Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

When we were kids, one of my brother's best, and most peculiar, friends, was a tall gangly fellow who was half inuit and one third uzbek. His parents made him take swimming lessons three times a week and it goes without saying that when it came to swimming, his skill was far superior to any other person we knew. But we were only seven and four at the time, so we really didn't know a lot of swimmers to compare him against. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that his swimming abilities were better than average for that age (he was five).

It seems our mother also thought that his swimming skills were quite impressive, for she never failed to start cursing and spitting at the very mention of his name. One thing we had learned to recognize about mother was that she couldn't stand to see other people's children winning approval and recognition for worthy achievements. I guess this was because the one thing she had gained much recognition for (and no approval) was the fact that one year earlier her husband had accidentally died in the clutches of his own garden hose.

In the recognition and approval department, it must have seemed to her that there was little prospect of improving her position with one son who was best known for his deathly fear of plants and animals, and another son who was best known for nothing at all. With our sister being less than two years old at the time, the chances of her accomplishing anything worthwhile were too far off for the impatient matron of our brood. It was thus that my brother and I found ourselves enrolled in swimming lessons.

Though my brother took a quick liking to this tall inuit/uzbek/tad o' something else, I found him to be obnoxious and conceited. He was always bragging about how fast he was. In fairness, he really was fast and it sometimes seemed to me that the water got warmer from his speed swimming. But I guess it could have been just pee. Though I didn't realise it at the time, I now suspect the latter to be the more likely, for reasons soon to be disclosed. You can decide for yourself.

Anyway, it wasn't long before he declared his life's ambition to race and defeat all the creatures of the sea. We started calling him Jock Cousteau.

As Jock and my brother became close friends, he started turning up at our house more often. My mother and I, for once, shared a common grief as neither of us liked Jock at all, but my brother suffered from a serious shortage of playmates. Rather than uniting against this common foe, my mother took this opportunity to torment me further by forcing to play with them. But it would be because of this that I first came to suspect his expertise in the pool was the result of overcompensating for deficiencies in other areas.

During the sunny afternoons which call for shorts, I started noticing a brown streak that usually appeared on the inside of his left leg (it would sometimes turn up on the right leg too, but that was rare). The only thing that was certain was that there was never a day when there wasn't a brown stripe on one leg or another. Curious, I asked him why he painted his legs like that and he said his mom made him do it. Even to my young mind, this rang false, and I was determined to find proof of what I personally believed to be the truth. My suspicions were confirmed during a sleepover when a little espionage revealed that Jock didn't sit down to poop. For whatever reason, his parent's toilet training methods had failed to convey this important bit of technique to the young lad.

In any case, the shit streak dried quickly and didn't stink too bad most of the time. Regardless, an already unpopular houseguest, he became an even more unpopular houseguest. I think it was mostly because of the little brown flakes he left on chairs, or maybe it was his curious habit of rubbing his legs together like a cricket. Whenever his visits concluded, passersby could hear the voices of children ringing out from all over our house "Mom! I found poo!"
Mother soon forbid him from the house and before the summer was over we had been withdrawn from swimming lessons and never saw him again.

A few days ago I though about him for the first time in years. I wondered what had become of him and whether he'd ever overcome his difficulties with defecation. Lo and behold, the very next day, I see a report on CNN, featuring none other than Jock Cousteau and how he'd just been clocked swimming faster than a beluga whale.

I'm not entirely sure whether this tale should be taken as inspirational or tragic. I guess if we say it's a little of both it'll appeal to a wider demographic, which is more important than trying to force a moral apon the audience anyway.