Bear Necessities

What's in a name?

Or if your family is of southern origin, what's in a nickname?

I believe southerners use manufactured monikers partially because plantation life was a British gentry export.

The English use nicknames to abbreviate long titles. If someone's title is Lord Bafferington, Earl of Wilmontshire, he'll likely be known as "Baffy Wills."

I'm named after two relatives for whom I feel few emotions, but my nicknames are the result of happy times: they evoke fond family memories.

When one bears silly family nicknames, knowing one was wanted before making an appearance on the planet provides comfort and strength.

It's also a tad burdensome, because the risk of failure means potential parential heartbreak (unless you're Prince of Wales, in which case it means relentless tabloid ridicule), and it can also increase the parental bid for control.

I need extend no other proof that my mother is a control freak than to reveal that I was potty trained by the time I reached eleven months old.

When we drove places, my parents loaded my portable potty chair in the car. If I had to use the restroom, I'd sound an alert (something Baby Einstein-like, "I pee! I pee"), and my father would pull our auto to the side of the road, mother would whisk out the potty chair, and I would be placed upon my throne, the center of attention and anticipation.

Luckily for my parents, sixties era infants (like Brittney Spear's son, today--that girl is so retro) rode sans seatbelt, easing child extrication. Unfortunately for everyone, I developed a dislike of car travel at an early age.

Bored and determined to exact diaperless revenge, I would falsely proclaim my need for a stop, then sit on my portable triumphant seat and play with roadside gravel until my annoyed parents declared defeat and returned me to the back seat next to our basset hound, Sad Sack.

This ploy worked several times until my parents became savvy to my routine (or perhaps an envious Sad Sack snitched).

To give me lifelong payback, my father bestowed upon me the nickname "Gravel Gertrude", which he soon shortened to "Gerts."

Once I grew old enough to display what William (my father--southerners often call parents by their first names) felt was prissy, Frenchified behavior, he tacked on a symbolic proper name, and I became "Gerts La Smerts", often truncated to "La Smerts."

William often hurtled this new name about in undignified ways that the sensitive French would understand to be entirely undiplomatic.

If I dropped my ice cream cone in front of God and several crushes standing in the Dairy Queen cue, I'd receive a humiliating "Ahh La Smerts! You're something else, La Smerts; you know that?!"

Meanwhile, mother, desirous to build the complex mother-daughter relationship we all know and love, decided to give me an agonizing faux moniker related to my physical characteristics, and began calling me "Hips."

When I became old enough to part ways with mother during shopping excursions, one of her favorite tricks was to position herself at one end of a crowded store, wait until I reached the other side, then bellow, "Hey Hips! Come here; I wanna show you something."

As you can imagine, everyone in the place turned around to see the wide freak of nature who'd earned such a name.

As I grew older, it became apparent that I mirrored my dad. Thus, in order to infuriate me (since I felt that William was the most embarrassing creature ever to trod the earth--he loved to stand next to me in a store, pass silent wind, then walk away, leaving me to suffer the indignant stares of overpowered shoppers), mother began calling me "Wilma."

Once All in the Family aired, mother immediately began calling William and I "Archie" and "Gloria", although referring to her as "Edith" or "dingbat" was not gonna happen (to her face, that is).

After I grew older, moved away from home, and shared my problems with William during phone conversations, he'd always reply "You're tough Gerts; you're tough. You'll be alright."

And I was and during tough times I still hear him saying that, in my mind's eye, and I am.

My dad was the ultimate hunter and sportsman. He moved undetected through the forest, slipping into the wilderness with ease because it was a genuine part of his psyche, a place where he belonged and was respected.

My favorite nickname, appropriately given to me by William, is "Bear." I can still hear him say, "I love you, Bear!" A bone-crushing embrace always followed.

As soon as I became able to identify the burly animal, I associated it with my dad.

Like the bear, he was furry, large and powerful, huggable one moment yet capable of uncontrollable rage if approached with a lack of disrespect.

Factory life, another wilderness of a sort, demands survival of the fittest.

For over thirty years, my dad survived carcinogens, stench, fires, and metallic roar.

He excelled in the most inhospitable environment imaginable and became top bear in the hierarchy, earning respect and fear with his fists, experience, and bravery.

Shortly before his retirement, when he was old and grizzled, a younger male foolishly challenged William's dominance in the plant parking lot. Right in front of God and everybody he nicknamed my dad a "stupid motherfucker."

In agitated grizzly-like fashion, William responded by beating the living hell out of the poor guy with an industrial-sized lunchbox. He bludgeoned the man's head into a bloody pulp, then lumbered through the parking lot to his car and benignly drove home to his cave where he could find some honeycombs and quiet.

Truth is, bears like to do a little fishing, but they're not natural predators, unless provoked.

People get obsessed with bears because they're strong objects we love, yet fear, and would like to control.

Bears represent a powerful bridge to our wild, spiritual selves that most people burn in a quest to "evolve" into rational humanists.

Bears are documented on film, and are favored collectable toys.

Aside from my 130 lb. brown Newf, "Magic Bear v. Nanstein" (the most Ursus arctos horribillis like creature ever to stroll 'round Williamsburg), I own numerous stuffed bears, including a "please prevent forest fires" Smokey the Bear, who wears denims, a ranger hat and a yellow helmet.

I also have a "Yogi the Bear" lamp. Yogi is the lamp's body, and the shade features "Boo Boo" and other Hana-Barbera characters.

Some people take their bear obsessions off the shelf and into the wild.

Controversial naturalist and filmmaker Timothy Treadwell lived among Katmai Park's brown grizzly bears for thirteen years, until he and his companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled to death in October, 2003.

Treadwell once said he wouldn't mind if his death converted him into "bear shat", and that's what happened http:www.grizzly people.org.

People love Treadwell or hate him and no one agrees about the real motives that compelled his life among the bears--an insane desire for fame, genuine spiritual connection, or just plain lunacy.

German director Warner Herzog's documentary about Treadwell's life, "The Grizzly Man", allows his audience to form independent conclusions regarding the man who resembles a star that fell to earth, and is desperate because it understands that it will continue to shine for only a few minutes more.

And that's not bear-like, at all.

One thing is for certain: Katmai Park rangers correctly predicted that Treadwell's career would lead to the endangerment of the very bears he claimed to protect.

Following the mauling deaths (the first recorded in Katami Park in 85 years), park rangers shot and killed two bears, including an elderly, 28 year old, 1200 lb. dominant male known as "Bear 141", whom they later suspected did not kill anyone.

Following his shooting death, another bear tore "141's" remains into masses of flesh, tissue and bone, just like cigarettes and factory carcinogens combined into the cancer that reduced my dad into an eviscerated mess.

In the aftermath, Treadwell and I would probably agree, the surviving bears were sad and grieving.

They felt the cold, winter air blow through their fur; they found their caves and hibernated for a long time until the warm breeze came and the sun's face shone upon the park and spring made the ice melt, the fish swim, bees buzz, and the berry plants leaf.

Then the bears awoke and came out of their caves and began life anew, because that's what bears do: they on on forever--continuing the process of death and rebirth we humans symbolize and tiptoe around because it's a concept too big for us to understand or control, even though we claim to be top of the chain.

A name can mean many things.

If you're lucky, a name will evoke love and happy memories, but most importantly, hope.