The Palabadu people offer ritual garments made of butterfly wings to make amends, whereas the rest of us are simply able to offer a “sorry” or maybe an ice-cream cone.
Paul and I got into his car, and he drove us to uptown Melva. It was a sunny afternoon, and the neatly trimmed grass around the court square was a perfect, even green. The old buildings surrounding the square looked, well, I had to admit it: charming. We parked and got out.
“Wanna just wander around some?” Paul asked.
“Sure.” I nodded. Ordinarily I would have pointed out that the verb “wander” implied one was in a place in which one was capable of aimlessness, of getting lost, of discovering something — a place completely unlike the short, straight, overly familiar lines of uptown Melva — but I didn’t say that. With Paul, there was a feeling that we might actually be able to discover something strange and serendipitous through aimlessness, even there in that utterly familiar court square.
We happened to pass my neighbor, Mrs. Crandor, walking her poodle. Paul greeted her and she beamed at us. “Aren’t y’all cute! And what a gorgeous day!” she chirped before toddling past us, following her little dog.
“Wow,” I said to Paul. “Mrs. Crandor must really like you. She’s never that nice.”
“What are you talking about? She’s always that nice. Haven’t you ever talked to her?”
I thought about it for a minute. Had I ever talked to Mrs. Crandor? She was my nosy neighbor. I’d waved at her enough times — it seemed like I must’ve talked to her….
“No,” I admitted. “Weird. I guess I really haven’t talked to her. I just thought because her face looks mean …”
Paul smiled. “Her face looks old, not mean. There’s a difference.”
I flushed. Paul probably thought I was hypercritical still. This whole outing was a terrible idea. I took a deep breath and focused on walking like a young woman, not a scarecrow.
“Hey,” Paul said quickly. “Have you heard about the Palabadu people? In Micronesia?”
I frowned, racking my brain. Had I? The name sounded vaguely familiar. I’d read some articles about people in Micronesia, but I couldn’t pull up the Palabadu.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Are you finally interested in anthropology too?”
“Well, I was just flipping through an old National Geographic, and I happened on this article. The Palabadu have an elaborate ritual when they believe they’ve accidentally hurt or offended another person. They collect a series of special leaves — these large, waxy leaves that grow in the jungle. They use these leaves as plates. Then they prepare this huge feast for the person they’ve hurt. When the feast is ready, they summon the person and sit the person in a special throne made entirely out of conch shells.”
“Maybe I’ve heard of this,” I said. “Palabadu. It’s sounding vaguely familiar.”
“And the most treasured food of the Palabadu is ice cream. It’s a luxury because very few people own freezers, and of course they live in a warm environment. So they prepare this huge goblet of treasured ice cream with caramel sauce for the person they feel they’ve wronged, and they also offer her a handmade ceremonial garment made entirely of butterfly wings —”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “No freezers but they love ice cream? Butterfly wings? What issue was this?”
Paul grinned at me. He shrugged.
“Seriously, Paul? Where’d you hear this stuff?”
“Fine,” he said. “You figured me out. I made it all up. No Palabadu. But it sure sounds like a nice culture, right? And what I’m trying to tell you is … I think I owe you ice cream.”
I smacked his arm lightly. “You liar! And of course here I am telling you that the Palabadu sound familiar.” I laughed, shaking my head.
So Paul and I walked down the street and around the corner to the Melva Ice-Cream Shop. The ice-cream shop was a popular afternoon spot mostly for middle schoolers, but sometimes when we got the urge for ice cream, we still went there too. The door jingled as we walked inside.
“Hey, buddy!” Paul called.
Stephen Shepherd was sitting at one of the tables. He put aside a jumble of tiny objects in front of him and looked up happily. His face was muddy with chocolate ice cream.
“Hey, Paul!” Stephen said. He looked at me warily, then back at Paul.
“Looks like you got into a serious battle with that ice cream, but still managed to triumph,” Paul said, laughing. “What have you got there?”
Stephen looked at the jumble in front of him. Tiny gears and cogs and silvery whatnots.
“Model plane parts. Miniature,” he said. “Started working on this sort of thing at MIT this past summer. But I’m building my own design and hoping eventually to translate it to the real deal.”
What was it that was so weird about Stephen? I wondered. And then I realized — he looked perfectly happy. Perfectly happy doing exactly what he liked, even if he looked like a chocolate-covered three-year-old playing with Legos.
ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
The sight of an adolescent looking utterly happy is so unusual that it is startling.
“That’s cool, Stephen,” I said. “I had no idea you were so good.” He smiled back at me. A brown-toothed, sticky-faced smile, but a good smile nonetheless.
Paul and I ordered ice cream, and when he was about to pay, Mr. Thompson, the shop owner, stopped him. “Wait. Wait. If I’m not mistaken, you’re buying ice cream for one of our Miss Livermush contenders. Is that correct?” he asked, winking at me.
“Uh, yes. Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll be there next Saturday. Gonna give it my best shot.”
“Well, that’s all anyone can ask, isn’t it? Ice cream’s on the house for both of you. Good luck Saturday!” Mr. Thompson said.
“Wow,” I said as we walked outside to find the benches. “That was so nice of Mr. Thompson. And I didn’t realize Stephen was so smart.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “He’s pretty brilliant — especially when it comes to mechanical stuff. Aviation. That sort of thing.”
I nodded, licking the side of my ice cream before it could drip. “Yeah, I guess I always only noticed how weird he was.”
Paul grinned at me. “Everybody who’s really into something is weird. You too. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done in the name of anthropology?”
I thought for a minute. “I used to go to this online anthropology chat room. It was mainly for grad students and professors,” I said. I told Paul a little about it. The discussions were often mundane but occasionally interesting, especially when someone wrote about his fieldwork. At the time, I’d gathered that most of the people I talked to were also eccentrics — odd, bald, lonely but harmless men in Hot Pocket—stained clothes — but I convinced myself that the more unglamorous the person with whom I was engaged in anthropological conversation (online, at least), the greater the intrinsic intellectual merit. Possibly. Of course, I’d been hoping there might be a devastatingly handsome young anthropologist among them too.
“But then one day AnthropoManiac75 from Indiana told me that we were soul mates and he’d already Googled me and found my family’s address, so I’ve avoided the anthropology chat room ever since,” I said.
Paul guffawed. “Seriously?! And had AnthropoManiac found your address?”
“No, of course not! He was lying. He didn’t even know my real name. I’m not stupid! But probably best not to mention it to my mom,” I said. “She’s watched one too many television news shows on Internet predators.” This was true: My mom seriously viewed the Internet as nothing more than one big child molester hangout buzzing with constant ENLARGE YR PENIS emails and pornography.
I watched Paul slurp his ice cream — there was something cute about it. I looked at his mouth, thinking briefly of Jimmy’s mouth hard against mine. I couldn’t imagine Paul’s mouth doing or saying anything unkind.
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done?” I asked Paul.
“My entire life,” he said. “My entire life is composed of weird things I’ve done in the name of some interest or another.”
“And so you struggle to downplay all the weird things you do in order to survive, huh?” I said. “Get by without attracting too much notice?”
Paul tilted his head at me, studying my face. Slowly he began to shake his head.
“No, no, no, Janice,” he said. “I thought you were a better anthropologist than that! You have the entire art of adolescent survival all wrong! You don’t hide your weirdnesses. You embrace them, thereby making them cool. It becomes your whole appeal, your strategy. And it works every time. It’s basically punk. A punk rock approach to life.”
I looked at Paul for a second before I burst out laughing again. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re soooooo not punk,” I said, still laughing. “You may have figured some things out, but you’re no Joey Ramone.”
Paul shrugged again, smiling.
“It’s like making it to the next video game level when you think you’ve already conquered the game, Janice,” he continued. “You’ve heard of the pink of goth, right? Like, if you’re so goth that the goth-est thing you can do is to ditch the safety pins and rock something pastel pink instead? That’s like me being punk. That’s how punk I am — I’m so punk, I’m the easy listening of punk. I’m totally the Lite FM of punk rock. It’s a full-circle thing, you see?”
“I hear you,” I said, smiling. “And I’m like, the pleated khaki high-waters of cool. The thick lenses and headgear of hip. So utterly, transcendentally cool that the next level upward is basically polka-dot suspenders. It’s a nerd of cool situation.”
Paul laughed. I watched him, his crinkling brown eyes, his straight teeth, his wavy brown hair. Cute, the non-anthropologist part of my brain warbled inside my head. Very cute.
“Crap,” I said. “It’s my mom. I’ve got to go, but Paul, thank you for the ice cream. And for sharing the wisdom of the Palabadu.”
“No problem,” he said, “and good luck in the pageant. Own it. Nerd of cool, represent. I’ll see you there.”