Alan Liere: Becoming Me

I’m staring at a photo taken in 1974. It shows a group of middle school teachers dressed up for Halloween. I’m the tall guy in the middle wearing an authentic coonskin cap. I have a coyote skin draped over one shoulder and I’m holding a double-barreled shotgun.

It was a real shotgun – a Baker my father had given me. He bought it second-hand for $10 in 1930, and the seller had thrown in a box of shells. In the picture, I see the old gun as a testimony to how things have changed.

Had I brought a real shotgun to school anytime after 1980, I would have been tasered, maced, handcuffed, and subjected to a polygraph, a urinalysis and a psychiatric evaluation.

When I walked into the building with my mountain man outfit, one of my colleagues, who was dressed up like a princess, commented that she found adult Halloween costumes particularly interesting. She had a theory that at Halloween, adults become who they really wanted to be.

It was an interesting theory, and it might have held true for her and for me, but if such was the case for everyone, the art teacher wanted to be a Hershey bar, one of the coaches wanted to be a bearded woman, and our principal wanted to be a buffoon.

When I look at that picture, I have to smile. How tenuous our existence and what silly diversions we have created to help us stumble through our time on earth! The photo makes me think about the things we do with our lives and how we travel from point A to point B – how we “become.”

At age 29, did I really want to be a mountain man? Yes, I think I did. I think trapping beaver and making my own animal hide clothing would have been ever so much more satisfying than doing lesson plans, grading papers and living for the weekend.

But in college, with a modicum of maturity and an abundance of raging hormones, I came to realize mountain men did not often have mountain women. My strong suits were English, sleeping in, Hearts and Pinochle.

I was a fifth-year senior, I was engaged, and I very much needed to graduate soon. A survey of my college credits indicated there wasn’t a lot I could do quickly with an English major.

My folks were disappointed to learn I had no glorious and noble desire to develop young minds or make the world a better place. I needed a job, and teaching is what I decided on.

I never did particularly like it because there were too many bosses and too much apathy and too many parents who expected me to do their jobs. But I did it, and I think I did it well for 30 years, living for the weekends.

And that’s the short version of how I got from A to B – assuming retirement is B. Now that I’m there and can really do what I want, I hunt and fish every chance I get and I still want to be a mountain man. I don’t need much money, I don’t have a wife anymore, and I’ve already graduated a couple times from college. I think I can make it this time.