Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(6)

“And I guess you can also poke someone’s eye out,” Bobbi added, watching Dan. He had the opener in his hand and was stabbing the air. He looked about twelve years old, and sounded like it too. “Dude, this is so sick! Thank you!”

I guess I should have been embarrassed at that point, but the Boothes just smiled at him like proud parents.

There were some actual parents there too. The Perkins-Forster family. They’ve only been here a few months and are the second to last residents before us.

Carmen Perkins is…I’m not sure she’s a germaphobe, I mean, I just met her. But the hand sanitizer. Using it right after she shook our hands, making sure her daughter used it, offering it around to everyone. She’s totally nice though. She kept saying how wonderful it was that we, Dan and I, “complete the circle.” She’s a child psychologist. She wrote a book on homeschooling in the digital age with her wife, Effie. Carmen kept calling her “Euphemia.”

Effie’s also a child psychologist, I guess. That’s how Carmen introduced her, at least. “Well, I’m not technically licensed—” Effie started to say but Carmen cut her off with a hand on her arm. “She’s working on her degree, and already a lot smarter than me,” she said, which made Effie blush a little.

I don’t know if Effie’s physically smaller than Carmen but her posture makes it look that way. Shoulders shrugged. Soft voice. Not a lot of eye contact. A couple times before answering one of our questions, she glanced quickly at Carmen. Permission? A couple times after. Approval?

Effie also spent a lot of time and attention on Palomino, their daughter. The name, according to Carmen, is a “place holder,” which they gave her during the adoption. I sensed a little bit of defensiveness, especially when Effie elaborated that a “place holder” name was something Palomino could change if she ever found one she loved more. Carmen explained that when they first met her in the orphanage in Bangladesh, she was clutching a worn and torn picture book on horses. I tried to ask her about horses, and Dan about how she liked living here. Neither of us got an answer.

You know that famous National Geographic picture of the Afghan girl with the green eyes? Palomino’s eyes are brown but have the same haunted expression. She just stared at us with those eyes and didn’t say anything for a second, then went back to her “fidgeter,” a little homemade beanbag. Effie gave her a hug and began to apologize. “She’s a little shy.”

Carmen cut her off with, “And it’s not her job to please us with conversation.” And went on to tell us about how the book was one of her only possessions, that and a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. When they met her, she didn’t know when she was going to eat again. Effie shook her head, hugging the girl again, and said she’d been so malnourished, all these vitamin deficiencies, mouth sores, rickets. She started to talk about what her people had gone through, the “Rohingya” minority (which I’ll have to google later) at the hands of the Myanmar government. Carmen shot her another silencing look and said, “But we don’t need to trigger her with those memories. What matters is she’s safe now, healthy and loved.”

That prompted Alex Reinhardt to comment on the deplorable state of many ethnic minorities in South Asia. Have you ever heard of Dr. Reinhardt? He looks like the Game of Thrones author, without the Greek fisherman’s hat. He does, though, wear a beret, which, I guess, he’s entitled to. I’d heard his name a couple times in school, seen his books advertised on Amazon. I think I might have caught the end of his TED Talk someone next to me on a plane was watching.

I guess he’s kind of a big deal. His book Rousseau’s Children was apparently “groundbreaking.” That’s the word Tony Durant used. Reinhardt gave a slight, almost embarrassed shrug at that, but went on to describe why it essentially launched him into the academic spotlight.

I hope I get this right. I’ll try to relate what he explained to me. Jean-Jacques Rousseau—not be confused with Henry David Thoreau as Dan did that night—was an eighteenth-century French philosopher. He believed that early humans were essentially good, but when humanity began to urbanize, separating themselves from nature, they separated from their own nature as well. In Reinhardt’s words, the “ills of today can all be traced to the corruption of civilization.” In Rousseau’s Children, Reinhardt proved him right by studying the Kung San hunter-gatherers of Africa’s Kalahari Desert. “They have none of the problems,” he said, “that plague our so-called advanced societies. No crime, addiction, war. They are the embodiment of Rousseau’s thesis.”

“And unlike Rousseau’s ideal, the women aren’t reduced to being virtuous sex slaves in a male-dominated society.” That was Carmen. She said it nicely, smiling, but with a sarcastic roll of the eyes. Effie giggled at that and Reinhardt, reaching for another helping of quinoa, looked like he might have been working up to a less than friendly comeback.

“Rousseau was human,” said Tony, “but he did influence countless generations in countless fields, including Maria Montessori.” That diffused the situation, that and his unbelievable smile. His eyes. They turned to me and I actually felt my forearms prickle.

“Alex here,” Tony said, and clinked Reinhardt’s glass with his own, “was the spiritual inspiration for Greenloop. When I read Rousseau’s Children, it codified my vision for sustainable housing. Mother Nature keeps us honest, reminds us who we’re supposed to be.” At that, Yvette, his wife, slipped a hand around his arm and gave this gentle, proud sigh.