Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

Rambunctious, which I rowed while he searched for crabs hiding in the shadows of the overhanging grasses at the edges of the islands in the flats on the far side of the bay; and a smaller sailboat, a little catboat called Bumper, which he had built for his boys, Buster and Bert; he allowed me to sail Bumper alone, and once I sailed her all the way across the bay and back.

We’ve established that I had a lot to learn, but I had learned some important lessons, and among them was the lesson that an unpleasant task like acknowledging a mistake is better done sooner than later, so I set out for my grandfather’s house right away. From the Lodkochnikovs’ it was only a short walk alongside the Bolotomy, in the upriver direction. I made the walk with my head down, kicking the dust at the roadside. I was reluctant to go, and I certainly wasn’t hurrying on my way, but I was resolved to do what I had to do and to do it like a man. As I walked along the way toward Grandfather’s house, I resolved to be truthful with him. That seemed very fine of me when I made the resolution, but when I began thinking about it, I realized that it meant that I was going to have to tell him that I had not sought his advice because I hadn’t wanted it.

I began to muse on vanity and pride and folly and the way that they get a boy — particularly an adolescent boy — into trouble. My thinking, which I recall as remarkably keen and insightful for an adolescent boy, went something like this:

    I am an adolescent boy, and an adolescent boy has his pride, and his little vanities, and his misplaced affections, his follies.

    His pride develops when he recognizes that he is beginning to be someone. What is this thing called pride? It’s the boy’s own estimate of his awakening self, the degree of esteem in which he holds his forming self. (Pride’s opposite is said to be humility, but from what I’ve seen in my life so far, most of what people claim as humility is really just another form of pride, the pride of people who hold themselves in high esteem for not being proud.) To the extent that pride influences a boy’s actions, it will be an influence in the direction of wisdom and right choices if it is based on a real and accurate assessment of his merits and abilities, but it will be an influence in the direction of foolishness and error if it is based on a fantastic assessment, and an adolescent boy’s estimate of himself is likely to be more dream than fact. So, his fantastic self-esteem will be one force nudging him toward folly.

    The vanity of an adolescent boy is his perception of the figure that his boy-self cuts in the world, his estimate of the estimate that other people make of that person-in-the-making, their placement of him along a line from respect to contempt. This awareness may be based on careful observation and sound reasoning, or — more likely — on fantasy, illusion, wishful thinking, despair, and fear. There are boys whose pride makes them want to be worthy in their own eyes, to be able to look themselves in the eye in the morning, in the mirror when they check to see whether this might be the day to begin shaving, and tell themselves that they’re fine fellows, no matter what the world thinks; there are those whose desire for the regard of their fellows is grand and noble, those who seek true fame, the esteem of the worthies; and there are those who court the mob, who will do anything to be known, to be known for anything, just to be known.

    When we — we adolescent boys — are deciding a course of action, we think first about what others will think of us and only second about what we will think of ourselves. We are vain first and proud second. We would rather be admired — or famous, the vain boy’s dream — for some quality that we do not actually possess or do not in our hearts think worthy of admiration, than to be ignored though we know in our hearts that we are good and right and able.

    That’s a boy’s vanity at work, but if he’s granted some unearned admiration — let’s say that he comes to be known as a boy who “knows boats” — he’ll find that his pride is at work, too, and his pride will tell him that he’s a fake, and so the vain boy will live in fear of discovery. He will fear that the people he has fooled will discover that he’s fooled them, and so to avoid having to listen to the voice of his pride he begins fooling himself. He begins to give himself the credit that the credulous world gives him. He does not ask the questions that should be asked, does not seek the help that should be sought.

    His actions often seem, from the outside, bold and confident, but he is standing at the brink of folly. Another step, and he falls. Once he has fallen, there’s no pulling him back onto solid ground. He won’t allow it. He won’t even allow his friends to remain on solid ground. “If you’re going to be my friend or keep my affection,” his thinking goes, “you will have to join me in my folly, because I’ve decided to live in this fool’s paradise, and I am inviting you to join me here. I feel — ”

    (Note the word that the young fool chooses: feel, not think.)

    “ — I feel that I will be happy here, and I don’t want you to tell me that I won’t. If you’re willing to join me, then jump, friend, but if you will