Mike and the Bear

As I drive up to a grove of pine trees on my Honda 350 four track, there are three huge trees on each side. On the left side of me is one log that is down on the ground on its side by the three trees. All the branches on the log have broken off long ago over the years. I park the Honda in the middle of the pine trees. I put the four wheeler in neutral and put the parking brake on. I swing my leg over the back of the four wheeler and get off. There is an oversized backpack on the back of the machine. It has everything I will need for today's hike. I put on the backpack, which makes me seem a foot taller.

  I start on my hike. I get about twenty yards away from the machine. Then, from the corner of my eye, I see some movement about thirty yards in the distance. I swing around. A full grown 200 pound reddish-brown bear is running right at me. You might call him a wall-hanger, because he is a very handsome animal. For a hunger, he'd be a keeper. His head is down and he's in full gallop. I could never outrun him. I’m thinking this is it for me. The bear is closing in on me very fast and yet, at the same time, everything is in slow-motion. As you can imagine I’m very scared but I stand my ground. I wonder if I can fight back. I set my feet and brace myself for the impact. 

When the bear gets about ten feet from me he stops dead in his tracks and looks at me with his  beady golden-brown eyes. He's sizing me up. He doesn't blink and neither do I. I'm ready for the first blow. I wonder if I can fight back but all I have is my hands and the ability to think. The bear looks at me and realizes I'm not going to be easy prey. It slowly turns and walks away, slowly, into the trees.

I stand there, pale and trembling, thinking to myself that even though I'm the winner, I have gone through something even more terrifying than this a thousand times before, if not a million. 

That is my life very time I’m called on to read out loud to a group of people or even one person. You see, I have never mastered reading. The humiliation I feel when asked to read makes my encounter with the bear seem like a piece of cake. I want to walk away, just like the bear did, but I can't.  I'm trapped. "I can't," I say. "I can't read it."  

So I stand there in the forest, thinking to myself, where does a person like me stand in the twenty- first century. That hard work for a laborer is not enough for a man who wants to get ahead in this life, where everything you do requires reading and writing. 

I think of what I have accomplished this year: I've repaired five miles of fencing, which requires persistence and skill. I've replaced the clutch in my truck, built a garage, repaired plumbing and electrical problems for friends, neighbors and family, helped my son finish his basement, put a new roof on my house and painted the interior, gone on hunting and fishing expeditions, taken a couple of camping trips, been the head cook at family reunions, and, as I have for the last twelve years, I've gone to my weekly lessons in reading and writing. 

"You're a good fixer, Mike," says my friend who is a range rider, which means he inspects fences and herds cattle and oversees the entire cattle range. 

I've always had to be an apprentice because I couldn't read or write. I've had to do the work and please someone else. 

While other people can go home and read a book for work or school or pleasure, I look at the pictures. 

You have to be a specialist. 

You're treading water but you're not swimming, in every situation you encounter. All I can do is listen to what people say. People can guide you to a certain point. 

I went to fourteen years of school without being able to read or write. I could have been a high school dropout for all the good it did for me. Starting with first grade, I was so far behind I could never put it all together. Now I'm playing catch-up. 

At school, I would tell my math teacher I didn't understand the procedure needed to solve a math problem. He said, "I knew you couldn't read, because once I showed you how to do it, you could do it." He would explain the steps to me. And I would understand. 

I think back and I start looking at my teachers and I think the only ones who really taught something were the math teachers because they had to show you the formula. The others said, "read this, write it down, hand it in."

I would listen in class and memorize as much as I could. I would study the spelling words all week and do pretty well on the test, but a week later they were gone. I knew history because I listened to the lessons, and I understood them, but when it came to a test, I couldn't show what I knew. 

I was so far behind I could never put it all together. 

I watch the show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? There's so much you should know by the time you're a fifth grader. I compare myself to those kids academically and I think I'm not even close. 

When you start to learn to read, they show you so much, you work so hard, and it has to become automatic. I have brothers in law who are great readers, yet they dropped out of high school. I've had to go in the back door to accomplish what I have, but I have done it. I have learned to read. I can read just about any book I choose to read, even long biographies and history books. 

I may be slower, like the turtle in the race, but I get to the finish line and I remember what I have read.  

I like to write and I have a lot of stories I want to tell, but I have a hard time spelling the words I really want to say. I'm working on this. Spellcheck is great, but you can still end up with the wrong word. So I have to depend on others to fix what I write. 

I look at what I have accomplished and I think I could have been an expert at something by now if I had learned to read and write when I was a child. I do look back with some satisfaction, even though these skills came later in life. 

I've heard that hell is like a dam in the river because you're stuck and you can't progress. You're held up and watching everybody else progress. You're seeing what everyone else is accomplishing  and you can't  do it. You're never swimming in the river. Never in the current. 

In the end, I'm pretty satisfied with who I am and what I've accomplished. 

I'd like to be in the mainstream. I'd like to be in the big river with everyone else. 

Sooner or later an athlete has to fall back on something else. They need a Plan B. They can live off the money they've earned or go into broadcasting or get a real job, doing what they went to college for. They're famous and they  have connections and most of them can find a way to earn a living after their athletic career is over. They can't depend on being an athlete all their life. If you don't have the talent to do something else you're stagnant. 

It's like a pond that wants to get to the river but it can't get into the main stream. It becomes a puddle and the grass and the flowers grow and then you look up and you think there's a beautiful flower. If you hadn't been that pond, the beauty of the meadow wouldn't be there. I have to think of myself as the pond that didn't get to go where it wanted to go, but found itself in a good place after all.