorrectly but also realized that I was living somewhere in the middle. I knew that I was afraid of almost everything.

With that Lights Out suddenly appeared. I noticed that he too had come from the conference room. I also noticed a sign on the conference room door that I hadn't noticed before. the sign said 'Tune in Yesterday'. The reason these guys wwere in this lirary at this particular time was because they had come vfor a conference about radio before teevee

If Otto looked like an elephant without tusks, his buddy looked like a wildebeest carrying a full load of invisible lion on his back and a wedding ring to match. Otto turned to his friend. "Lights this kid is looking for the secrets of life. What can you tell him"

"Otto" said Lights Out "looking for the secrets of life is like looking for the license plate number on a car that's pulling out ninety feet away on a street that's as deserted as a warm bottle of beer.  Whaddya want me to tell this kid"

"Tell him something that you know for sure. Tell him something simple. Tell him what you glimpsed. Tell him something from your radio days. Ask him a few questions. This kid is smart" Otto insisted.

Lights Out turned his spooky gaze my way.

"Kid, " he said, "lots of people will tell you that life imitates art. I'm here to tell you that art imitates life"

"Art was an interesting fella" Otto agreed sorta. 

Mister Out fixed his frightened and frightening focus full upon me.

"When I was a kid, my favorite radio show was called Lights Out. I never missed a program. That's how I got this nickname. Churchbells would ring twelve times and the announcer would say 'LIGHT'S OUT EV-RYBODY'. Around the twelfth toll of the bells, an announcer would say 'This is the witching hour. It is the hour when the dogs howl and evil is let loose upon the sleeping world. Want to hear about it? Then turn out your lights'.

"I'd turn out the lights and get scared to death. The stories were scary for sure but it was the sounds that went along with the stories that I can never forget.

"Otto says you're a smart kid. Let me tell you how a few sounds were made and then let's see if you can figure out what those sounds imitated."

Sounded like a plan to me.

"Im ready. Go ahead." 

Mr Out went ahead. "Here's an easy one. Maple syrup dripping on a plate?"

"I'm gonna go with drops of blood" I had caught on to the game.

"One for one" said Otto. "Throw him another one, Lights".

Mr Out was just getting warmed up. "How about a blade chopping through a head of cabbage"

"I'm gonna go with a guy getting his head chopped off"

"Two for two" said Otto

Out again. "This one's more difficult, I'm going to describe three sounds and how those sounds were made. See if you can tell me what's going on in the scene. One, frying bacon. Two, sparks flying produced by attaching a telegraph key to a dry cell battery. Three, a ringing telephone."

I caught a whiff of the drift.

"Let's see. How about a guy getting zapped in the electric chair even as a call is coming in from the governor demanding a stay of execution"

"Three for thee" said Otto.

"Here's my last one. Soaking a rubber glove in water and turning it inside out while a berry basket is crushed" 

"That's not fair" said Otto.

"You got me there", I admitted.

Mr. Out seemed pleased, quite a bit too pleased in fact.

"That, young man, is the sound of a man being turned inside out when caught in a demonic fog. You see.  Art imitates life"

I objected meekly. " Can't be sure about that because I've never been caught in a demonic fog"

"Be patient, kid. Give the world a chance" said Lights Out in a distinctly foggy voice.

I thanked the men.

I left the library.

A dog howled in the distance. Maybe it was another dog getting killed by another cat.

A couple of days later, I arrived at Krell's class with at least a minute to spare.

Apparently Arthur was expecting an exam that day or had already had one in an earlier class because he was wearing an examination glove and explaining to an astonished Haylen how he had made his choice of gloves.

"When it comes to latex gloves, I have two choices: the Accu- care Plus or the Universal 3G. The Accu is yellowish white and the Universal is white. I wore the Accu for a test last week in History. I fanned on that test. So I went with the Universal for this morning's test in Astronomy. As far as powder goes, both brands are equally free"

etc.

When Krell came in, Julia had a surprise of her own. She asked Krell if she could recite the alphabet and hold the match herself. Krell gave her permission.  Julia pulled out a tube of those extra long matches that people use to light candles and fireplaces. She lit the match and calmly recited the Greek alphabet ten times before the flame finally burned out.

Krell seemed impressed.

"I don't think anybody's going to top that act so we can put an end to the alphabet on a match recitations once and for all"

Then he turned his attention on me.

"And Ovid, how has it been for the last couple of days walking around as the smartest guy in town"

I told Krell that I had gone around and tried to find somebody smarter. I told him that I had met two men and they were both smarter than I was so I had given up and was okay with my stupidity.

Krell said that "he doubted either of the two guys were any wiser than me". He said that "they probably had given me a mass of confused and contradictory opinions, derived from stories or traditions or memories and that those stories and traditions and memories and contradictory opinions had been no doubt changed at will to match the march of time and circumstance." 

He said "such opinons were not knowledge". 

He said "such opinions were only used to reinforce personal biases.and that such opinions do not establish wisdom although all people who hold such opinions consider themselves wise and usually appear so to others". 

He said that "Socrates spent his entire life under the belief that he had been identified by Apollo as the man whose mission in life was to destroy the false conceit of knowledge which had blinded his countrymen to their real ignorance and had in fact stupefied them wilth a false, fearsome sense of security and self-importance."

Krell told us about how Socrates would question everyone and then prove how worthless the answers to his questions really were. Socrates didn't offer any answers to his own questions because as he openly admitted, he himself was completely ignorant.

"Or as you have told us, Ovid. He was 'okay with his own stupidity'. Because he did so, Apollo had judged him to be the wisest of all. And that's how I've judged you. And you went out and proved me right"

Julia passed me a note. The note read "PROJECT YOURSELF"

I could tell everybody in the class wanted me to say something.

I gave it a shot.

"Well, I did discover something in my questioning of the two wiser men who probably aren't as wise as I thought they were. I discovered what I want to do with the rest of my life"

Everybody was paying attention now, particularly Julia. 

"I've decided that I want to become a Lone Ranger of writing. I want to do the right thing anonymously and write about it when I do it. First thing, I'm gonna do is write up the story of the last few days. I'm gonna use my notes. The next thing I want to do is ask Julia if she'll go out with me tonight to see a Will Sampson movie."

Haylen looked disappointed.

Julia said "love to."

Krell seemed to understand.

"And" Krell asked "what was the name of the man who inspired you to make such a decision"

"His name is Otto Dingfeldt," I said.

When he heard that name, Arthur turned his glove inside out and looked as if he wanted to punch a berry basket.

Play Meatball

Lights Out.

I left the campus. When I reach the end of the campus road I always turn left, this time I turned right towards the Starlite