The Hoddit & Me
The author kicks Tolkien. Tolkien kicks back
By Vance Briceland
"I was thinking about a party I went to in high school," I said to my father recently, over the phone.
"A party?"
"Yes, remember when--"
"You went to a party?"
I've always suspected that at the hospital, parents of newborns are given a small device that emits high-frequency sound waves that even dogs cannot hear. When employed, it changes their children from sane individuals into cringing lunatics. Now I had proof it worked over long-distance lines, as well. "Now, just wait a minute. . . ."
"You went to a party? In high school?" He sounded genuinely flabbergasted at the concept. I could hear his memory banks whirring over the phone lines, like one of those old-fashioned computers from the seventies on a TV show. I half expected a little punch-card to pop out of his mouth emblazoned with the legend, does not compute.
I took a deep breath, and with dignity proclaimed, "I could have gone to many parties in high school if I'd wanted to."
Although I was attempting to steer the conversation forward, my father was still musing by the curb several blocks back, unaware I was driving off without him. "You? Went to a party? In high school?"
Much as I loathe admitting it, he had something of a point. Measuring my popularity level in high school would have required one of those highly technical and expensive scientific instruments used to record miniscule electrical pulses in protozoa. I had a few study group friends with whom I'd go downtown to Richmond's main library on weekends. But that was the extent of my social life.
My Saturday nights consisted of a rubber of bridge with my family, followed by a prolonged argument with my mother. She was usually North to my South. I'd read all the books on contract bridge in the branch library, and followed Omar Sharif in the papers daily. Though any experienced bridge player could probably have beaten my pants down to around my ankles, I felt that my research gave me a strategic edge to the game. My mother, though, was an avid adherent of the psychic bid. After picking up her hand, she would arrange them by suit and count her eight measly points in face cards. Then she would gaze at me meaningfully, and say in the same sort of rasping voice from which Luke Skywalker learned the identity of his father, "Four hearts." Naturally, I'd only have two heart cards in my hand, and she'd sometimes have fewer than that, and my sister and father would snicker and watch us go down in flames.
After telling my mother exactly what I thought of the psychic system (which she swore had made her 'Queen Grand Slam' of the Shorter College Bridge Club), I'd stomp off to my room and read murder mysteries for the rest of the evening. I'd also sulk some, knowing that other kids my age were out at parties and were even dating. Looking back, though, I don't think I missed anything by spending Saturday nights with my family. I certainly gained an appreciation for Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.
I attended my one and only high school party in the ninth grade. It was such a traumatic incident that I never felt confident about trying a second. My high school allowed its gifted students to indulge in an unstructured schedule; we young scholars were supposed to pursue those interests that most fascinated us, while meeting objective goals on a fortnightly basis.
In other words, it was a load of crap.
Instead of having a specific hour for earth science, one for English, another for algebra, we were allowed to go to our subject classrooms whenever the whim struck us. None of the teachers cared where we were as long as we completed our assignments. If we wanted to spend the entire day in the math lab, it was just dandy. Every two weeks the teachers would check our workbooks to ensure we weren't merely goofing off, and then we'd be let loose again to follow our bliss. We got the work done, all right, but mostly during the ninth grade my little circle of friends sat in the supply room of the science lab and played Dungeons and Dragons all day.
They would, that is. Although I tried to get into the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, I felt it was a little silly. Plus I interfered too much with the Dungeonmaster. His name was Chet Dundee, and he'd been the one to introduce everyone to the game. Because he owned the rulebooks, which he rarely let us consult on the spurious reason that our fingers might smudge the pristine whiteness of their pages, he ran the game. Chet was the sort of boy who wore shirts covered with Star Trek buttons to school every day, including one button fashioned in the shape of the Enterprise with blinking diodes at the ends. He could be brought to a teary-eyed fury in mere seconds if we pretended to confuse Mr. Spock with Dr. Spock. To make matters worse, he had terrible buck teeth. The only person keeping me from being the biggest nerd in high school, with my greasy long hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and instantly unfashionable clothes from the local Sears, was Chet Dundee.
That's why I had him as a friend-very few others outside the brainy set would tolerate me, and compared to him, I always came off looking relatively normal. I'm afraid I fell out with him over Dungeons and Dragons, however, with my hundreds of (to him) irrelevant questions. We would be sitting back in the science supply room, and Henry would say something like, "You have entered a large chamber, richly furnished. Curtains hang at the windows. A treasure chest sits at one end of the room. Elven runes have been carved upon it."
"What color are the curtains?" I'd ask.
Chet would make up something on the spot. "Blue. Silk."
"Floor length or do they end at the sash?"
"Is it important?"
I would look offended. "Of course it's important."
Chet would offer a mute apology to the rest of the Dungeons and Dragons crew, fondle his Lieutenant Uhura badge in a supplication for strength, and say to me, "They're floor length."
"Why are there windows if we're in an underground cavern? Wouldn't they just look out on rock?"
Henry would glare at me. "Elves like curtains. They're just there for decoration. You can't see behind the curtains."
"Do they have sashes?"
Chet growled. "An orc enters the room suddenly." The others would suppress cheers. They knew what was coming. "It looks hungry! It attacks. . . ." He would roll the dice and not even bother to look at the pips. "Vance."
"Okay, I'll attack back with. . . ."
"Too bad. You're dead," he would proclaim. "And the orc vanishes as suddenly as it appeared!" The other kids would clap, and I would sit on the other side of the supply room, sullenly doing my schoolwork. After a few similar incidents the first week, I gave up on the game and sat sullenly with my workbooks while they played. I might have been a nerd who spent every weekend at home suffering psychic bids from his mother, but I still had my dignity. At least I wasn't a nerd who played Dungeons and Dragons, and a Trekkie, to boot.
Fantasy novels were just getting a big revival in the late seventies, and the Dungeons and Dragons crew were always gobbling down titles such as The Wizard of Earthsea and The Sword of Shannara and The Hobbit. I refused to read them. If I wasn't going to be able to play their stupid little game without having my poor little characters chewed by orcs or mauled by poison darts, I certainly wasn't going to read their stupid little books. Whenever they sat gossiping in their corner fantasizing about how cool it would be if the Enterprise were to land in Middle-Earth, and who would win if they were to have a psionic battle with the evil elves, I would make a point of ignoring them while holding up an edition of some great work of lit-ra-tchah. Usually it was a battered copy of the poems of Keats. I never really understood the poems, but the book cover was easy to read from thirty feet away. I fancied it made me look cultivated and sensitive, unlike the fantasy-reading crowed, who wouldn't have recognized a Grecian urn had they dropped their twenty-sided dice inside it.
One late October day Chris Baum, one half of the Baum twins, announced that his parents had given permisson for him and his sister Margaret to hold a party that Saturday. The entire science storeroom was abuzz with excitement. I don't think any of our brainy set had been to a party that didn't conclude with a round of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. "It's a Tolkien party," Margaret explained. "We're all going to dress up as characters from The Lord of the Rings and eat Middle Earth food and play games and then we're going to roust the minions of the Dark Lord from their nest."
"Not really," added Chris a bit unnecessarily. "But we're going to run around with swords and stuff." The others were visibly enthused. Heretofore the Baum twins were distinguished only by living in an old Victorian house large enough that they and their little sister each had three bedrooms apiece. By hosting the first party of the ninth grade, they seemed daring and reckless. Everyone chattered about running around the field behind their house with swords for the rest of the afternoon, while I sullenly stared at the poems of Keats.
That afternoon at home I dropped my knapsack at the bottom of the stairs and then trudged down the basement, where my parents kept acres of paperback books. After a few minutes of dusty searching, I sat down at the kitchen table across from my mother, who was simultaneously smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, and cramming for the history lecture she was giving that evening. "What've you got there?" she asked.
I displayed her decades-old copies of The Hobbit and the three Lord of the Rings books. "Chris and Margaret Baum are giving a Tolkien party Saturday. Can I go?"
"Sure," she said. She considered a moment, and then raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't like that kind of book. Have you read Tolkien?"
With a dignified stiffness, I stared at her through clouds of cigarette smoke. "That's what I'm doing now."
My mother watched with fascination as I skimmed through the first chapter of The Hobbit in less than thirty seconds. I flipped through pages with scarcely a pause, read what seemed to be important paragraphs, and skipped entire chapters that didn't look as if they were going anywhere. Within twenty minutes I'd finished the entire thing. I looked up to find my mother still staring at me, the cigarette in her mouth one long, burnt-out ash. "What?" I asked.
"Get a lot out of that, did you?"
"Enough to fake it."
She shook her head and said, "And what happens in it?"
I cleared my throat. "Well, there's some guy named Bilbo or something like that, and he meets this wizard, and there's a ring, and some elfy types, and then they go all over the place, and then he comes back home at the end."
"Ah," was all my mother said. She held up the folder with her lecture to cover her face, but the jiggling of the kitchen table from her elbow gave away her mirth. I scowled and went back to my reading, and within the hour I'd finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The breast of Evelyn Wood would have swelled with pride, that afternoon. Of course, I only had the vaguest notion of what had happened in the books. Already the very little I picked up had vanished. I couldn't remember the names of the characters, exactly. The events were escaping me-but I remembered there were elves, and some bad guys, and a lot of characters running around and getting lost and separated, and then more elves, and a lot of bad poetry.
I'd do fine.
Saturday night I was greeted at the door by the younger Baum, Elissa. She was wearing a pair of leather boots, some jodhpurs, and a leather vest. Elissa was a good three grades younger than the twins, but they always let her play with them. "Who are you supposed to be?" she asked, taking in the sight of my scarlet flannel cape that Alicia had worn as part of her vampire Halloween costume the year before. A little boy her age stood with her, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
"An elf," I stated. "Who are you?"
"I'm Strider," she said. "But I'm not really coming to the party. Hey, elves are supposed to blend into the forest."
"Striders aren't supposed to be so mouthy," I retorted. "Who's your friend?"
"This is Kennedy," she told me, dragging him forward. "He can hold his breath longer than anyone in the class, but I'm better than him at spelling. He's epileptic."
Kennedy confirmed the charge. "I could swallow my tongue."
Margaret and Chris and the others came in, slightly agog to see me in my floor-length scarlet flannel cape. "He's an elf," Elissa explained to them, then rolled her eyes and exited dramatically through the front door with her friend.
Chet Dundee, who was wearing his Mr. Spock pointy ears and a green cape, studied my outfit and clearly found it wanting. However, as he had affixed no less than seventeen Star Trek buttons, including the blinking Enterprise, to his own costume, he was hardly about to question the purity of mine. I knew I'd have to tread carefully around him, though.
For a while we ate dry shortbread wrapped up in kitchen parchment cut into the shapes of leaves. It was supposed to be some sort of elven fare, I gathered. I almost felt sorry for the poor creatures, forced to wear forest camouflage and choke down the worst cookies I'd ever tasted, all their lives. And then Margaret announced that it was time for the games.
I began to sweat the moment she explained the first game to us. It was called "Who Am I?" One by one we went into the kitchen where Mrs. Baum sat waiting. She drew the name of a Tolkien character from a bag and taped it to our foreheads, so that although we couldn't see it ourselves, other people could. When we were all back in the living room together, we were supposed to ask each other yes or no questions about our name tags, and guess who we were.
After Mrs. Baum taped a name to me and remarked, "Oh, you have an easy one!", I walked back into the living room and found myself confronted with over a dozen names of characters I hadn't even seen in my brief flip-through of the novels, all of them neatly printed in lower-case letters on yellow paper. Essie's contribution, most likely. Who the hell was "aragorn the ranger"? How in the world was I supposed to know "galadriel"? It sounded like a cough medicine. My heart was pounding heavily. I hadn't expected a pop quiz right out of the gate. I knew in a panicky sort of way that I was going to be the inevitable loser of this game unless. . . .
Ah, there it was. A mirror over a sidetable. It would be easy. I'd listen to some of the other questions people asked each other, repeat them, and then after I'd peered at my reflection and read the answer on my brow, I'd make a 'guess.' If I timed it right, I could avoid drawing attention to myself by guessing my name somewhere in the middle. Too quickly, and I'd be accused of cheating. Too late, and I'd be recognized as the dunce I was. I began to navigate to the mirror.
Chet Dundee stepped in front of me. "Am I one of the seven who went over?" Went over what? I peered at the name on his forehead: "frodo the hobbit."
"Yes?" I said uncertainly. If I happened to be wrong and was questioned later, I could backtrack with a little laugh and an "Oh, I thought you said 'Am I not one of the seven who went over.'"
"Okay," he said, thinking. "Now you ask one."
"Um . . . am I one of the seven who went over?"
"No. Now, am I a wizard?"
I coughed and shook my head. He seemed to take it as a negative. Good. I could also laugh away that one, if I happened to be wrong, later. "Okay, your turn."
I mumbled, "Am I a wizard?"
He gave me a suspicious look. "Are you just repeating everything I ask?"
"Why would I repeat everything you ask?"
"Are you doing it again?"
"Why do you think I'm doing it again?" I was feeling slightly desperate. I had to get over to that mirror. I took a few steps forward, but Chet followed me. "Am I a hobbit?"
He could have been a footstool, for all I knew. I pretended not to hear him, but he repeated the question again. Chris Baum stepped in, and excitedly asked, "Am I a Ranger?"
"Aye captain," Chet said, still giving me a strange look. I was hoping Chris would distract his attention so I could look squarely into the mirror, but no such luck.
Chris jumped up and down in excitement. "Am I Aragorn?" He ripped off his name and looked. "I am! I guessed right!"
I feigned an interest in the roses on the sideboard and leaned over from the side to sniff them. When rising, I could casually lean forward a little and take a peek, if I timed it right. "Am I a hobbit?" Chet demanded to know.
"Yes!" cried Chris, who seemed to be delighted with his party so far. "Am I Frodo?"
"Yes!"
"Yes!" The pair of them jumped up and down in a Tolkeinetic frenzy. What in the world was I doing there? I couldn't help but wondering. I hadn't enjoyed what I'd skimmed of the Tolkien books. I didn't even particularly like these people, though they were my only friends. And the roses didn't even have any smell. I looked around the room. All but a few guests had guessed the names of their characters. It was time to make my move.
"MOM!" Essie's voice echoed from the front porch.
I took advantage of the brief moment in which everyone's attention was diverted towards the front door to lean forward, cock my head, read the name affixed to my brow, and mouth it to myself to commit it to memory. "Am I a Ranger?" I asked Chet and Chris. They turned back to look at me.
"No," said Chet.
I looked up toward the ceiling, as if thinking, and said, "Am I . . . oh wait, I think I know!" I had them hooked. I tapped my finger on my chin, and then spoke with a loud and confident voice. "I think I'm . . . yes, I'm sure that I have to be . . . Dildo Daggins the Hoddit!"
I ripped off the name off my forehead and read it: bilbo baggins the hobbit. I never had been that good at reading backwards.
I looked up. Chet and Chris stood there with mouths agape. The rest of the room, too, seemed strangely silent. Everyone had heard my blunder. The only motion was of the blinking lights of the Starship Enterprise.
"Who did you say you were?" Chet asked.
Just then Essie burst through the front door. "MOM! Kennedy's having a FIT! We need some TONGS!"
We'd never seen an epileptic seizure before. Immediately everyone rushed out onto the front porch to see whether or not Mrs. Baum could keep Kennedy from ingesting his own tongue. Everyone, that is, except me. I removed my sad little flannel cape and slunk out the back door, and walked the half-mile home. My parents and sister were trying to struggle through a rubber of three-handed bridge, and were mid-way through the second deal when I came through the back door. I slumped into the chair across from my mother and picked up the cards, automatically sorting them.
"Have a nice time?" she asked.
"Not particularly," I replied. refusing to meet her gaze.
"One club." It was my sister's favorite opening bid.
"Pass."
"One spade," said my father. "What happened to your cape?"
"I never particularly liked Tolkien, you know." My mother studied her cards for a moment, then gave me a searching look. She sighed. "Too many elves. Five no-trump."
"Pass."
I let out a groan. "Pass!"
"Pass."
We went down in flames.
July 2000
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