Stargazing With a War Hero

I was a strange kid.

Those who know me personally probably aren't surprised in the least by this information. After my dad passed away when I was six, I found it hard to grow up. Toss in three older brothers' shadows (who were the epitome of everything I and other boys were supposed to be in one way or another) leering over my development and suddenly you have a young child who doesn't know what he's supposed to do or how he's supposed to act. My only "father figure" at the time was a friend's father who, while he had taken me under his wing, was not the bastion of good moral fiber that a developing mind needs. I also, unfortunately, did not have the same complexes his son (at the time my best friend) had where he believed, beyond anything in the world, that his father was a superhero.

I had seen my superhero fall; I knew them as fallible, destructible. 

Human.

All of these problems had made me extremely awkward; I didn't make friends very well, and the ones I had were everything to me. Unlike most of them, I had experienced a permanent loss in my life. I knew that feeling and never wanted to experience it again. This also brought about the idea that, if I just don't get close to anyone, I'll never lose them.

I want you to imagine that for a second -- I was eight years old and already considering what I could do to never be hurt again. I was surrounded by love but never felt like I deserved it. Had I blamed myself somehow for what happened to my dad? He died of a heart attack -- a symptom of drinking and smoking too much -- not of anything that he began doing when I was born or directly because of me.

Not long after, my class took a trip to what is known as the "Nature Walk" in town. Located right next to the high school, it was a preservation for local fauna and flora as well as a small research center and planetarium. We had been there dozens of times through my education, but this would be the first all-day trip where we would experience the nature walk and the planetarium. At the time, I was more excited that we wouldn't be in school for the day -- I could have cared less to see the stars or appreciate a thousand-year-old tree.

The caretaker for the grounds, a grizzled old man named Jefferson Deblanc, was a staple in St.Martinville's history and culture. If there was something going on around the small city, he was there smiling and telling stories. Later, I would discover that he was an Ace in the Marine Corps, a Medal of Honor recipient, and a Prisoner of War in World War II. At that point though? He was the old man who ran the Nature Walk and tried to, unsuccessfully, make us laugh with terrible jokes we were too young to understand. 

As Mr. Deblanc was showing us the Morse Code machines that were kept in a small classroom near the planetarium, my friends and I began to play with, and eventually break, one of the aluminum and plastic boxes. It, of course, was the machine I had been given care over for the lesson, and so I was told to stay after class while my teacher and the rest of my friends went through the wooded areas of the Nature Walk. I had been left, all alone, with a creepy old man who smelled a bit too strongly of cologne and had a voice that could give gravel shivers.

He began to lecture me on why I had to stay behind, the value of these machines, why I was the only one who was punished, and the responsibility that I had shirked and, throughout it all, I cried. My mom had never been one to lecture or yell since my father passed away and her voice, while deadly, never rose louder than her normal speaking voice. She knew how to strike the fear of God in us without it.

Jefferson Deblanc, on the other hand, brought about the sounds of thunder.

Eventually, he calmed down and I stopped crying. As he began to think about a suitable way to punish me -- top at the list of course were telling my mom or tossing me in the bayou (where he swore there were alligators the size of the nearby school) -- he eventually settled that I would get his own personal tour of the Nature Walk. While this doesn't sound like much of a punishment, Mr. Deblanc was a talker and knew everything there was to know about that place. This meant that, while my friends were having fun with our teacher, I would be walking next to a smelly old man who droned on and on about the importance of knowing the differences between poison ivy and poison sumac, that you can eat your shoes if you ever get caught in the forest, and that the casing for boudin was actually made from pig intestines -- finding out the last one was actually true was, at that point in my life, one of the saddest things I had ever been given knowledge on. 

At some point, when and why I don’t remember, but I began to enjoy my personal tour and, as we rounded towards the end, I asked him if we could go and visit the planetarium. I had missed it earlier (while he was lecturing) and for some strange reason I wanted to hear his thoughts. For the first time, I wanted to see the stars.

We went inside and he had me sit right next to the machine. The lights dimmed, and the soft hum of gears and fans greeted us as he switched it on. Suddenly, the walls and ceiling were being bathed in a starry night sky and he began to point out constellations, show the shifting of the heavenly bodies in relation to the seasons, and, in the most revered of tones, explain why they were given their respective names. Suddenly, the conversation switched from lecture to questionnaire, and he was asking me about myself; If I missed my dad, how school was going, and what subjects I liked the most. As I answered each of his questions he would nod and smile, attentively, as he continued switching between Eastern and Western skies, between Northern and Southern hemispheres.

His eyes never left the night sky, almost as if he were more fascinated in it than his students were. As I told him my favorite subjects were English and History, he looked down at me and, smiling, told me "The world needs more good writers -- are you any good?". I had recently won the Young Authors' Contest for a poem that I had written about one of my favorite games, and still had a copy of it in my backpack. Retrieving it from the mess of pencils and notebooks, I handed it to him for inspection.

 As his eyes scanned the short poem, he gave small grunts and other intelligible noises. Soon after, he lowered it with a smile on his face and gave it back to me.

"The world needs more good writers. Keep that up and you'll be one of them."

Throughout my education, no one had ever told me I was good at anything. It took a complete stranger to make me realize that I was meant for something with just those simple words -- after that day, I always wanted to go and see Mr. Deblanc, and our field trips to the Nature Walk became something that I looked forward to more than anything else.

 He had changed me and also made me realize that maybe I wasn't awkward, but just a bit different from the norm. And that it was a good thing.