The Armchair Outfitter

One of the author’s “black rifles.”

I wrote this piece some time ago, but I read it again after the first reports of the shooting at Northern Illinois University began appearing in the national news. Inevitably, there will be calls for new restrictions on our 2nd Amendment rights and freedoms, but of course these incidents have little to do with firearms and everything to do with our our flawed human nature. Violence and murder have been a part of the fallen creation since Cain and Abel, and no registration, background check, or waiting period could have prevented that.

Here is the story as I originally wrote it. It represents my best recollection of actual events.

Let me begin by saying that I am a Tazukia Possum, and I will be one until the day I die. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I guess I should explain what a Tazukia Possum is, exactly. Tazukia is a county in rural West Tennessee, just above the Mississippi state line, and the Possum is the Tazukia High School mascot. Their colors are pink and black, like the ‘80s metal band Twisted Sister, and at sporting events they hold up both hands, wriggle their fingers, and shout, “Eeeeeeeeeeee!” Oh, and one more thing I guess you should know. The Possums aren’t real. Neither is Tazukia county, or at least not in the conventional sense. I’ll try to explain.

When I was in high school, in McNairy County, Tennessee, which incidentally is just north of the Mississippi state line, I was a loser. That was O.K., because I had friends, and they all were losers too. I didn’t think so, of course, but everyone else did. My friends were mostly band geeks, and I was an Academic Decathlete, which in my mind made me the Loser King. I wasn’t cool enough for band, for Christ’s sake! Needless to say, I don’t have many warm, fuzzy memories of my high-school days. School was something you had to endure, along with acne, your parents, and enough male hormones to drop a bull elephant.

One day in the gym, as we wallowed in our geekiness and wondered if anyone would notice if we all just suddenly disappeared, one of my friends had an idea. Well, it wasn’t really an idea, more of a musing or a daydream. He said, “What if we went to another school where we were cool? What if we ruled the school like the preps and jocks do here?” This was my friend Tom. At least I think it was Tom. He died just after graduation in a car accident, so I guess we’ll never know unless another Possum corrects me. At any rate, this sounded like a brilliant notion to me. “What would our mascot be?” I asked, keen to hear anything that might distract me from the quotidian misery of school. “The possum,” he said, “We’d be the Tazukia County Possums.” We do have a lot of possums where I grew up. More than you can shake a stick at, in fact, although I’m not sure why anyone would want to. They are not generally frightened by sticks, or by cars either judging from road-kill statistics.

We went on to discuss the Possum colors and the Possum Salute, which consisted of extending both arms full length over your head, wriggling your fingers, and shouting, “Eeeeeeeee!” This was intended to simulate a possum trapped in the glare of automobile headlights, but I have never actually heard one make that sound. They might, for all I know. Either way, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard of. Just the thought that in another place, we could be accepted, that we could actually be cool, was like a fire burning in my brain. I guess I wasn’t the only one, either, because over the ensuing days, the Possum talk continued. One guy, I think it was Trevor, colored all his spiral-bound notebooks pink and black. Someone designed a Possum symbol incorporating the letters T.P. We all gave the Possum salute in the hallways, and I thought that would be the end of it. Then, as they say in stories like this, a funny thing happened.

People started to ask questions. Classmates, teachers even, wanted to know why the pink and black, why the wriggling fingers, what’s all this Possum stuff about? I don’t know why to a man we all had the presence of mind to say, “It’s a secret, I can’t tell you.” I guess the truth would have been just another boxcar of shame hitched to the long train of self-consciousness that we were all laboriously pulling. Far from satisfying the inquiries, however, this secrecy only heightened the public curiosity. Everyone was talking about the Possums! Well, everyone but the actual Possums, of course. We held a “meeting” and swore each other to secrecy. I don’t even remember the member list, because there never really was one. After all, we didn’t exist. If the truth ever got out, we’d be so embarrassed that we all really would have to find another school.

As the school year wore on, the Possum phenomenon grew. Our teachers and principal were closely monitoring Possum activities to make sure that nothing nefarious was happening on school grounds. Cheerleaders (!), cheerleaders who we imagined might someday actually speak to us, returned the Possum salute at football games. I’m sure many opposing teams wondered why a McNairy Central Bobcat would scream, “Eeeeeeeee!” After all, it wasn’t really that intimidating a battle cry.

I guess the next step was inevitable. People began asking us how to become members. They wanted to belong to our made-up club! We dismissed these inquiries by telling people that you couldn’t ask to join, you had to be invited. We added that there was a secret ceremony, which was different for every Possum initiate, and that members were forbidden to reveal the humiliating details of their individual ordeal. I was certain that this would quell the Possum furor, and that people would return to ignoring us as they had for years. Instead, the buzz about the new “secret society” swelled to a fever pitch. One Possum, I think it was Colby, suggested that we actually let some people join. His logic was that we had started the Possums because we felt left out, excluded. What fine hypocrites we’d all be in the end if we excluded other people.

At another meeting, it was agreed that any founding member could sponsor a new Possum. Upon a vote of the “membership”, an offer would be extended to the potential Possum. The actual invitation was always delivered anonymously and said something to the effect of: “Potential Possum, this is your invitation. Be ready at any time for initiation. You will not know the time and place.” An admonition to destroy the note, or eat it or something, always followed. The initiation itself was designed and conducted by the sponsoring member. A condition of membership was that you never reveal your particular initiation rite. It was fairly innocuous stuff, like having your head flushed in a toilet, a swirley, as we called it. One female member, whose nickname would be “Pickle” from initiation forward, had to get the attention of the entire lunchroom crowd and lick whipped cream from an enormous pickle. I couldn’t believe that our classmates would be willing to do anything at all, even something trivial, just for the privilege of hanging out with people, namely us, with whom no one had ever considered hanging out a privilege.

The whole Possum experience taught me something about human nature, insecurity, and the need to belong that I’ll never forget. Maybe it’s a manifestation of the herd mentality. We broke off from the main group, but we never could have imagined that others would want to stampede along with us. I thought about the Possums when those kids at Columbine went berserk, as I do every time some isolated, loner kids lash out at society in a public way. I wish they knew that a private rebellion is the best kind, the kind where everybody gets to walk away. In the end, all of the original Possums graduated. Some of us listed “Tazukia Possum” in the activities section of the school yearbook, and the annual staff actually printed it. I guess they didn’t know any better. My friends and I have all moved to different states, but we call our fantasy football league the “Tazukia Possums.” I was wrong at the beginning when I said that Tazukia and the Possums aren’t real. They were always real for me.