To Knit...

I have a confession to make. You scare me. Actually, it’s not so much you who scare me as the prospect of having to converse with you – or worse, be called upon to speak up in class. It wasn’t until high school that I had a conversation with a teacher. I’m not sure what, precisely, we spoke about, but afterwards it was if a sun had risen in the darkness, for what dawned on me in that instant was the truth that teachers are simply people. Until that time, teachers were AUTHORITIES – representatives of a divine power that was waiting to catch me in a moment of weakness and publish abroad my humiliation. To be sure, teachers were still authorities. The realization that adults were neither demi-gods nor demi-gorgon, however, but merely human beings with all the pluses and minuses that entails was a liberating concept. This revelation was indeed timely, for my brothers were both in after-school band. That may seem safe enough, but my father was deployed and my mother worked, so it meant that twice each week I had to stay at school an interminable two hours after the last bell. The shear, inescapable boredom of it at length drove me to take my life into my own hands. The PE teacher, Mrs. Rook, was in her office. I loathe PE. Indeed, it was difficult for me to believe that anyone who enjoyed it enough to teach it could be wholly human. Even so, she seemed harmless enough. But what if this was diabolical duplicity intended to lull us into insensibility before she struck? I walked into the room with bated breath… and walked out of it rejoicing in the prospect of learning to knit in just a few more days. I envisioned all the beautiful blankets and soft scarves I would soon be making. There was nothing I couldn’t do and no one I wouldn’t talk to – except, perhaps, the principal. Well, and maybe the janitor. And the guy’s PE teacher …. My first scarf was made with a size seven needle (unbelievably small, as I later discovered). The yarn had a cream base, but had a sort of autumnal mottle effect going on. I was shocked at the simplicity of the thing once I got started – a series of loops, nothing more. In fact, after a while, I didn’t even have to watch what I was doing. I could simply feel the pattern. I began to take my knitting with me everywhere. I would knit during movies, during lunch break, during class, in the car – everywhere. It was something practical, useful, and aesthetically pleasing. I was absurdly proud of the scarf, showing it off to the most unsuspecting persons. Oddly enough, I found that it caught on. People admired my ability to do this simple thing and even wanted to emulate me. Complete strangers would come up and talk to me about it. People who could already knit came out of the closet; the click of needles was everywhere. My Latin Class talked our teacher into taking a day off so we could all learn knitting. I taught them. A little startled and definitely more than a little scared, yet I did it. In fact, the entire wrestling team started to knit. The trend lasted the rest of the year, though the wrestling coach asked his team to stop bringing their knitting to meets. I was forced to put this newly won confidence to the test when I moved the next year. The gorgons and gods reappeared in new form, like ghosts that reclaimed their material form. This time, however, I had a new weapon. I knit at them. And they knew they were beaten. It allowed me to strike up a conversation without having to say anything. I merely pulled out the needles and then others would talk to me and I could respond in kind – or not. The interesting thing about it was that people simply assumed I was listening when I knit. I became a confidante, a counselor to the very beasts that had so frightened me, and all I had to do was knit while they spoke. There were other knitters here, too, I found – a community of woolly sages into which I was readily accepted. The art teacher caught me at it after I had finished a required project and, in addition to offering me some pointers, asked me to join her with a group of other students in teaching some of the un-knitting faculty. The idea of me aspiring to instruct the instructors, was still terrifying. To merely converse with them seemed easy in comparison. The flattery of the invitation, however, overcame my fear. To paraphrase Caesar, “Veni, trexi, vici” – I came, I knit, I conquered. You still scare me. Pretty much everybody does. Sometimes life itself frightens me. But that’s okay – I can knit.