HOW TO PREVENT BEING KILLED AND EATEN BY A BEAR
(and other wisdom from the mouth of Don Lambert)
Don Lambert was a guy you’ve met. In fact he was a guy you knew very well. Don Lambert was a guy who tried your patience. He was a guy that you couldn’t get out of your mind, no matter how hard you tried.
He was my next door neighbor in my old neighborhood. Your Don Lambert might not have been named Don Lambert, but you knew him. He was the guy in your family who was consumed by his hobby and wanted you to be consumed by his hobby too. He talked incessantly about his hobby, showed pictures, and gave routine reports. Your Don Lambert’s hobby may have been playing music, or building models, or even just watching sports and talking about them around the water cooler at work, but he drives you nuts with his hobby.
I know another guy who is trying to force himself to write to prepare for his next painting project, and he keeps writing 30 minute forced writings and posting them online, but he is nowhere near as obsessed as Don Lambert was and is easily tolerable in comparison.
All of that said, my Don Lambert wasn’t a bad guy—rather he was a really great guy. Your Don Lambert is probably a nice guy too, if you could just get him interested in something other than his hobby for a few minutes.
If you don’t know who the Don Lambert is in your life, it might be you.
My Don Lambert’s hobby, fixation, compulsion was outdoor living. He loved hiking, camping, fishing, hunting….anything to do with being outdoors. He took all the outdoor magazines. He had thousands of dollars in camping equipment. He knew the plant and animal world. He had camped in temps from -35F to 118F. He could survive just about any outdoor situation. Getting in the car with him on the interstate and living to tell the tale was a different story, but he avoided interstates and when he had to take them he would talk about the ancient Chacoan “interstate” that he’d once hiked.
Don knew how the outside world worked—he could navigate by stars or in the heat of the day. He could often tell you the time of day within just a couple of minutes by just glancing at the sun. Where his obsession got him into trouble was when he was INSIDE.
At the office, he was routinely written up for wandering away from his desk to talk to someone about his recent fishing trip. I was at a dinner party with him once and he started talking about what to do when you have to relieve yourself in the woods. On casual Friday he once wore his camouflage coveralls in, which wouldn’t have been a big deal had there not just been an incident of workplace violence in our town a few weeks before. He would overhear someone making small talk about the weather and start to explain the jet stream. He told people who were talking about the Boston Bruins how to avoid being killed and eaten by a bear.
One day, last summer, Don finally got to me. He’d been bugging me about going fishing with him and I finally gave in. I was visiting my home town and we decided to get together to go fishing.
The morning of the fishing trip I showed up in my black jeans and denim shirt—Don showed up in all the latest gear from REI. I had a cooler of Diet Pepsi—Don had a cooler of worms. I had a $19 fishing pole from Walmart—Don had $400 worth of stuff that should have had the fish lining up to jump in our boat.
Don was tall and lanky, probably 6’4” and 185 or 190 lbs. He was now bald after having a very 80’s perm when I lived next door to him. He had curious eyes—eyes that made you realize he was always learning.
After we’d been fishing for a while I realized just how good this guy was, or just how bad I was, at outdoor living—He’d caught his limit twice over (he was putting them back waiting for a good “eater” as he called them) and I hadn’t seen my line move. I was enjoying catching up with him…it seems that when he was actually outdoors doing his thing he didn’t talk about it! He just did it and talked about life. He was a very nice guy.
After several hours I’d grown tired of (not) fishing—I’d started to watch these birds of prey around the lake we were on and asking Don about things. I asked him why he ditched the 80’s perm and he told me that a bald head was much easier to keep clean in the outdoors. That made sense. I asked him about his family and about his work. He told me he’d left the office where he was constantly in trouble and had started to work at a Bass Pro Shop where all of the people he worked with and served shared his interest. That made sense too.
It was about that time we heard the hoarse, raw scream of a bird and I asked him what kind of bird it was. After all, he was the expert here. He told me it was a hawk and then we saw it come out from behind a tree. He was right. It had something in its talons and was flying a path that would take it directly over us. Just then a BIG fish bit on my line. I started the fight and Don started coaching me on how to reel the fish in. I heard a “thud” and Don stopped talking. I managed to get the fish in the net and turned around to show the fish to him, but he was dead and there was a very confused turtle in our boat. The hawk had thought Don’s bald head was a stone and had dropped the turtle on him in an attempt to break the turtle’s shell.
Don died doing what he loved doing. He died while I was doing what he loved doing. The turtle lived, as did my fish. I let it go—it didn’t seem like an “eater” to me after seeing my friend die.
(and other wisdom from the mouth of Don Lambert)
Don Lambert was a guy you’ve met. In fact he was a guy you knew very well. Don Lambert was a guy who tried your patience. He was a guy that you couldn’t get out of your mind, no matter how hard you tried.
He was my next door neighbor in my old neighborhood. Your Don Lambert might not have been named Don Lambert, but you knew him. He was the guy in your family who was consumed by his hobby and wanted you to be consumed by his hobby too. He talked incessantly about his hobby, showed pictures, and gave routine reports. Your Don Lambert’s hobby may have been playing music, or building models, or even just watching sports and talking about them around the water cooler at work, but he drives you nuts with his hobby.
I know another guy who is trying to force himself to write to prepare for his next painting project, and he keeps writing 30 minute forced writings and posting them online, but he is nowhere near as obsessed as Don Lambert was and is easily tolerable in comparison.
All of that said, my Don Lambert wasn’t a bad guy—rather he was a really great guy. Your Don Lambert is probably a nice guy too, if you could just get him interested in something other than his hobby for a few minutes.
If you don’t know who the Don Lambert is in your life, it might be you.
My Don Lambert’s hobby, fixation, compulsion was outdoor living. He loved hiking, camping, fishing, hunting….anything to do with being outdoors. He took all the outdoor magazines. He had thousands of dollars in camping equipment. He knew the plant and animal world. He had camped in temps from -35F to 118F. He could survive just about any outdoor situation. Getting in the car with him on the interstate and living to tell the tale was a different story, but he avoided interstates and when he had to take them he would talk about the ancient Chacoan “interstate” that he’d once hiked.
Don knew how the outside world worked—he could navigate by stars or in the heat of the day. He could often tell you the time of day within just a couple of minutes by just glancing at the sun. Where his obsession got him into trouble was when he was INSIDE.
At the office, he was routinely written up for wandering away from his desk to talk to someone about his recent fishing trip. I was at a dinner party with him once and he started talking about what to do when you have to relieve yourself in the woods. On casual Friday he once wore his camouflage coveralls in, which wouldn’t have been a big deal had there not just been an incident of workplace violence in our town a few weeks before. He would overhear someone making small talk about the weather and start to explain the jet stream. He told people who were talking about the Boston Bruins how to avoid being killed and eaten by a bear.
One day, last summer, Don finally got to me. He’d been bugging me about going fishing with him and I finally gave in. I was visiting my home town and we decided to get together to go fishing.
The morning of the fishing trip I showed up in my black jeans and denim shirt—Don showed up in all the latest gear from REI. I had a cooler of Diet Pepsi—Don had a cooler of worms. I had a $19 fishing pole from Walmart—Don had $400 worth of stuff that should have had the fish lining up to jump in our boat.
Don was tall and lanky, probably 6’4” and 185 or 190 lbs. He was now bald after having a very 80’s perm when I lived next door to him. He had curious eyes—eyes that made you realize he was always learning.
After we’d been fishing for a while I realized just how good this guy was, or just how bad I was, at outdoor living—He’d caught his limit twice over (he was putting them back waiting for a good “eater” as he called them) and I hadn’t seen my line move. I was enjoying catching up with him…it seems that when he was actually outdoors doing his thing he didn’t talk about it! He just did it and talked about life. He was a very nice guy.
After several hours I’d grown tired of (not) fishing—I’d started to watch these birds of prey around the lake we were on and asking Don about things. I asked him why he ditched the 80’s perm and he told me that a bald head was much easier to keep clean in the outdoors. That made sense. I asked him about his family and about his work. He told me he’d left the office where he was constantly in trouble and had started to work at a Bass Pro Shop where all of the people he worked with and served shared his interest. That made sense too.
It was about that time we heard the hoarse, raw scream of a bird and I asked him what kind of bird it was. After all, he was the expert here. He told me it was a hawk and then we saw it come out from behind a tree. He was right. It had something in its talons and was flying a path that would take it directly over us. Just then a BIG fish bit on my line. I started the fight and Don started coaching me on how to reel the fish in. I heard a “thud” and Don stopped talking. I managed to get the fish in the net and turned around to show the fish to him, but he was dead and there was a very confused turtle in our boat. The hawk had thought Don’s bald head was a stone and had dropped the turtle on him in an attempt to break the turtle’s shell.
Don died doing what he loved doing. He died while I was doing what he loved doing. The turtle lived, as did my fish. I let it go—it didn’t seem like an “eater” to me after seeing my friend die.
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