Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing (22 page)

Eighty-seven percent of all conversations between friends are based on shared ignorance. It's true. That's the reason so many friendships last a lifetime. There is even a procedure for testing a friend's ignorance on a topic, to see if it matches your own. It goes something like this.

“George, you know anything about the national debt?”

“Naw. You?”

“Naw. But I'll tell you what causes it. Too much gravity.”

“You got that right, ol' buddy.”

After running their little test on shared ignorance, the two friends can then discourse in mutual confidence on a topic about which neither of them knows the slightest thing.

My friend Retch Sweeney and I have spent many a happy hour around the campfire sharing our mutual ignoranees.

Just about any topic will do for the evening, because Retch is a vast reservoir of ignorance. His only academic achievement—a record—was Most Years in Fifth Grade. As my friend, he feels totally confident and secure in his ignorance. He can go on at impressive length discussing the nuances of a subject he never even heard of until the moment it came up.

“You hear that fellow talking about the chaos theory on the radio just now?”

“Yeah.”

“You know anything about the chaos theory?”

“Naw. You?”

“Naw. But I'll tell you somethin' about chaos.”

“Got anything to do with the hole in the ozone?”

“How'd you guess?”

As I've indicated, the problem with ignorance arises when it isn't shared equally among friends discussing a particular topic. This can put a heavy strain on a relationship. Here's an example.

It all started when I was being interviewed on our local radio station. At one point, the interviewer said, “What do you do for recreation, Pat?”

“Well, besides fishing, I'm an avid hunter,” I replied.

A little later in the day, Retch and I were walking down the street to shop for some new tackle at Lou's Sporting Goods.

“I heard you bein' interviewed on the radio this morning,” Retch said.

“How'd I do?” I said.

“Fine. But what was that about you being an avid hunter, you big liar? Ha!”

“What are you talking about, Retch? You know I'm an avid hunter.”

“Don't think you can pull that on me. There ain't no such thing as avids.”

We walked along in silence for a while. Clearly, Retch's comment revealed a deep chasm in our usual mutual ignorance. Because of our long friendship, I wrestled for a moment with my conscience. I won.

“There are too avids,” I said. “I've hunted them for years.”

“You have not. I hunt with you all the time an' I've never once seen you hunt avids.”

“That's because you're never around during avid season.”

“Listen, if there was such a critter as an avid, I'd have heard of it.”

“Well, I'm surprised you haven't. Avid hunting is very popular.”

Retch chuckled. “You're just foolin' with me.”

We came to Kelly's Bar & Grill, the cultural center of our little town of Blight, Idaho.

“You think I'm fooling with you, Retch? Why then, you just step into Kelly's here for a minute.”

We stepped into Kelly's.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” I called out to the Kelly's regulars. “I'm running a little study for the Fish and Game Department. Would every man here who's an avid hunter raise his hand?”

Hands went up all over the room.

“You see,” I said to Retch. “Avid hunting is a popular sport. There are probably more avid hunters than all the deer and elk hunters combined.”

“Well, if that don't beat all,” Retch said. “Seems as if everybody but me has hunted avids for years.”

“Seems that way.”

“You don't have to be so smug about it.”

“I'm not being smug. I just get this urge to smile at strange times.”

“What do these avids look like anyway? Maybe I've seen them and didn't know what they was.”

“What does an avid look like? You want to know what an avid looks like. Retch?”

“Ain't that what I just said?”

“Right. Let's see now, well, your average avid is about as big as a bread box. Covered with fur. Big ears. Little squinty eyes.”

“Good to eat?”

“About like chicken.”

“I figured that. How you hunt them?”

“You hunt avids mostly at night. You crouch down and hold a gunnysack open on the ground. When an avid comes along, you shine a flashlight into the sack. The avid sees the light and runs right into the sack. It's pretty simple. Of course, sometimes you have to wait quite a while for an avid to show up. You might want to try it tonight.”

Retch's eyes began to narrow into slits, similar to the eyes of an avid right after it has run into a sack.

“I suppose,” he growled, “that while you're waiting for an avid to show up you might catch a few snipe in your sack.”

“A frequent occurrence,” I said. “An avid hunt and a snipe hunt have great similarities.”

Retch was pretty steamed. This, after all, had been a classic violation of the bonds of ignorance. I hoped he wouldn't be so upset by my little joke that our enjoyment of shared ignorance would be forever lost.

We walked along without talking for several minutes. Then Retch broke the silence.

“You know anything about the national debt?” he said.

“Naw,” I said. “You?”

“Naw. But I'll tell you something, the big problem with the national debt is …”

The following stories appeared in
Outdoor Life:

“The Boy,” originally published as “For Whom the Boy Toils,” May 1996; “Mountain Men,” published in three parts: “Something Bad Blowing on the Wind,” June/July 1997, “Caught!,” August 1997, and “Pay Back,” September 1997; “Smoke!,” as “My Stinky Old Pipes,” December 1994; “Sam Spud and the Case of the Maltese Fly,” May 1997; “Other Than That, Bostich …,” as “Littering the Wilds,” January 1996; “The Chicken-Fried Club,” as “A Glistening Retreat,” March 1996; “Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing,” as “A Good Grouse Woods,” November 1995; “Dream Fish,” as “Fish of Dreams,” April 1996; “Will,” as “Where There's a Will,” October 1996; “Crime Wave,” February 1997; “Big Ben,” August 1995; “Roast Beef,” as “Midnight Rendezvous,” August 1996; “The Fly Rod,” March 1997; “The Stupidity Alarm,” April 1997; “Work and Other Horrors,” June 1994; “The Dangers of Light Tackle,” June 1995; “Faint Heart,” September 1995; “Mrs. Peabody II,” as “R.I.P.,” July 1996; “Cereal Crime,” as “Sid Is on the Case,” October 1994; “Pickers,” as “The Competition,” December 1995; “My Fishing Trip with Ernie,” September 1994; “For Crying Out Loud!,” as “Sensitivity Training,” January 1997; “Fan Mail,” July 1995; “Bike Ride,” December 1996; “Uncle Flynn's Hairy Adventure,” as “Uncle Finn's Hairy Escape,” April 1995; “Hunting the Wily Avid,” May 1995.

“Attack of the Stamp People” appeared in
Storyworks
, September 1996.