F Stands For Failure

When he was five years old, Teddy was shown a long line of letters and told that each one had a name. A bee. Seedy. Eyef gee. A chi. Jake A. Elemenopee. Cue our estee. You vee, double you. Ecks. Why zee?

Nonsense. Tripe. Dribble. If he had known the words, his teachers’ tears of frustration would have dried up. But he couldn’t even make sense of the symbols and the sounds. He guffawed when his teacher pointed to a letter and announced that it was “pee.” It was clearly a superball bouncing against a wall, and calling it “pee” was funny. When he pointed this out, Mrs. Finnegan, with her quiet grace, told him again that it was “pee,” at which point he had to giggle. When Mrs. Finnegan pointed at another letter and called it a bee, Teddy asked why it didn’t buzz. Mrs. Finnegan’s worn face fell into her hands.

“Go over there, Teddy,” she commanded. She pointed towards the corner. “Until you realize that the alphabet is not a game.”

“Teddy’s dumb,” snickered a boy named Jack who always hogged the glue when they made crafts. He was slapping his hand on the table, and he pointed to a letter. “That’s an effffff.”

He drew it out as Teddy sat down in a chair, facing the wall.

A little boy named Johnny, who wore the same blue shirt every day, came over to Teddy and poked him in the shoulder. The two little boys chatted as Mrs. Finnegan walked amongst the other children, smiling at the wavering lines of their l’s and f’s.

“I don’t understand it, either,” Johnny said.

“Ef!” they heard Jack say loudly.
When he got papers back in high school and saw the letter F, the word “failure” flashed across his mind. He was stupid. Dumb. A loser. Just like everyone kept telling him. They knew better than him. He couldn’t read without stuttering or mixing up his letters. Girls would giggle, guys would smirk. Teachers would reach for their red pen and rub their hands together in anticipation. A few teachers tried, and failed, to help him. They always gave up eventually.

“Ted,” said a teacher in junior high, “why can’t you just read it?”

“I’m trying!” Teddy said.

Jack was always nearby; Jack and Teddy’s last names were close together alphabetically, and the school determined homeroom by last name. Jack surreptitiously slipped his essay--with a thin, neatly written A at the top--into his notebook as he caught sight of Teddy’s paper. He was nicer than most kids. At least he had stopped making fun of Teddy when they were in first grade and Teddy fixed Jack’s bike.

“There’s no ‘i’ in tomorrow,” Jack pointed out.

“Thanks. But the teacher said so, too,” said Teddy angrily. “See?”

He prodded the paper. Even Teddy understood it. Red marks crossed out his unique spelling of the word and replaced it with an alien combination of letters. He couldn’t exactly figure how they added up to “tomorrow.” At the top was an F, but it wasn’t neat and it wasn’t lonely. The teacher had written a long note berating Teddy. When he took it home and his mother saw it, she shook her head and asked what she could do to help him. He shrugged.

“Nothing. The teachers keep saying I’m dumb.”

But he came to like the letter F when it wasn’t written in red ink at the top of his homework. He liked it if only because it could be a verb, an adjective, and an expletive, though he would have hooted with derision at those terms. He didn’t like big words because he had no idea what they meant. And he certainly didn’t know how to spell them. He knew some words, though. He could speak like everyone else, and he could think just fine. Only when he went to write down his thoughts, the words stuck in his fingertips and wouldn’t drip off of his pen onto the paper. There was a roadblock somewhere along the way from his thoughts to the words on the paper.
But he liked the letter F, even when he graduated from high school by the skin of his teeth.

“What the eff did I tell you, Johnny?” he groaned.

“I ain’t got nothin’ more, dude,” Johnny said, tugging out his pockets. “I ain’t got nothin’ to give. What do you want?”

Teddy shrugged and took a puff on the nub of the blunt. “Tell your sister to make me a sandwich, man,” said Teddy, grinning. “I like ham and cheese.”

“Ham and cheese? We don’t have ham and we don’t have cheese.”

“What do you have? Sardines?”

“Nothing,” said Johnny, shrugging. “You know. It happens. I live in a van, dude. In an effing van.”

“Yeah,” said Teddy, passing the blunt to Johnny in sympathy. That way Johnny could have the last draw. It was friendly of Teddy, who was a friendly guy all around. He had even given old Jack--the glue thief--a pat on the back when Jack went off to university.

“You really should have tried, Ted,” Jack had said with a shake of his moppy head. He was like the Beatles, like the effing Beatles. Teddy had kept his own hair short. When his mother looked at him and frowned, he always knew it was because he was starting to look like Paul McCartney. And his mother hated Paul, so Teddy would get a haircut. Jack loved Paul, though. “It would do you good to go to college. I think you’re smart enough.”

“Nah, man, I’m a hippie,” Teddy had told Jack.

“You’re not a hippie, Ted,” Jack had answered. “You haven’t gone to see the God-damn Gandhi or whatever. Right? So you’re not a hippie. Right? I mean, do you have a couple of weed plants in your minibus, or whatever? Have you washed your hair this century? You’re no hippie.”

“Nah, man, but I’ve got some pot in my room if you want one. I’m willing to share. I’m into free love, dude. And free pot.”

Jack appreciated the humor but had declined the pot. Teddy was thrilled. He liked his joints to be his. He felt like Jack had said something nice, though, about him being smart enough to go to college. None of Teddy’s teachers had thought so, seriously. They talked about the value of college, knowing he would never make it. It wasn’t often that someone called Teddy smart, and no one but his mom thought Teddy ought to go to college. College. Eff college. Jack was okay, though.

But Johnny was better. Johnny understood. Johnny wasn’t going anywhere either. They were in Johnny’s van. Johnny had a blanket and a little bit of pot, that was about it.

When the joint had burned Johnny’s fingers, he blew on them and asked Teddy whether the fire was getting any bigger. Teddy tumbled onto his face trying to throw himself on Johnny to put out the fire. He got the wind knocked out of him, but Johnny’s fingers weren’t on fire anymore.

“Man, you were on fire! Fire, man! Ha ha! Oh, man, you dick, your foot’s in my stomach!”

“Your whole effing body’s on top of me, you fart.”

“Fart!” Teddy roared. “I’m gonna fart on you.”

“Man, you’re crazy! Get off, get off!”

When Teddy had fumbled back to the smelly back bench, Johnny panted on the floor, looking at the ceiling. He coughed a couple times, then sat up.

“We oughta go hunting.”

“What?” Teddy demanded.

“I wanna go hunting.”

“Yeah, man, what are you, stupid? It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“No it’s not, it’s three,” said Johnny, pointing towards the clock. “We can go at five or something.”

“You wanna die, or what?” said Teddy, laughing. “You’re high. Man, you’ll blast your foot off.”

“Or your head.”

“Damn. Don’t say that. That’s so wrong, man.”

“Sorry,” Johnny said, but he didn’t sound it.

“You know what, man, maybe we shouldn’t hunt.”

“What?”

“Look. If we kill ‘em now, then maybe there won’t be any later.”

"You’re high, buddy.”

“Yeah,” said Teddy.” I am. I’m effing high.”

When the letter came in the mail, Teddy knocked on Johnny’s door; Johnny had gotten tired of the van and gone home. Johnny’s sister came to the door and sneered at Teddy.

“Well if it isn’t the machine-shop sweeper.” She leaned her lithe body against the doorframe, the screen door held open by her foot; her sandal propped against the wood. “What do you want, Ted?”

Teddy shrugged. She rolled her eyes.

“Johnny. Worthless Pothead!” she called as though it was his name. “Worthless Pothead Number Two is here. Get down here before Dad boots him.”

Johnny appeared at the door and pushed his sister out of the way. The door slammed against her hip and she shoved him with her slender hands. He hissed at her to keep her effing mouth shut and mind her own business. He glared at her.

“Get yourself a life,” he said.

“I’m going to get married, you bastard,” she said. “What’re you gonna do, tinker with cars and smoke weed for an audience?”

Johnny shoved her away. She went without a fight, but winked at Teddy as she went.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” said Johnny. “She thinks she’s smart. She’s dumber than you are. But, you know, she can read.”

Teddy nodded. He just kind of shrugged his shoulder and lifted his arm. He didn’t even care that Johnny had insulted him. There was an envelope in his hand, marked with an official seal and addressed with Teddy’s full name, first, middle, and last.

When he saw it, Johnny leapt back as though the envelope was a viper.

“What’s that?” he asked, staring directly at the official-looking seal.

Teddy could only shrug. He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

“This better not be a joke,” said Johnny, snatching at the letter. Johnny had to tug it hard from Teddy’s fingers. Johnny glanced at the envelope, gulped, and then pulled the white paper out of the butchered top of the envelope. Teddy had torn it nearly in two in his horrified haste.

Johnny read it once, looked up, put his hand to his mouth, and read it again. He leaned against the door. Then he threw the envelope to the ground.

“Can we burn it or something? Pretend it never came?”

“I signed for it, man,” said Teddy. He took a huge bite of air as though about to say something more, but he couldn’t.

“What are you gonna do? You know, you can always go to Canada. I know a lot of guys—“

“They’ll throw me in jail, Johnny,” Teddy said plaintively. “I don’t wanna break the law.”

“You smoked weed with me. We blew up so many things, it’s gotta be illegal somehow. And I know what we did to Jared Browning wasn’t legal. Come on, this is something else. This is your life. This is worth breaking the law for. There’s lotsa guys doing it. It’s an effing river of draft evaders flowing into Canada. No one wants to go to effing Vietnam.”

Teddy couldn’t count how many times it was called “effing Vietnam” within his earshot. Thousands. Millions. Didn’t matter. It would always be “effing Vietnam,” with the stinking hovels and the rainy season when there wasn’t a dry spot to be found within a thousand miles.
Johnny wasn’t drafted. He was lucky. Jack was in college, and the army didn’t draft college students.

Teddy signed up quick and got his choice: air force. But he was sent there anyway, to Vietnam, after boot camp. It was awful. He hated every instant.

A buddy in Teddy’s platoon tried to steal something from a ratty little Vietnamese man—hard to say if he was Charlie in disguise—and was strung up in a basket in the jail. Teddy would have laughed, but it wasn’t funny, really, because his buddy was blubbering almost as badly as Teddy had when he first got the letter.

They loaded big bombs onto bigger planes, huge bulbous things that looked like pills to cure the ills of the peaceful Vietnamese farmers. Teddy kept his mind off of the destination of the bombs he helped transport them to and fro. He was responsible, quick, and able to drive a trailer. For years, whenever he rolled something in his car he’d say, with a grin, “I’m rolling the bombs!”

He bought a jade ring and a real tiger’s claw. He was tall and rich for a whole year while he was in Vietnam. The people in uniform liked how hard he was willing to work. They didn’t care that he couldn’t read or spell very well. He had graduated high school, and he could do what he was told. So they made him a sergeant and told him he was special.

He couldn’t always do what he was told, though. When the brass realized that he was bendable but not moldable, they sent him to the deserts of Idaho to finish out his time in the army. The stinking dessert. It never rains in the stinking dessert, he always said. AM radio waves came in only at night. When he was on leave, Teddy hitchhiked into the nearest town.

When his time was up, he was given his papers and told he was free to go. He bought a month’s worth of shirts, pants, underwear, and socks from the army surplus, and went on his way. In grudging gratitude for his service, the army gave him money and told him that he could go to any college he wanted to at just about half the price. Johnny went home, hugged his mother, and smiled. She was ecstatic.
He went to find Johnny, who was still at home. His sister had married, had a little baby, and was as nasty as ever to her deadbeat brother. Johnny shrugged when Teddy told him about college.

“Whatever, man. You want some weed? Like old times?”

“No, man,” he joked, “I’m going to college, they’ve got beer.”

He didn’t like beer as much as pot, but he did like college.

It was Teddy’s first class, on the first day. The teacher wrote his name on the board. Teddy took a moment to piece it out—pees and bees still looked alike to him. But when he had done that, he came to realize that the man named Campbell was talking about bugs and that there were no cues and double yous. Only exoskeletons and abdomens. He could understand that.

He stopped smoking the pot, and when he graduated college with a degree in entomology, he stopped drinking beer, too. Mostly. He had one every now and again, but he didn’t need it. It was like when he understood things, he didn’t need the pot and booze to make sense of it for him. He was smart enough to make sense of it. He worked so hard and found that he could read almost as well as other people. He learned words by hearing them, and he learned about bugs from books and from looking at the crawly little things. He understood them.

In horticulture class, a crazy brunette looking for a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes kept sitting next to him. She was sassy, and smarter than him when it came to letters. When they graduated, they bought a dump of a farmhouse and started to fix it up.
Teddy ran into Johnny by chance one day. Johnny’s eyes were sunken and his nails were dirty, and he didn’t see it when Teddy walked past him, stopped, turned, and stared. A deep, dark pit imploded within Teddy, and he just kept walking.

He caught up with Jack, too. Jack had gotten a job as a headhunter, making good money and dancing like a maniac at his friends’ weddings. He grinned and congratulated Teddy on doing so well.

“Yeah, I knew you could do it. You always knew how to make things work, Ted, and that’s more than most people could say. You just had trouble with letters. You know, I heard Thomas Edison had the same problem, Ted.”

“Yeah, I’m smart. I’m an effing genius.”

And he did a crazy little dance, just to make fun of Jack and make himself feel better. It worked.