Ferdinand & Fairies

There is an older man who calls our office every few weeks with the same query: why does Godine publish a classic children’s book, The Story of Ferdinand, in a Latin translation, Ferdinandus Taurus? Several weeks into our internship, the other interns had warned me to expect his calls. He calls often and has for months, apparently, always asking the same question about Ferdinand, and the general speculation is that he suffers from dementia. They said Ferdinand Guy seems rather grouchy and the conversation typically ends with him becoming disgruntled and hanging up. Maybe I only get him when he’s in high spirits, but he’s been pleasant. He starts by asking my name, then exclaiming at its beauty and saying, “That means sweet-one and honey-like, you know. It’s typically a name reserved for fairies.” Whether this is fact or just a positive result of his dementia, I don’t know. Then he asks his question about our sole Latin title, sometimes pausing to mumble under his breath about that being un-American. I explain that it’s an educational tool for students learning Latin, at which point he brightens up directly and politely exclaims, “Well! That makes much more sense. I’m so glad you could help me understand that. Really.” Typically, he then rambles about growing up during WWII and the uproar that Ferdinand the pacifist bull caused in America at the time. But today, he went the direction of other children’s literature that touched him, first recommending the anthology Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from a Children’s Book (His favorite contribution is by Jay Leno.).

“Have you ever heard of… Well, I’m going to ask you about this children’s book that I read as a child that no one can find for me. I can’t remember the title but it was about a baby bat who got lost out of his cave and mice raised him. Which, of course, is pretty weird. The mice teased him for the two strange humps he had growing on his back, but then a cat came and, see, the bat snatched up all the mice and got them to safety. So even though he was different, he saved them, see. And I just can’t find it anywhere, but the images are just so…so stuck in my head. I can see them. I wish I had it. I keep asking reference librarians, but no one can help me.”

After a flash of pity for the librarians who assist him (or, more than likely, the same librarian who helps him repeatedly, listening to the bat’s heroics over and over), I wished I could find this book for him. A Google search was fruitless (Google tried to convince me I was searching for a cat who grew up with mice), and I don’t know how to contact him anyway. Who knows how many eons ago the book was published or what the title might be, but it obviously impacted him in a memorable way. Who knows how far his memory has receded, how much he remembers of his life. But Ferdinand the peaceful bull and the bat who saved his tormentors, they are constant. In his old age, they are the figures who remain vivid and real.

Ferdinand Guy then concluded today’s conversation by narrating the story of how he once told an inappropriate joke about Adam and Eve to a group he had just met at a bar...who turned out to be missionaries. He concluded, “I did always have a knack for shoving my foot in my mouth.”

He then thanked me for talking to an old man like him, and hung up.