Just Ray

There’s a novel by Dennis Lehane--and maybe you’ve heard of it--called “Mystic River.”  In the book Lehane introduces a character by the name of “Just Ray” Harris, a man named because all of the other gangster “_______ Ray” names were taken in Boston.

I don’t know why, but I thought of that when I heard that Ray Bradbury had passed way Tuesday night.  Maybe it was because when I hear the name Ray I don’t think of Ramono or my cousin’s husband or “Field of Dreams” first.  I think of Ray Bradbury.  I haven’t read his books in decades, but I can tell you when I did read them and how they affected me.

To ignore that influence would be like removing one of my senses.  It’s more than amputation.  It’s more than a lost tooth.  It would be a denial of my own skin.

*****

Somewhere in the storage unit in Missouri or in a wicker hamper under my childhood bed in Ohio is a pink, loose-leaf binder, a little bit bigger than an iPhone.  In that notebook are scrawlings of my experiences in a special school program called T.A.G.  Once I briefly explain what T.A.G. was--no, it wasn’t the playground game, or what you do to people in photos now on the social networks--you’re going to accuse me of tooting my own horn.  The best part was, I didn’t toot that horn, then or now.  I was God-awful at grade school; when I was in first grade I was so sluggish that I kept all of my homework assignments rather than turn them in half-finished, and on the last day of the school year had to stay in a classroom with a teacher’s aid to finish them while everyone else went to another location to watch a movie.  I looked to be doomed academically--I did way too much staring out of windows.

(My mother got on to me for that at first.  Years later she had to explain it to my best friend.  “That’s where her stories come from--it’s best to just leave her alone when she does that.”)

Ok...T.A.G.

T.A.G. stood for Talented And Gifted.  Not many kids were asked to be in this program; I think in my class there were four of us.  (I won’t name names--that’s their horn.)  I honestly can’t tell you how we were selected, but I do know this--my parents learned something from this program, and not just me.  The program had a county fair kind of thing at one of the schools so that all of the students could mingle and the parents could watch us in action and talk to the county coordinators.  My mother met the director of T.A.G. and made some sort of self-deprecating statement about how she couldn’t figure out how her kids could be chosen for this program.  “Mrs. Schlosser,” he responded, “You must have done something right.  If only three kids in Williams County could be in T.A.G., two of them would be yours.”

So, yes, my brother was in T.A.G., too.  Which is also pretty remarkable considering his early years, but I’ll let him tell that story.

I don’t begrudgingly state that my brother was in this program and shouldn’t have been.  I state that because for a long time I felt I shouldn’t be in T.A.G.  For a long time I felt that my brother deserved to be in and that I was just piggybacking on my genius brother’s reputation.  (He’s still smarter and more gifted than I am.  Just saying.)  I wrote about my frustration in the little pink notebook.  Because I was known for my love of words, that’s what the program was trying to develop in me, so I had to turn in that notebook occasionally for the teacher to review and guide my writing.  She read my fears and wrote a small note next to them in the margins:  “Your mother has a great story from meeting the director about this.  Ask her about it sometime.”  I did.  She shared the story with me.  I stayed where I belonged, and played with my words in essays and poetry.

The program believed in pushing us outside of our comfort zone, and one way they did that was having us read stuff we wouldn’t get to read in the standard curriculum.  To this day I couldn’t tell you if the rest of my classmates ever got to read “The Martian Chronicles” or “Fahrenheit 451,” or if they had to wait for high school or maybe a literature class in college to get it.  (By my senior year of high school I was reading Dorothy Parker, so I’m grateful for Mr. Friend, my journalism/English teacher at the time, for believing in my literary development enough to handle her at 18.)  I was not a fan of science fiction, and while the “The Martian Chronicles” were satisfying they were slow-going (even for my daydreaming).  But “Fahrenheit 451” was mind-blowing--the writing, the suggestions, the idea that life could be found and preserved in very fragile, very flammable dead trees.  (To this day I am still working on a short story that plays on the virtual/ebook counterpart of "Fahrenheit" and just realized it writing this.)

If I fell in love with Ray in middle school, and then in college the infatuation grew worse.  I was at a Barnes and Noble in Springfield, Missouri, poring over the section of writing how-to books, and stumbled into a familiar name with what for me was a new title:

“Zen in the Art of Writing,” by Ray Bradbury.

I’m willing to bet that whoever finds that compact pink notebook will find, nestled next to it, “Zen.”

*****

According to sources, Bradbury took exception to being called a science fiction writer.  He thought of “Fahrenheit 451” as his only science fiction work, and the rest of his fiction was fantasy.  I can see that, somewhat.  I always thought of his work as literature, though.  Just literature.

Like the detective stories of Mr. Lehane.  Just literature.

Just Ray.  Just right.

Post Script--The evening after writing the first draft of this post I asked my brother if he remembered T.A.G.  “Sure,” he said, a little tight-lipped.  Did he remember reading Ray Bradbury?  “Some of it,” he answered, a bit uncomfortably.  “I remembered reading ‘The Martian Chronicles’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’--I still have ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in my bookshelf in there--and what’s the one with the guy with words all over his body?”  The “Illustrated Man?”  “Yeah, that’s it.  But I only remember the first two.”  (I had forgotten about “The Illustrated Man,” so it was all the same to me as well.)  He paused.  “That’s when I stopped reading for fun.”  With Ray?  “No, they assigned ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ right after ‘Fahrenheit 451.’  I hated ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ but we had to read it.  So I just shut down and read it, and then ‘The Illustrated Man.’  I didn’t read anything else or didn’t remember any other required reading for ten years after that.  I didn’t enjoy reading again until you sent me ‘A Fool’s Progress.’”

Huh.  So I wasn’t the only one to struggle with T.A.G.  Or hang on to “Fahrenheit,” one way or another.