When I was in college, I went through a phase of being obsessed with obituaries. This was back when we still read newspapers on paper, and I would sift through the cast off left in the student center. I don't remember how this started, but I remember Peg Leg Bates' obituary. He was, as you might imagine, a tap dancer who lost his leg in a work accident when he was 12 and still made it big on the vaudeville circuit. This fascinated me, and because I was young and thoughtless, I also found it kind of hilarious. I cut the obituary out of the paper (something else we still did back then) and showed it to all my friends who were equally callous and amused. Death seemed so far away--at that point life was much scarier. Looking back now, I realize part of the fascination with obituaries was the very vague sense that by reading about people who had done enough to merit a write-up in a major newspaper, I might find some guidance on how to live my life, on how to be the adult that I was about to have to be, on how to be, at least a little extraordinary. In the truest sense of the word--ordinary, but with a little extra. At that point in my life, I remember having the overwhelming urge to sit at the feet of every teacher and mentor I had a say "please, please tell me how to be a person." That feeling is still so vivid, over a decade later, and I know that urge is a big part of why I teach college-students now. I want to be that person for someone else, at the same time I realize that no one can ever tell you how to be anything. I like reading the obituaries of people I've never heard of, as it reminds me of how much there is for all of us to do, how little of it gets seen. So I'm thinking about going back to that, and maybe writing about it, writing about what I learn from obituaries. I think I'm a little less callow now, if no less self-involved, and I am in need of as much guidance as ever. Look at that image of Peg Leg Bates. How could that NOT be a lesson on how to live life and be a person?
Important note: Some friends who also found the Peg Leg Bates obit hilarious tried to use it as a teaching tool in a writing class for middle-school students. The middle-schoolers were horrified, rightfully so, that their teachers were laughing at an obituary. Mentorship comes in all shapes and sizes and unexpected ages.
