Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors

Author:Dorthe Nors [Nors, Dorthe]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Short Stories, Contemporary, Danish Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9781555970857
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2008-09-24T23:00:00+00:00

NAT NEWSOM

IF I WERE TO SINGLE OUT ONE PERSON IN PARTICULAR FROM MY extensive studies of human behavior it would have to be Nat Newsom, whom I knew ten years ago, or rather ran into outside the McDonald’s I passed each day on my way to work at Columbia University. Nat Newsom opened the door for the customers of McDonald’s while rattling a plastic cup he for want of a better solution had taped to his wrist. The reason Nat more than anyone else stands out for me as special is not simply that he was able to keep his spirits up despite lacking health care and the deposit his former landlord had vanished into thin air with. That was part of it, but more specifically it was because of the paradox of Nat, genetically predisposed to naïveté as he was, lacking the very quality that characterizes the condition.

A person is born with the ability to reach out for things in the world. Thus, an infant will clutch at any finger that is extended toward it, for the child wants to live, and in order to live it must get its hands dirty. It is the retention of this basic reaching out into the world that characterizes genetic predisposition to naïveté in the adult human. It’s bred into us. The monkey’s young reach immediately for the mother’s fur and use its tufts as handles during transport on their perilous way through the jungle, and on another level we must not forget that the reflex moreover is cosmic, since humans reach out in more or less the same way to God and all else unknown. But let’s return to Nat Newsom.

Nat Newsom stood outside McDonald’s every day trying to make it look like he was helping people by opening and closing the door. The reality of the matter was that his handicap prevented him from truly making a difference, but at least he showed himself to be willing. Doing so allowed him to save up so that at the end of the day he could go through the door himself and purchase a Happy Meal. Having observed Nat Newsom for some time I decided one morning to ask if he would be interested in taking part in my study of existential behavior at Columbia’s philosophy department, where I am known as Professor Jack Soya. Nat agreed, and we arranged to meet over a beer in a bar that same evening. Nat showed up on time.

He told me he was born to an alcoholic mother who had also experimented with amphetamines during the pregnancy, a cocktail that resulted in Nat entering the world as smooth as soap, unable to grasp hold of anything at all. Where his fingers were supposed to be he had only stumps, so Nat drank his beer through a straw. I studied his hands as he did so: both were equipped with a minuscule thumb that more than anything else resembled a baby kangaroo when, tiny and covered

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.