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.I don’t even remember the point of the article, but it made a case for the possibility that whales’ language is as sophisticated as ours, very intricate and precise.It also claimed that whale songs travel for hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in the ocean.“I was in one of those emotional places where I cursed my entire being.Mad at myself for not looking under the truck, mad at my parents and relatives and teachers for not warning me this kind of pain even exists in the world, mad at God for not looking under his truck and seeing me there.“And I realized I had reached adulthood without even knowing what it is to be human.Nobody ever told me how dangerous it is, how risky.I started wishing I were a whale.At least they know what it is to be a whale.I mean, think of it.I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it travels maybe two blocks.A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles.Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song.And I figure whales probably don’t edit.If they think it, they say it.If some man-whale cheats on his wife, her anguish, her rage, her despair, is heard and understood by every whale who swims into the range of her voice.The joy of lovemaking, the crippling heartache of a lost child—it’s all heard and understood.Predators and prey have equal voice.The Mother Teresa whales and the Jeffrey Dahmer whales all have their say.Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you’re a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.”I watch a spider crawl across the ceiling toward the light.“All that is exactly opposite of what it is to be human, at least for me.My parents were wonderful people, I suppose, but they didn’t want me to know what was out there.They didn’t want me to know the real skinny on sex or love or boredom or hate or disappointment.They sold me their wishes as if they were fact.After you saw me in the bedroom, I was embarrassed.I feel so weak when I get like that.But the truth is, that’s just the way it is with me some of the time, and you might as well know it.”I tell him what I haven’t said.“I guess I was afraid you were suicidal.”“Suicidal or not, I’m not going to kill myself,” he said with a smile.“If I were going to do that, I’d have done it a long time ago.What you need to know about your old man is that I always bounce back.”I went to my room and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t help running Dad’s and my conversation over in my head.If we all spoke in whale talk, and I heard the voices of Chris Coughlin and Andy Mott and Simon DeLong, how would I put them in the same ocean with the shit that comes out of Rich Marshall and Mike Barbour?By the second round of swim meets we look forward to the road trips as if they are vacations.We have attained a certain celebrity at meets, as Team Bizarro led by Superman.It turns out other teams have a few rookies who probably should have turned out for javelin catching, too, so we pick up unexpected points occasionally, but one coach called us the only team in the state that could actually make a swimming meet last longer.We have learned the trick bad hockey goalies have known forever.When the puck whizzes into the net for the eleventh time in the first period, pretend it didn’t happen.If you’re Simon or Mott or Jackie Craig, you just pull yourself out of the water as if they weren’t waiting for you to get out so they can start the next race.If you’re Dan Hole, you leap out, oblivious to all others, hustle to your workout bag, pull out your clipboard and a calculator, and chart your time.If you’re Chris Coughlin, you’re giddy just to hear your teammates clapping and chanting your name, and if you’re Tay-Roy Kibble, you flex as you pull yourself out and the entire crowd forgets why you were in the water in the first place.If you’re T.J.Jones, you kick exactly as many asses as dare dive into the water with you.But the fun is the ride [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]