The National Geographic
It was the only Society
to send me a special invitation
to become a member.
You had to be recommended
to become a member.
Someone had actually recommended me.
What an honor.
That is how I joined the hoard of hoarders
accumulating issues of this finely printed
magazine.
“I’ll get it for my son,”
I told myself. “He’s a smart boy
who will use them while in school.”
When I noticed him
scrutinizing the bare breasts of an
East African Bush-woman,
I stopped leaving the issues out
where he could get at them easily.
I’m not sure why I did that.
“I’ll keep the copies in my room,”
I reasoned, “and when he needs
information for a geography report,
I’ll find the perfect article
and supervise the read.”
It rarely happened.
When it did, I rarely found the perfect
article.
And still the issues continued
to arrive
packed in by postmen
despite wind and rain and snow,
(but never on holidays) they did
their duty. I never missed an issue.
My son grew up and moved away
and still the issues came,
accumulated, each pristine
and largely unread.
I tried repeatedly (I really did)
to read articles,
but I can’t remember ever completing
even one article. Ever.
The vocabulary was strange, the sentences
were long, and the concepts were
complicated.
I was Readers’ Digest smart,
and National Geographic stupid.
I should have canceled
my membership, but I was too poor
to travel the world,
and the National Geographic Society
was kind enough to seek me out
as a member of the society,
and to send me, as regular as a heart beat,
information about the earth and its people.
How could I sever this connection
I had with the earth?
It bothered me that other people
seemed smart enough and
disciplined enough
to read the magazine.
We visited some friends once
and I noticed a National Geographic
magazine laying open on an end-table,
near a lamp,
a pair of reading glasses resting
on the article entitled:
“Mysteries of Spain.”
I was livid. How dare that pseudo-
intellectual snob to rub my face
in my own ignorance.
Now when people are coming
here, I’ll take an old issue,
randomly underline passages
through out the entire issue,
dog ear a few pages, here
and then there, and I’d place that issue
open on the arm of my chair,
to show my visitors that I not only
read National Geographic’s magazine,
but I actually study the contents.
It’s a lie I’m learning to live with.
Up stairs, where I rarely go,
dozens of bundles of National Geographic’s
magazine sleep in apartments
of corrugated cardboard.
There might be a law
making it a criminal offense to throw out
old copies of the magazine.
I may lie to myself,
but I will not risk breaking the law.
I can’t recall ever having read
even one complete article,
but when a new issue arrives
I quickly san each picture
looking for boobs.
Article submitted Saturday, July 04, 2009 & read 32 times.
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