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Lonesome Journey on the Road to Manhood Made Easier With a Good Guide
Wandering in circles in life is for Twerps; new novella offers one man's pathway toward wholeness. Retribing: The Unpaved Road to Manhood by Anthony Rippo. ISBN: 978-0-9823107-0-0.
by John A. Rippo
It’s not easy being a Twerp—a young boy adrift with a foot in several worlds not of his choosing, in which he doesn’t fit. The central character of this novella is a small boy lost on the road to maturity. Like so many others, he’s collateral damage in the wake of his parents’ divorce, and cut off from the norms of a functioning nuclear family and those who might teach him valuable lessons, the Twerp ambles through childhood into youth as a good student with a caring parent, a benign sibling—and a notable lack of direction, discipline or goals. He’s happy enough to frolic in empty fields with a fellow Twerp in trivial pursuits that foreshadow the waste of time and energy that Twerps tend to mistake for real lives.
Fortunately for the Twerp, life gets better. That’s because it gets harder and the grit and polish that works the boy into a man is supplied by a mysterious, scarred Indian who appears out of nowhere to impose lessons on the rootless little boy.
Retribing is a story of lessons taught and learned that follows the Twerp from about age seven to his teen years. “Retribing” defines a process of leaving behind the inadequacies of youth and Twerphood and gaining standing among those who have grown into what they should become. Those who have made their grade show their feathers denoting their accomplishments. The scarred Indian shows many of long standing; Twerp struggles to reinvent himself in order to gain even a single plume. The term describes not only a relationship between mentor and student, but between mentor and the rest of society. Retribing is part coming-of-age story, and much more a settling-in-of-character tale that offers all readers, Twerps or otherwise, a great deal.
Take for instance, the metaphor between the jolokia pepper and girls. Twerp finds he needs to learn about the opposite sex and requires guidance. The best his Indian friend can offer is what starts out to be a taste test of an unknown morsel that the hungry Twerp chomps on to quickly satisfy himself. The fiery pepper nearly chokes him to death with its burning fury as the Twerp’s mentor watches. When he recovers, the Twerp learns that carelessly biting into something unknown, without suspecting what the consequences could be, is an unwise way to satisfy an appetite, and that a better way to approach one’s hunger is through what some others might call present consciousness. Girls are far hotter than peppers, of course, and if Twerp can’t cut it with vegetables, he’s in for a long and lonely ride to nowhere where the ladies are concerned—with bumps every step of the way. This style of learning has its merits for the Twerp, and as the story unfolds the little boy soon grows into a much more aware and self actualizing fellow who can appreciate and respect the humanity of others in ways he never knew before.
The author tells his tale with a careful wit and subtle irony and his sufferings are enough to make any former Twerp wince with the memory of what it’s like to have been there. Twerp’s first shave is full of pathos—alternately wickedly funny and terribly sad; his description of the disconnect he feels post-divorce when shuttling from one parent to another echoes elements taken from tales of those who left foreign shores on a one-way ride to America. If the Twerp never really seems to arrive, he never really is gone, yet he exists as a ghost among his living relations and sometimes thinks he'd be better off being buried. The scarred Indian clues him in fast; that other Twerps have it much worse and nothing he faces will be more than he can handle. The mentoring Indian reminds him that men—real ones—have a common history of strength, character and resilience—and a lot of TLC in their souls.
Retribing is a worthy read, not only for the male who quietly suspects that something’s amiss, but for those who know him or those who have their own battles to win and feathers to show.
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