Obtuse

     The day I was hit by a car, I remembered as I flew angelically towards the boulevard, and a rather large sycamore, it was lucky that I’d forgotten to pick up milk on my way home from dance class. I normally go to dance class on Tuesday evenings, but because of the recent basement flooding and lightning strikes that left the building engulfed in darkness each night, it was determined we should meet at the VFW hall on Wednesday, as Bingo night was cancelled due to the untimely passing of Wilbur, the Ball Master.

    It was Obtuse’s suggestion as usual, to meet on Wednesday. He believed because of his unique ability to be considered opaque by the majority of the members of the Wild Horse Bridge Club, he should make all decisions pertaining to, not only the weekly operations of the club, but the individual members as well. Obtuse believed detachment was necessasry in leaership for equality to pervail.

Only Mabel Schmidt objected to his dominance, but given Mabel’s inability to refrain from complaining continuously, she was ignored, and Obtuse continued to hold the chair person’s gavel posthumously, as he too had crossed the threshold of no return several months earlier. But not before completing the scheduling for the remainder of not only the month, but the remaining months of the year as well.

    I wish I could say that his death was unexpected, but anyone who knew him realized he wasn’t long for this world. It wasn’t that he, as the saying goes, was too good for this world, it was that he couldn’t make up his mind about anything, and foundhimself in situations not conducive to survival.

    Some claimed it was the curse attached to the name Obtuse, a common name in Transylvania’s mountainous region known for its mystical deviance from traditional spirituality. It was claimed that miracles were forbidden in that region, as was the human sacrifice of extraterrestrial celestials, which gave a specialty of purpose to those who claimed kinship to that region.

 I gave up going with him, on what were at one time pleasurable walks around the park. The last time I went with him he spent twenty minutes deciding if the green on the stoplight was giving adequate time for those impeded by physical disabilities, to safely cross the street. He was going to introduce the idea of a third button on all stoplights at the next City Council Meeting, that would add an additional twenty seconds of green time to all stoplights. But he was run over by that beer truck while attempting to show the inadequacies of the stoplights by using a borrowed wheel chair to cross the street to prove the necessity of added time for the disadvantaged to cross streets safely. 

    The City Council named the street after him, but would not agree to spend the additional monies to adapt stop lights to the needs of handicapped pedestrians. Although the gesture was greatly appreciated by the Wild Horse Bridge Club, they maintained it did not go far enough, and gave the city the funds collected from the first Inner City Bridge Non-Motorized Olympics, which consisted of races involving the existing traffic, and the attempts to cross the busy street by those not practiced in wheel chair performance. They raised enough money to buy one button, but as it was stated at the installation ceremony, “you have to begin somewhere, or be trumped.”

    A reporter from a local newspaper, hearing about the fund-raising event and its purpose, decided to run an interest piece in the Sunday paper. I was to usher a Miss Abernathy around, answer her questions. I assumed she wanted to see the stoplight and the newly installed blue button. Miss Abernathy however was more concerned with Obtuse himself, his life, and how he came to be in a wheel chair in the street, rather than the extended time allotted the handicapped. I explained the story; had she been thorough in her preparation, she could have read the verbatim account of what I told her in her own newspaper.      

    “Obtuse, it was rumored had a brain deficiency. He couldn’t remember a thing he did ten minutes before, but could remember, down to the humidity level, what he’d done on a given day a year earlier. Did you notice any of that while you were around him?”

    “I noticed he’d forget things, mostly recent things. I considered it to be just who he was. He wasn't concerned about most things enough to remember them. I was surprised when he’d remember who I was.”

    I couldn’t see how this would be of any interest to her, but decided it couldn't hurt to play along. She’d be gone shortly and Obtuse, well, he wasn’t coming back, so…

     “Did he ever talk about a time he was lost in the woods while hiking and came upon a cabin, and was helped by the people living there? The people it was reported took care of him. My mother was one of those who lived in that house. That is what she told me anyway, and the real reason why I’m here.”

     “Obtuse wasn’t much for talking, especially about himself. He couldn’t remember much, or didn’t want to. So he talked mainly about the early times, when he was a boy, things like that.”

    “So you knew him for a long time then?”

    “Yeh, we grew up together. He was always around it seemed like, but I never knew where he lived. We went to different schools so I didn’t see him at school, and he had different friends except for me. What is it you are looking for anyway? I can tell you of what I observed of him, but what he thought about or why…no one can do that for another.”

    “I can’t be sure, but I think from what my mother told me, he may haave been my father. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’ve been revisiting some of the places and people she spoke of, hoping to find out for sure. When I saw the article last week... I never met him you see. I need to know.”

    “He can’t be your father.”

    Obtuse had not been himself lately. As he began to forget, he began to manufacture a past, most days a present. He was becoming unreliable, as well as unmanageable, as a friend.

    “Why couldn't he be my father?”

    “Because he doesn’t exist, didn’t exist. I made him up. When I was a child, I had no one to talk to. My father was away, my mother worked so she was gone most days. We lived in a tenement house where there were no other’s close to my age. Obtuse became my friend. The longer he remained my friend, the more difficult it was for him to leave.”

     “If you created him, why didn’t you just ignore him, erase him from your life? Was it necessary to have him die?”

     “You don’t erase someone who has become a part of you, a friend who you confide in, who confides in you.”

     “Then what happened? Why all of a sudden did he have to die...and in a grusome accident?”

     “I don’t know, but I expected it was his choice. His inability to remember…he told me about his brain disease, how it was affecting his todays, his tomorrows. He'd begun to worry about his future.”

     “He purposely wheeled himself in front of an oncoming vehicle?”

      “Of late he was depressed. He would no longer confide in me about the world he lived in. I believe he simply became tired of me, wanted to move on by himself, begin a new life.”

      “Do you believe it is possible to believe in something or someone so strongly and for such a long time, they become real? They take on not only the characteristics of physical existence, but the mental capacity equal to that of all humans. I mean, how do you know I’m real…that you have not made me up? How do I know I’ve not made you up? Our minds are powerful assets when it comes to survival. How do we know we have not created ourselves?”

    “But to what purpose?”

    “Exactly!”