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From the The Tenement Series of non-fiction essays by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
Goofy, Ernie and Me
There were three
of us. My best friend Ernie, "Goofy" and me. Me and Ernie were the
same age. Goofy was a year older. Me and Ernie lived in the same tenement and
Goofy lived over his folks candy store on the corner.
We were in the same class at school. Goofy had been "left back" at
least once and still had trouble keeping up with the class. We were all close
friends .... as close as kids could get in those days. Why? we didn't know why
.... that's the way it goes with kids. Looking back on it now, I'm sure one
of the reasons was that none of us had anything the other wanted.
Goofy's real name
was Stanley, but other than his mother and father and Mrs. Martel at PS 9, I
never heard anyone call him Stanley. Everyone called him Goofy. We even called
him Goofy in front of his mother and father and they didn't mind. I guess they
were glad somebody his own age cared about him. My mother once told me that
something had gone wrong when Goofy was born -- she never explained exactly
what, and it's likely she didn't know herself. He didn't seem to have both oars
in the water at the same time, and he took a lot of abuse. Other kids in school
would give him a hard time like pulling his corduroy knickers down in front
of everybody in home room. If it wasn't for me and Ernie, Goofy would have found
it hard getting through a single day at school.
After school Goofy worked in his father's candy store. He would see to it that
there were straws and napkins in the dispensers and dry mop around the stools.
His father wouldn't trust him to do much more than that. After nine innings
of stick ball in the street outside and just before we went home for supper,
me and Ernie would stop in at the candy store to check up on Goofy. His father
would usually make us a free lime phosphate while we sat at a rickety table
in the back and helped Goofy with his homework. Most times we'd do it for him
-- it was easier than telling him how to do it.
He was slow. Yet
there was something in him that you couldn't put your finger
on. He knew when it was going to rain; he knew exactly when the IRT was pulling
into the DeKalb Avenue Station two blocks away. But he couldn't get halfway
through the times table. Me and Ernie always said that if we were cast ashore
on a deserted island we would want Goofy with us, but if we had to parse a sentence
in Mrs. Martel's English class, Goofy would be the last person on earth we would
want to help us.
Me and Ernie would meet in the vestibule of our five floor tenement every morning
before school and walk down to the candy store. Goofy would be standing there,
just inside his father's store waiting for us, afraid to come out on his own.
Our route to school skirted the Prospect Park Zoo, and at that hour of the morning
the animals were just beginning to stretch and yawn. If you stood on tip toe
you could just see over the brick wall and watch them pulling themselves together
-- getting ready for another day with nothing to do. That's how we got our first
inkling that Goofy was something special.
We always knew
that Goofy could bark like a dog and whinny like a horse; so much like them
in fact, that they in turn, would stare at him in disbelief. But until we watched
Goofy in action at the zoo we never realized his true potential. You couldn't
tell the difference -- he could chatter like a monkey and roar like a lion.
They would shout back at him and he would answer -- we'd have to drag him away.
No wonder he didn't fit in at school. In the best sense of the word he was an
animal at heart.
With the zoo so close to us, we spent a lot of time there, and on weekends our
mothers would pack a lunch for us to keep us out of their hair for an hour or
two. Goofy would be in seventh heaven. He had names for each and every one of
them, not names like you and I would use for a pet dog or cat, but names in
their own language. One particular afternoon we were eating our lunch in front
of a cage full of macaque monkeys who were having their lunch too. Goofy as
always was as close to the cage as he could get -- just Goofy and the macaques,
eating and chattering. Suddenly Goofy reached out and offered his apple to one
of them who in turn looked at it carefully then passed a banana out to Goofy.
We were stunned, along with some other people standing nearby as the exchange
took place. Goofy simply explained that the macaque wanted to check out the
apple before he traded it for a banana.
Me and Ernie made the mistake of telling this strange story to our parents that
afternoon and what with Goofy's reputation for barking at dogs and whinnying
at horses, they thought it might be a good idea if we steered clear of him for
a while. If they knew Goofy was destined to be a future world famous animal
behaviorist I'm sure they would have reconsidered.
Kids are resilient. They make friends quickly and drop them for new friends with no regrets. Me and Ernie found other friends and eventually forgot Goofy. When time came around for promotion, me and Ernie moved on and Goofy got left back again. The school board decided it was time to consider alternate avenues of education for Goofy and he was sent to a school for special children. Well, Goofy was special all right, me and Ernie could have told them that from the start.
As we grew older we all drifted apart, even me and Ernie, and it wasn't until I was grown and married that I read the piece about Dr. Stanley Margolis in Scientific American. I would have passed it by except the name Margolis is not a common one, and certainly not one usually encountered in the field of research.
Professor Margolis
had apparently made great strides in bridging the communication gap that exists
between animals and man. He had developed the
theory of "Talking Turkey," as it became popularly known. Rather than
persuading animals to speak as we do, he attacked the problem by teaching humans
to speak as they do. Well! That certainly sounded like Goofy to me. It brought
back that memorable Saturday afternoon in front of the cage of macaques and
how monkey and man had met and traded a banana for an apple at lunch. Goofy
hadn't changed in all these years except that now he chaired Princeton's Department
for Advanced Studies of Animal Behaviorism.
I considered writing a letter to Professor Margolis, or trying to contact him by phone -- but then indecision, (a primary element of my adult years) took over and it seemed to me indiscreet to bring up our formative years which he might well want to keep under his hat.
Me and Ernie got
as much out of life as we were destined for. Both of us were
successful, but nothing more than that. Neither of us nudged the quality of
life forward a notch nor did we illuminate the human equation -- we did what
was expected of us. We had more to hide from than Goofy did, and we had to bear
the realization that we deserted him when he needed us most.
All I had to say was -- "Way to go Goofy!"
©Harry Buschman 1996
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