DECEMBER 28, 2021 – Yesterday, I’d just pulled some old journals off my shelf, when friend/neighbor, “K.O.” Paulson stopped by to check on me. I’ve posted about him before—a smart, thoroughly amusing, tough-talking, literary savant/retired honors English teacher, and former baseball/basketball coach, who scouts locally for the Twins.
I gave K.O. the current, unvarnished low-down—to be supplemented after a medical appointment next Monday. We then talked about the cold, cruel world beyond my condition.
K.O. is no flaming leftist—traditionally he’s voted Republican. His voting history, however, doesn’t stop him from “calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough” in the tradition of Plutarch (Apophthegmata Laconic)—or, in K.O.’s patented terminology, calling knuckleheads, “knuckleheads.”
He’s had it with anti-vaxxers, supporters and apologists of the January 6 insurrection, and people who drank Kool-Aid dispensed by “the most polarizing figure in American history” (K.O.’s description of You-Know-Who). After telling a family/Covid-related anecdote, he said facetiously, “Covid doesn’t exist over in Wisconsin. Want to avoid the virus? Just cross the border.” He then told how one of his daughters, a physician, had posted in her workplace an open letter by a clutch of CEOs encouraging people to get vaccinated. Subsequently, two nurses on her staff asked her to remove the letter, saying it was “political.” (She refused.) In another jaw-dropping account, K.O. said the Twins have adopted a policy of no-vaccination, no employment. Two people resisted, pinning their resistance on . . . religious beliefs. Unimpressed, Twins management said, “You’re out!”
As always, however, K.O. turned to literature. “Just finished Jane Eyre,” he said, “and need to find some short stories to get me through until my next book arrives tomorrow.” As an aside, our literary neighbor said contemptuously, “I don’t have time for books that are as empty as the desert. You won’t catch me reading the likes of Alibaba and the 40 Thieves. No sir.”
But what was K.O.’s assessment of Charlotte Brönte’s classic?
“Fabulous,” K.O. said authoritatively. “She was quite young when she wrote it, too. A fine example of her exquisite writing is her treatment of Rochester’s superficial love interest, the original Bachelorette. Remember, this was over 170 years ago, and Brönte nailed it—a description of the modern ditz. It’s brilliant.”
“I know you’re talking literature,” I said, “but in clearing out my stuff, what do I do with my scores of journals?”
“Recycle ’em,” he said abruptly. “Trust me, no one—not even you—will have the faintest interest in reading them.”
As K.O. bundled up to leave, I wondered whether he’d dub me a “knucklehead” if I merely skimmed a few of my journals—“as empty as the desert”—before recycling them.
As he stepped through the doorway, we both espied a newly delivered Amazon package on the front step. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to me. As K.O. disappeared down the sidewalk, I opened the package. It contained . . . a set of high-end journals . . . ordered for me by our (optimistic) son Byron—namesake of a great writer.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
