Forgive Me Father, for I Have Sinned

A boy disassociates himself with humanity and decides to live in the wild.

A Further Explanation

 

The book I read was the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Mark Twain’s character Hank Morgan brings many different technologies into the 6^th century along with soap. During this ancient time period, the people of the time very rarely cleaned themselves and don’t exactly like Morgan bringing this strange smelly substance into their land. In one part, Morgan bathes an abbot who has never cleaned himself because he stands like the hermits with very strong religious views of the world that are stricter than the church itself. The church was really the rule establisher of the time and Morgan tries to change that by mixing magic and science. Like the whole Science vs. Religion of today, except not as extreme. In my story I placed a hermit in the 21^st century�"so modern day�"because I find hermits to be very peculiar creatures and thought I could write a very funny short story about this hermit who runs away from home and lives in the wild. He has very strict religious views of the world. This pertains to Twain’s novel given the fact that at the end he is captured and cleansed to the highest purification as if they are washing him away of everything he once was. This is kind of what Morgan is doing, he finds the 6^th century to far stuck in the past and they have rules that he finds have no base to them and are very illogical, like hanging for the sake of hanging. He enforces soap upon them to portray them as silly characters and to wash them away from their connections with the church. This is why I have written this short story.

 

Now here’s the tale.

Prayer told by Thomas Blanche

 

Retold by Andy Ruffett

 

I used to be a respectful fellow who kept close to the church. I love and respect the earth and all its wonders. This is why I never bathe. The mud is my cleansing. The thick oozy mud and the worms that just wiggle around my body and in my hair; ah, what more could a hermit want? I respect God and the church, and I am very close to them for the fact that I wear no clothes. The human body is a wonderful thing and why should we cover it up with mere pieces of fabric? I never understood my parents who locked me up in the house as if I was some deranged animal who needed to be locked up in a cage. My parents gave me a beating when I stripped off my clothes in Grade 8 because I couldn’t understand these inhumane beings and I had shielded myself away from mankind for too long. It was time to reveal myself.

            “I can’t stand it anymore!” I cried in English class and that’s when I removed my clothes.

            Everyone was shocked as if I had sinned. I stood there looking proud and naked.

            “Tommy, sit down,” said the teacher, Ms. Thwarp firmly.

            I didn’t comply.

            “We are wearing rags that man created for us, not God. God created the ‘birthday suit’ as you humans call it.”

            I was disassociating myself from this disgraceful race. “God would be ashamed seeing us covered up instead of naked and free.”

            “And what about winter Tommy?” asked Ms. Thwarp. “In Canada we are always receiving winter and Toronto can get very chilly at this time in December. We twenty-first centurions can’t really survive without clothing in this season. Our body alone wasn’t built for that.”

            “Life will find a way, but we choose to go against life and God. We should be living with our relatives, the animals. God created them first before us. We weren’t supposed to disassociate ourselves from them.”

            “But we haven’t. Most of us respect animals. Only the ones who have slaughtered and tortured these poor creatures have sinned.”

            Ms. Thwarp had this kind and soft voice that was so calming that I felt being swayed to reason. But I couldn’t; I had to stand up for my principles. I would be disregarding God and my existence if I didn’t.

            “They live with us, we don’t live among them,” I explained.

            “Are you saying that animals are more important than humans, Tommy?”

            And what was with this “Tommy” business? The way she said it, always had her voice rise but only slightly. Still, it made me feel weak as I was some inferior babbling 4-year-old. But I wasn’t. I was 12 and talking sense. Ms. Thwarp’s voice was really superior without her expressions and body language portraying. Given her superiority, her sweet calming voice was sort of ironic.

            “Yes they are. Animals have lived on this earth far longer than we have. They understand life, we don’t.”

            “So we should lick our bodies and roll in mud?” asked Sharlene, who used to be a very pretty girl with golden blonde hair and soft green eyes until she cackled like a maniacal deranged witch, crying,

            “Wild boy! Wild boy!”

            The rest of the class joined in the chant.

            “Wild boy! Wild Boy! WILD BOY!”

            I was getting very angry. My peers were treating me as if I were a joke and was completely insane. It seemed I was the only one that was actually sane.

            Wild boy! Wild Boy! WILD BOY!

            “Yes!” I cried over the chanting. “That is what the animals do and that is what we should be entitled to do! We need to live in harmony, not retreat from the animal kingdom!”

            Wild boy! Wild Boy! WILD BOY!

            I couldn’t stand it any longer. Ms. Thwarp tried to calm the class down by saying soothingly,

            “Please settle down.”

            But it didn’t work.

            I was so angry that I took my science textbook and clubbed it into Sharlene’s beautiful face.

            I then ran out of the room, wanting to be separated from mankind forever.

            Unfortunately, twenty minutes later I was captured by the humans. I was just about to eat nature’s pure berries from the bush outside the back of the school when my parents along with Principal Punce and Ms. Thwarp walked towards me. I quickly stuffed them in my mouth and enjoyed the sweet juices. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so well and my throat seemed to be burning. When my mother grabbed me off the ground, I started to shiver and began to perspire. She felt my forehead and proclaimed that I had a fever.

            “Not surprising in this weather,” stated Ms. Thwarp blatantly.

            But then the adults noticed the bush that I had just eaten from did not contain black currents but the American Solanum berry otherwise known as Nightshade.

            I was quickly rushed to the hospital, where I soon vomited in the car looking ghostly pale, vomiting the dark purple colour all over the car.

            That luckily had flushed the berries out of my system but the doctor still checked me. I was wrapped up in an old bed sheet, since they had forgotten to fetch my clothes.

            I was told I had a small fever at the doctor’s once examined and the man who examined me, Dr. Charles Vanhorne looked at me very peculiarly when my parents explained my little mishap. The doctor seemed to believe I had come from the same freak circus that everyone else thought.

            Once home, I was bathed thoroughly, clothed, spanked many times from my own father’s hand, and then locked in my room, where I later slept in my green and purple polka dotted bed.

* * *

 

For three years they didn’t trust me. I always had a very strict curfew of 7:30 p.m. and was always locked in my room once in bed. All I ever saw was the school environment and home. No one really talked to me in school anymore, after hearing about the wild child rumour.

            On the holidays and summer vacation, I was forced to work in the house and nothing more. My parents were always keeping keen eagle eyes on me.

            But finally, one day on April 10, 2008, my parents forgot to lock the door. It was my birthday and I was 15. They had celebrated with a little cake after I got home and some small gifts like candy worms and books on how to be respectful to animals, but they just found that really funny giving me gifts like that. I got the same sort of crap for Christmas. I was never laughing. They really thought I was completely out of my mind.

            Once they tucked me into bed and left the room, I noticed their flaw. I lay there for a couple of hours, reading a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court for three hours until I saw the light go off in their room. I waited 10 minutes before I pulled the sheets off of me. I quickly removed my clothes and headed downstairs.

            I slipped out the door without a sound and closed it quietly behind me. It was time for me to face the outdoors again.

            It took me five minutes to get to a forest since one was very close to my house and once there, I felt more relaxed. It began to rain and I smiled. I found a rotting log and lay down in the luscious soil, using the log as a pillow. I had never felt so happy.

* * *

 

A year went by and I had learned a lot. Pretty soon I was able to hunt for my own food and run with the wolves. I shared nuts and berries with the squirrels, and swam in the swamp with the frogs. It was wonderful. No parents to discipline you or tell you to clean yourself, just your own freedom. The only really cleanliness I got was the swamp which didn’t really get me much unsullied. I loved the feeling of the squelching of mud between my toes and the worms wiggling in my hair. Many animals had made habitats in my body like spiders, worms, and other small creatures. I was helping the animals, along with myself. Life was great. All I ate were berries and nuts because I felt the Lord would not want me to kill another animal because I would like them all to live. But I wasn’t going to stop other animals from killing, it was in their nature. My blonde hair had grown very long and I had grown very skinny, but I didn’t mind. When it snowed, I had learned to cope. I smeared myself with layers upon layers of mud to insulate myself with extra heat. I would sometimes lie in the mud just to get warm. When the earth began to freeze, it got more difficult. Sometimes my long hair would keep me warm but it didn’t cover my entire body. A few wolves had died while I had stayed in the forest, so by using a sharp rock, I removed their furs and applied them to my body to keep warm. It made the wolves respect me more. People had wandered all over the forests since it was a very common place to visit. I had even seen a few people that I had once known like my fellow classmates. But I don’t think they recognized me. There were even some illegal hunters killing wolves. I tackled a few and they soon fled from the stench of me and the sight, but sometimes they did get one. A few of the wolves had been shot dead by a hunter. But I soon blocked the hunter’s path before he could get to them. I hadn’t lost my English though. I still thought and sometimes spoke out loud in English. But when I was with the wolves, I howled, barked, and growled�"or at least tried�"and I’m pretty sure they understood.

            Surprisingly, my parents had never seen me in the forest. I had seen them alongside some police officers who were walking down the small dirt path carrying flashlights. When I saw them, I always ran away and hid in the trees with my fellow wolves. They had come many times, obviously looking for me. My parents looked very worried but I was never going back. After a while the searches disappeared. I had no idea how they had alerted the city about my disappearance but obviously they didn’t mention a wild boy or maybe the people that had seen me hadn’t put the two together. Or maybe they had seen the signs, knew who I was, but knew there was no hope for me. I had no idea, but I didn’t care why I hadn’t been seized. I respected the humans for disregarding me.

            I thought I had taken myself away from the world of humans but it seemed that they had just given me a break.

            Just when I thought I had separated myself from my parents, they happened to find me. I was chasing Squiggly the Squirrel�"I had named him that because of his squiggly tail. I named the animals; it was one of the existing human qualities that had stayed with me�"when I saw them. They were walking hand in hand. They seemed to be very happy, but I could tell that they missed me. They must have been pretty surprised when my mother tripped over the naked 16-year-old body and went flying into the earth. My father nearly fainted seeing me. He looked very happy but also covered his nose from my offensive mucid odour. When you had lived in the forest as long as I had, you got used to your own aroma. But my dad couldn’t stand it and vomited into a tree and all over my little home I had made out of sticks, leaves, and mud. He helped my mother from the ground where she too covered her nose. They more tried to smell their clean hands than smell the area I was in. The stench was that overpowering. They stared at me for ten minutes like that. My mom wiped the dirt off her pants but kept one hand plugged on her nose. They were even holding their breath, couldn’t even breathe me in. They didn’t even speak, afraid of something horrific occurring if they did. My father looked at my mother, nodded towards her, and then disappeared farther into the woods. My mother was a very pretty woman with blonde hair and dark green eyes, but I couldn’t stand the sight of her right now nor could she stand the sight and smell of me.

            Soon my father came back and nodded towards my mother. He had coarse brown hair, sharp hazel eyes, which seemed to be very serious right now. My mother nodded back in agreement. All the silence was confusing me, but I didn’t know what to make of it.

            There were sirens and suddenly I realized that they weren’t holding me or anything, so I decided to escape. I wasn’t letting myself get taken back to that treacherous life. My father saw this act of flight and tackled me to the ground.

            He kept me pasted to the thick mud until the police threw a net over me as if I was some crazed animal. I did try to fight back but it did no good. My parents opened their mouths for a few minutes once I was trapped.

            “Throw him in the lake! Throw him in the lake!”

            The police nodded. They were prepared for me, wearing latex gloves and nose plugs. 

            They tied the net and one of the officers threw me over their back like a sack, as if they were Santa Clause delivering toys for the children for Christmas even though it was now the summer.

            As much as I thrashed in protest it did no good. The humans had got me. The two police officers threw me into the back of their cruiser and then got into the front seats. I could see my parents climb into their car. It was a blue Honda Civic. The police then turned on the ignition and drove down the road heading towards Lake Ontario. Once there, they grabbed my helpless body out of the back seat and carried me down the dock towards the lake. The officer then snipped the knot with a pair of scissors and threw me into the lake.

            The cold water hit me as if my whole life had just been butchered right in Earth’s water. I soon saw the police come back carrying buckets of soapy water and a few bars of soap. They stripped off their clothes so they were only standing in their boxer shorts, removed their shoes, and socks, and dove in. They grabbed me and began scrubbing.

            I cried in pain as they tortured me. I was violated all over my body as they scrubbed everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Soap, I couldn’t be scrubbed with soap. If I was scrubbed with soap, I was going against the natures of God. They dunked my head many times in the water and began scrubbing my head; smearing a whole bottle of shampoo over me. They then scrubbed me again until my whole body was a deep red. After that I was dunked. They dunked me, and dunked me, and dunked me. Once I was rinsed they left me there dripping wet. My parents thanked the police officers for their help.

            “It’s our duty ma’am,” said the bigger police officer, tipping his hat once his clothes were on.

            He must have eaten lots of donuts.

            My body was so clean that I was probably as clear transparent glass. My life, my soul, and my whole body seemed to have washed away with the soapy suds. It was sacrilegious. I stared up at my parents. I wanted to spit at everyone who had ever tried to obliterate me. I wanted to burn this hateful body and the disgusting odours that made me reek of lemons and orange blossoms. I couldn’t stand it. All I did though, was walk closer to the shore, plant my knees on the shallow sandy watered ground, and prey.

 

FORGIVE ME FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED