My Birthday Present:

In a cement dorm, there lived a Reimers. Not a first-born, cocky, self-confident Reimers, full of lists of goals and objectives for his life, nor yet a last-born, lackadaisical, let life hit ‘em Reimers with no direction, gumption, or gale; it was a Nathan Reimers, and that means whimsical.

He has a perfectly round head with a button nose growing stubbornly out of the center of his face. On his head he grows very little hair, and even when this hair persists in growing against his will, he promptly cuts it all off with a razor or any other sharp object just short of a scimitar. He has a well-tuned bass that he likes to sing in when he walks about or sits down. Due to his Reimersness, you are apt to find him always humming a tune, particularly the oratorios of Handel.

This Reimers is a very far-from-home Reimers, and his name, as I mentioned earlier, is Nathan. The Reimers have lived in Lynden, Washington for time out of mind, but this particular Reimers up and joined the Air Force and left Lynden behind. Behind, in a manner of speaking only, for he always carried large particles of home with him wherever he went.

Given his Reimers upbringing, Nathan has a great propensity to read things aloud to whomever happens to be about. This condition (commonly known as Accidental Reading, not to be confused with the much graver Occidental Reading which has to do with reading Asiatic languages aloud) has never been successfully treated (beyond the traditional approach which is to just sit down and listen until the person goes hoarse. This might take awhile given the Reimers’ vocal training.)

Reimers share a inevitable quest for learning. Therefore, Nathan might not know what he wants to do in the long run as far as how to make money; but he has pockets full of lists of things he wants to learn: Russian, Bagpipes, French, and probably even Irish dance.

He has an aversion to mushrooms and frowns on the day that they grace his platter. His enculturated preference lies in the pickled category. Rumor has it that Nathan considers dill pickles a meal all by themselves.

He’s quick to lend a hand. Whipping out his Gerber with the speed of a medieval swashbuckler, he will break whatever it is that has been bothering you to have fixed. Sheepishly, he’ll smile at the raw brute of his young strength symbolized in the broken pieces scattered about his Gerber, and privately wonder if maybe something is needed in some situations besides untempered, masculine force. He pushes the question to the back burner to stir up later.

And if ever you need clarification on characters and lineage of Middle Earth, Nathan, the walking resource of Middle Earth, will readily assist you. As a matter of fact, he lives in a dwarrowdelf. A dwarrowdelf? What’s that? Well, a dwarrowdelf is the name in the Common Speech for the mansions of Khazad-dûm. Actually, Dwarrowdelf is an Anglicism for Phurunargian. And that’s where the real Nathan Reimers lives.

So that begs the question. Does that mean Nathan is really a dwarf? Well, perhaps an overgrown, skinny dwarf. That is possible given the terrain and his near ancestor’s habit of living above ground. He certainly has less hair than your typical Middle Earthen dwarf, but it is possible that Nathan Reimers is the Modern Earth dwarf. If you’ve seen him whip out his Gerber, you will cock your head and weigh the probability as you envision an axe in its place. He is rather heavy-booted like his ancestors who traipsed so clodd-footedly through Mirkwood many years ago. If you’ve seen his appetite as he devours a warm meal, the evidence will tip the scale even further. And if you hear him tell stories and sing songs, you’ll pause to consider that maybe the dwarf blood might have finally overcome its animosity toward the elves (or perhaps the hobbits) and intermarried in this Reimer line. For there is something altogether uncanny about these two traits coming together so unclashingly in Nathan Reimers. How could such a man come from the dwarrowdelves of Khazad-dûm? This is uncertain, but some things cannot be proven scientifically. Some things live on the dawn of our understanding. Yet even there, though they escape our finite perception, they are, nonetheless, real.

Oct. 26, 2005

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