From: tjlee@iastate.edu (The Lamplighter)
Subject: Re: Bear's story
Originator: tjlee@vincent1.iastate.edu
Organization: Seven Wishes Lamp Co.
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 22:29:45 GMT

	The Lamplighter listens to Sea Wasp and is floored, almost
physically knocked over, by what he hears.  It's just so similar!  He
can hardly believe it.

Ryk E Spoor writes:

>	"My childhood, too, was very much like that. Though not including the
>size. I was a pariah because I was an asthmatic, incapable of participating in
>any sports, kept indoors, practically blind, and exceedingly intelligent
>without the FAINTEST idea of how to hide it, or even why I should. I had
>no social graces at all. My asthma had kept me from interacting with anyone
>else, and once I was thrown into the school system, I had no idea what was
>going on.

	"Asthma's been part of my life from the start too, Sea Wasp,"
says the Lamplighter.  "Fortunately, I've always had doctors who had the
philosophy that asthmatics should be able to live normally.  At first,
my parents discouraged me from overexerting myself, but after a while
they didn't have to -- I never understood sports.  I thought reading was
fun, and looking at things close up with a magnifying glass."

>	"You see, by the time I hit first grade (when they started teaching
>reading) I had already been reading constantly for almost two years. I
>had also, somehow, gotten a certain idea of what a school was supposed 
>to be like: a lot of people (probably in robes, like graduation) talking
>about interesting things, and exploring them as fast as they could.

	"I don't remember entering first grade.  A lot of my early
childhood is a blank, as a matter of fact.  But it never occurred to me
that I was smarter than anybody else -- I just never worried about
schoolwork then.  It was fun."

>	"So from MY point of view, I was instead dropped into what seemed
>to be a hospital for the mentally incompetent. When you are reading things
>at the level of _The Wizard of Oz_ and walk into a room to find that people
>your own age are having trouble making the connection between L O O K and
>the word "look", it's a pretty horrifying feeling.

	"Hmm, I've never even read _The Wizard of Oz_.  My parents
didn't buy me very many of those 'traditional' children's books.  I had
a pretty strange collection.  I liked the Hardy Boys, though.  Anyway,
as I said, I don't remember how I saw it; there were people smarter than
me around."

>	"Obviously, it wasn't really possible for me to hide that attitude,
>though I tried to understand. But that, coupled with my other differences, 
>made me a helluva target. I was weak, intellectual, and unable to fight.

	"I was weak, too, because I didn't run around and play football
or 'war' or whatever.  I loved to climb things, though.  I didn't get
into fights, because there was no point.  I stayed away from people."

>	"Weak?" the Wasp grins ruefully. "At 14, I could, by straining
>MIGHTILY, bench press (on one of those little machines) 30 pounds. ALL
>the other people could do much more. However, my legs were hellishly 
>strong for some reason; I could do the whole rack of weights with them
>(500+ pounds...).

	"Same here!" says the Lamplighter.  "I think my legs were so
strong because I rode my bicycle a lot (as I do to this day).  But my
arms were (and are) not very strong."

>	"When I was 18, two things happened. First, I was put on 
>a new form of medication called Theodur -- time release theophylline."
>The Wasp gestures and an image appears. It shows a slender young man,
>light blond hair flying in the wind as he dashes recklessly through rain,
>sprinting at demonic speed down a shady boulevard. He stumbles into a
>kitchen, brightly lit, breathing fast but not having trouble drawing 
>breath. The water that flows down his face is not from the rain. 

	"Wondrous!  That's what I take even now!  I used to take a
different brand, but that's the one now."

>	The patrons of Callahan's can see another, echoing tear in the
>Wasp's eye as he thinks on that day... the day he ran a MILE. "No one
>who has not had asthma, or something like it, can EVER understand what
>it means to just BREATHE."

	"Aye; when you spend the entire night crouched on the floor,
straining for every breath, when you don't know how long you can keep up
the constant effort, when you're afraid to move for fear of using up
more oxygen than you're capable of taking in, when all the words you can
say are the few you can get out during the brief moments when you can
exhale, *then* you know how much we really depend on air for life.  I
don't understand smoking, nor do I understand how anybody could possibly
veto a clean air bill."

	"Anyway, Wasp, we have lots in common, it seems."

-----------------------<| "The embroidery of your life holds you in and keeps
  <=|- Tom Lee -|=>   -<| you out, but you survive,
  tjlee@iastate.edu   -<|  Imprisoned in your bones behind the isinglass
-----------------------<| windows of your eyes." -- sung by Judy Collins