Howard Beans

Another cultural observation.  (?)  I met a wonderful guy named Howard, who seems to give everybody shit pretty much all the time, with just a moment of sincerity here or there--blink, and you miss it.  He's head of maintenance for the district, I think, or maybe technology, a local Yupik native and a classic example of what seems to be a very particular sense of humor peculiar to this part of the world.  We met my first day at school, and when I told him I live in Michigan, he launched into a diatribe on how much Michigan's college football team sucks.  This I took in stride, and with no small amusement, as I don't pretend to know anything at all about college sports, and very little about professional sports either.  After a few minutes of giving me a vigorously hard time about that and several other things, he told me to let him know if I needed anything.  Later, after he got me the key to my classroom, I caught him in passing and thanked him.  He teased me mercilessly about Michigan for a while longer, then parted with, "I'm here to help people."  He didn't say this with any kind of emphasis or melodrama; it seemed a casual statement of fact, so obvious that it hardly needed mention.

Yet, casual though it sounded, this simple statement struck me as nonetheless quite profound and far-reaching, as though he were putting his whole life and world-view into a nutshell to let everybody know what he was all about.  I'm probably reading my own views into it, at least in part, but I can't help feeling that this was more than a mere statement of professional responsibility.  It struck me as a very casual expression of a very deep, personal sense of purpose.  It strongly reinforced my first impression, that this is definitely a guy I can get along with.

At least one teacher has actually warned me off of Howard as a racist.  I believe the line she quoted was, "White people are trash."  Given my own impressions, I have to wonder if she simply failed to catch on to his decidedly dry and forceful sense of humor.  This past Saturday, he and his wife stopped by the Hilton to pick up something from the chest freezer, and since I was home they stayed to BS for a while and gave me a nice hunk of sheefish, an Alaskan delicacy that is apparently related to whitefish.  I felt very honored to be given such a treat--when people here ask if I've had any native food, sheefish is always one of the first things mentioned.

Deservedly so--it is wonderful.  I cooked it up tonight, baked in foil with lemon pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  Light and mild, flaky and tender, moist, savory, delicious!  Again, I may be dramatizing things unnecessarily, but I feel very strongly about being given food, particularly food of a kind prized by the giver.  There is something powerfully humbling in such a gift.  It makes me feel...  accepted, that's part of it, valued, welcome in some quiet, profound way.  Actually, now that I think about it, this feeling reminds me of having a bunch of high school and middle school kids ask if they could come into my room to do homework after school; the implicit sentiment is, "You're all right."  I'm delighted and honored to be accepted as even a distant and tangential member of this community.

My craving for acceptance has always been a bit of a weakness, for I crave it from everyone, deserving or no.  But I wonder if this 'flaw' doesn't also carry a little blessing, in that it lets perceptive people see my sincerity of purpose and my profound desire to be of help.  So perhaps in some circumstances my tragic longing for acceptance can help to bring about its own fulfillment.