by Tim O'Brien
So one afternoon last summer I took the plunge. I’d been asked to deliver a public lecture. Meredith and Timmy were in the audience, which revved up my jitters, and for several seconds I went through a catalog of excuses for getting the hell out of there: I’d contracted encephalitis, I’d eaten cockroaches. But then I did it—I plunged. I explained that Meredith and I had been eagerly awaiting our son’s first utterance. One of us had been betting on “Mommy,” the other on “Daddy.”
Yesterday morning, I told the audience, Timmy finally delivered.
He looked up from a toy rattlesnake (we live in Texas) and said, with hair-raising clarity, “ ’Tis a tale told by an idiot.”
Meredith and I were astonished. We were frightened. Immediately we packed the boy up and hauled him down to the Sewanee health facility. A kindly young nurse was on duty. She enthroned Timmy on an examining table and said, “Okay, what’s the trouble, little guy?” Timmy stared at her—suspiciously, I thought—and said, “ ’Tis a tale told by an idiot.” The nurse, like Meredith and I, was taken aback. She checked the boy’s vitals, excused herself, and went to a telephone. Apparently a doctor was on call. Over the next several minutes, we overheard bits and pieces of the nurse’s end of the conversation, a phrase here, a phrase there, the general tone of which was alarm. I’m quite certain I heard the nurse whisper, “These goddamned writers’ conferences.” Only minutes later, no doubt sped by curiosity, the doctor himself soon appeared, a white-haired, courtly, convivial gentleman dressed for a game of golf. The man smiled and clapped his hands and said, “So what’s the story here?” Timmy muttered, “ ’Tis a tale told by an idiot.” The boy seemed pleased with himself.
Medical procedures ensued, tentative probings of the ear and tongue, but, in the end, the physician seemed as puzzled as any of us. He scratched his head. Our son, he finally told us, was not ill. He explained that one-year-olds were well known to have as their first decipherable bit of language not just a single word, such as “Daddy,” but in fact two or three words, such as “Hi there, Daddy,” or “Bye-bye, Daddy,” or other such simple constructions. “Your son,” the doctor said, “has merely tacked on a few additional syllables.”
“Well, yes,” said Meredith, “but those are famous syllables. Those syllables make sense.”
The physician pooh-poohed this. He assured us that the abnormality, if one wished to call it that, was far from life-threatening. It was not cancer. It was not polio. And thus, after he’d prescribed a sedative for Meredith and me, we departed the dispensary.
That evening, as any parent can well imagine, Meredith and I shot a good many oblique glances at our son—proudly, yes, but also with a measure of anxiety. It was clear that from this point on we would be wise to watch our tongues. If the boy could pick up on a phrase from Shakespeare, he could certainly master the word “cocksucker.” Moreover, I must now admit to something infantile in my own character. As the evening wore on, I found myself increasingly disappointed, then outright irritated, that my son’s first utterance had originated in the imagination of a competing writer. At one point, while Meredith set up our video camera, I knelt down beside young Timmy and whispered to him, “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.”
At that point in my Sewanee lecture, I glanced over at Timmy, who squirmed and fussed in Meredith’s arms. People stared at him. People were laughing. Though the boy was barely a year old, and though his vocabulary was therefore severely cramped, he nonetheless seemed annoyed at the airing of his intimate personal life in a public setting. He emitted what I took to be heckling sounds.
For twenty minutes or so, although now flustered, I did my best—ineptly, I’m sure—to point out that I was making no claims about the literary merit of my little story. In fact, I admitted, it wasn’t even a story, certainly not in the sense of richness or depth. It was a trifling anecdote, nothing more. But even so, I said, it was possible that in certain sympathetic hands, perhaps those of a Donald Barthelme or a Woody Allen or any other writer with a sensibility suited to the comically grotesque, an interesting piece of prose might be forthcoming with the application of much time and imaginative energy. In fact, I myself might one day wish to pick up the tale, adding and subtracting, taking what is now a mere sketch off into the world of a full story. What I surely would not do is play much longer with Shakespeare. I would take the story elsewhere, virtually to any elsewhere. I’d try to surprise myself. I’d seek some new narrative dimension. And while striving to sustain something of the humor, I would also keep an eye peeled for gravitas—a thematic heft, a moral weight—hoping the tale might elevate itself above the eccentric or the entertainingly slight. I would trust these first paragraphs to carry me toward that next dimension.
What if . . . What if late that same night, Timmy were to cry out in his sleep, “Alas, Babylon”?
Or what if the next morning, perched in his high chair, he were suddenly to bay, “I ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog”?
Or what if, a month later or a year later, on a sunny beach along the ocean, he were to whisper, “Bye-bye, Daddy,” and then toddle off into the water and slip forever beneath the waves?
To trust a story is to trust one’s own story, not someone else’s. To trust a story is to avoid the predictable, the familiar, the wholly logical, the already written, the movie you saw last week, the bestseller you read last month, and even that classic you nearly finished back in college. To trust a story is to trust your own imagination, not the imagination of some literary predecessor.
Also, if I were to go forward with the Timmy story—and now, having thought about it, why not?—I would soon be fretting over issues of craft. For example, there is the whole matter of writers writing about writers, which for me carries with it a self-congratulatory stink. I would probably end up dispensing with the reference to The Things They Carried, although it would be painful to delete one of the anecdote’s funnier lines. (Funny to me, anyway.) No doubt I would tinker, perhaps for hours, with ways to recast or defuse the reference to my own work, but still, at the end of the day, the line would almost certainly have to go.
Beyond all else, I would do nothing to explain how a one-year-old came to declaim a famous phrase from Macbeth. The utterance would simply be, just as Gregor Samsa simply is a bug, or just as Grumpy simply is a dwarf. Granted, a baby reciting a phrase from Shakespeare is on its face pretty far-fetched and mysterious. But it seems to me no more far-fetched or mysterious than, say, the existence of our solar system, or human love, or Mohamed Atta flying an airplane into a Manhattan skyscraper.
At that point, as I concluded my talk, Timmy lay snoozing in his mother’s arms. Yet even that—the fact that I’d now bored him into unconsciousness—had the feel of a rebuke, and for the remainder of the day I was followed by an unsettling cloud of guilt: that I’d exploited my own son for the sake of a few paltry literary observations.
That evening, in the midst of an outdoor cocktail party, I was approached by a middle-aged gentleman dressed in a bow tie, colorful suspenders, and a vintage straw boater of the sort Gatsby might have favored.
“Your fucking kid,” the man said, “never quoted Shakespeare.”
“No,” I said.
“So why did you have to lie?”
“I didn’t have to,” I told him. “I wanted to.”
This comment (wholly defensible) pissed him off. He had been drinking, I realized, but plainly his wrath was genuine.
Over the next many minutes I received the gist of the man’s complaint, which had to do with my failure to acknowledge that Timmy had not spoken, in any form whatsoever, the words I’d claimed he had spoken. It amounted to intentional and gross deception, the man said. It was unfair to the audience. “You made us laugh,” he said, “about a complete lie. You made us feel like fools.”
“I didn’t intend that.”
“Well, my friend,” he said, “I’m here to tell you that I
took offense. I still take offense.”
Ordinarily, I would’ve tried to smooth things over. But he had referred to Timmy as my “fucking kid.” He had referred to me as his friend.
I told him he was a monster.
I told him that one day I would write about him.
“In that case,” the man said (and I’m paraphrasing here, omitting two very vulgar words), “according to Shakespeare, that would be a tale told by an idiot—by a lying idiot—which is you.”
I did not hit him.
In fact, much to my karmic credit, I drew a breath and stepped back. Fiction writers always lie, I said—way too gently. They lie for a living. They lie for money. They lie for the fun of it. They invent stuff and try to convince people it actually occurred—that’s the job, that’s the joy. Besides, aren’t the first words of a child always miraculous? Alwaysbeyond belief ?
“Maybe so,” the man said, “but why not just give us the actual miracle, not some made-up bullshit? Why not give us your kid’s realfirst words?”
“Because it would’ve been dull—you wouldn’t have felt anything.”
“That’s all you can say?”
“Well, no,” I told him. “I guess nobody would’ve believed me—not Timmy’s actual first words. So why not invent something amusing?”
“It wasn’t in the least amusing,” he muttered. “It was manipulative.”
“You didn’t laugh?”
“Of course I did. That’s what made it manipulative. And by the way, in case you don’t know, your books make my students feel exactly the same way. Totally scammed.”
I nodded. “So you teach?”
“Most definitely, and at a very respectable university.”
“And do you also write fiction?”
“Certainly so. Superb fiction.”
I should’ve ended it there, but I didn’t.
“Well, listen,” I said, “have you considered trying your hand at nonfiction? Maybe a book about automotive repair?”
The man glared. “I take that as a condescending assault on my person. I’ll be reporting you accordingly—you can count on it. Plus, I suppose you’re too much of a liar to tell me what your kid actually said.”
“Does it matter?”
“Ha!” he said. “You’re asking if truth matters?”
“But we’re talking about a story, aren’t we? Wasn’t it clear that the whole thing was—?”
“Fabrication!” he snarled.
I looked around for assistance. People were staring at us without staring at us.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you the truth, but it won’t be funny. Basically, most of it happened just the way I described it, except of course I changed Timmy’s dialogue. But the toy rattlesnake, that part was real.”
“I knew that,” the man said sharply.
“The nurse was real, too. Timmy had an ear infection.”
“I assumed as much.”
“And the doctor—he was very real. Courtly, convivial. Dressed for golf.”
“Who cares? All that’s obvious. Get to what your kid really said.”
I was frightened, I’ll admit. But I was thrilled by the certainty that someday (which is right now) I would exact revenge on this literal-minded Philistine.
“Okay,” I said, “Timmy’s first words were—you won’t believe this—a full sentence, perfect grammar, clear as a bell. He looked up from his toy rattlesnake and said, ‘Daddy, we should go find a guy in a straw hat and tie him up and murder him.’ Verbatim quote. First utterance ever. I warned you it wouldn’t be funny.”
The man peered at me.
“Is that a threat?”
“No. It’s a miracle.”
The man removed his hat, straightened to his full height, and said, very quietly, “Your son has a terrible, terrible father.”
6
First Words
When Timmy began to speak, Meredith was in the habit of calling him “honey,” which the boy took to mean that others were also to be called “honey.”
The mailman frowned at this.
The Walmart cashier, a humorless Texan, squinted at my son with a touch of irritation.
“Bye, honey,” Timmy called over his shoulder.
7
Home School
Timmy, I want you to consider something: George Washington was once declared a terrorist in the halls of Parliament. America’s beloved patriot had become King George’s detested criminal. It is not just beauty that resides in the eye of the beholder.
Also, Timmy, whenever you glance at a five-dollar bill, I want you to remember that Abraham Lincoln engaged in the sexual act. He had four children, after all, and this required ejaculation, and during those exclamatory moments, Lincoln almost certainly was not contemplating the Gettysburg Address. The man on the five-dollar bill is not the whole man.
I want you to bear in mind that truth has no patience for what is tasteful and what is not.
And I want you to ask: Is one-kabillionth of the truth the truth? Is three-quarters of the truth the truth? In fact, is the whole truth, to which we are pledged in courtrooms, ever truly the whole truth, and if so, how do you know? Can you read minds? Were you present at the creation? Does sunlight come equipped with earbuds through which it whispers to you, “I am truth, I am truth”? Do wars whisper, “I am righteous, I am righteous”? Or is it mankind who whispers those comforting words about sunlight and the wars we make?
There is no Easter Bunny, Timmy. Although your mother and I will do all we can to make you believe in generous rabbits, please don’t forget that you once accepted as perfectly true something that was perfectly false.
As you grow older and wiser, I want you to remind yourself that this true-false thing cuts both ways. What is accepted as false may later be accepted as true. And what is accepted as true may later be denounced as false. Planet Earth is not flat. Planet Earth is not located at the center of the universe.
I want you to remember that your country once went to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.
I want you to consider that the witches executed in Salem, Massachusetts, were probably not true witches, except in the heads of the people who executed them.
I want you to remember that the word “truth” can kill.
I want you to remember that what is true in one place may not be true in another. Right now, for example, it’s Christmas Eve, 11:52 p.m., on Friday, December 24, 2004. That’s true, I suppose. But it’s not true in Tokyo, is it? Or in Baghdad? Or on Neptune?
Right now you are sound asleep in your crib, dreaming your true dreams, but at 5 a.m. tomorrow, when you awaken, what is true at this instant will no longer be true.
I want you to remember that truths can be contradictory. I could tell you, Timmy, that you live in a great and good country, and I would be telling the truth. But I could also tell you that ours is a country that once permitted the enslavement of human beings, and that too would be true.
Truth can be fluid, Timmy. People fall in love. People fall out of love. What is true on Thursday may not be true on Friday, or may not be true in exactly the same way.
I want you to remember that Newton was succeeded by Einstein.
I want you to remember that what we call the Vietnam War is called by others the American War.
I want you to remember that God did not receive creation instructions from the authors of Genesis or from the trustees of Oral Roberts University. Presumably the instructional flow went the other way.
I want you to remember that sometimes—in fact, many times—literal truth does not matter in the least, and should not matter. As you sit in a movie theater or lie in bed with a good novel, Timmy, I hope you will not mutter to yourself every few seconds: “That’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true.” If anything of the sort occurs—if literal truth matters to you that much—please seek counseling.
Along the same lines, I want you to ke
ep in mind that any work of history, though it may contain a great deal of truth, will never contain the truth. The daydreams of Alexander the Great will not appear in a work of history, and yet daydreams influence aspiration, and aspiration influences behavior, and human behavior influences history. Did Tojo wake up with a bad headache on a December morning in 1941? Did Ho Chi Minh dream about riding naked aboard an elephant through the streets of Saigon? At the Little Bighorn, in his final seconds, did Custer appreciate the irony that he was about to receive exactly what he had come prepared to deliver? History doesn’t know.
Also, Timmy, I want you to remember that Osama bin Laden is at this instant convinced of certain truths, truths he considers worth killing for, just as Dick Cheney is convinced of his own precious truths, truths he too believes are worth killing for. Truth does not come dressed in flags or priestly vestments or classy business suits.
I want you to remember that the word “truth,” especially when it’s capitalized, can be used as a tyrant’s bludgeon or as a saint’s exhortation or as a con man’s invitation to invest your life savings in a Ukrainian time-share.
Also, Timmy, I want you to know that your first utterance had nothing to do with Shakespeare. It had nothing to do with murdering people in suspenders and straw boaters. Your first words, in fact, were these: “This so’ is mine!” (The word “so’,” which is not quite a word, was your parents’ shorthand for “soda pop.”) While few will believe it, your grammar was excellent and your youthful utterance arrived in the form of a flawlessly constructed sentence. Who cares if skeptics don’t believe this? As Galileo discovered, people often prefer comfortable falsehoods to uncomfortable truths.
As I sit at your crib, Timmy, and as I jot down these things under the glow of a night-light, I’m caught up in some pretty serious Christmas Eve sentimentality. I’m here beside you, that seems true, but it’s also true that I’m gliding through the silent, snow-softened Christmas Eves of my Minnesota childhood, then to a sad and fearsome Christmas Eve in Quang Ngai Province, then to a Christmas Eve in 1994 when I’d come to the conclusion that for me there would be no more Christmas Eves ever again. How untrue that was. But how true it then seemed.
