Large Fierce Mammal

Furrowed brow and book title notwithstanding, it’s not what you think. SFM has nothing to fear. WE LFM’s don’t eat our young. (Mrs. LFM photo – click to enbiggen)

Back in the early 1980’s, a young man came to work for a company I was consulting for, and it fell to me to train him in the arcane arts of installing and troubleshooting security and fire alarm systems. I befriended him in  a mentor kind of way, and learned he had spent much of his young adulthood working as an enforcer for a drug dealer in Halifax County. He found his salvation in Martial Arts under the tutelage of a Korean Teacher who I only met once, and am shamed to say whose name has escaped me in the more than thirty years since.

Lacking anyone in his life who might be even remotely seen as a functioning parent, my friend spoke often of his Teacher, and came to me one day to ask if I would meet him. The date suggested was doubly significant because he also wanted to know if I would do him the honour of standing witness to his black belt test.

Of course, I accepted the invitation. So, on the day, we entered the school; I took my seat where others would have been had they been there, and quietly watched. When in the end, all requirements were met to the Teacher’s satisfaction, the coveted belt was bestowed, and I found myself being introduced to a very tiny and soft spoken Korean Gentleman who informed me he had come to know that I filled a powerful and most beneficial role in this young man’s life, and complimented me on it. I had to reciprocate in kind, for such was my understanding of him.

About a year later, in the midst of the long hot summer of 1981 the Halifax Police Department went on strike and night time in that city was a war zone. Anyone involved in any sort of security service was working round the clock, and in the course of the mayhem, a conversation occurred between my young friend and me about how thin a veneer civilization actually is. It was as we spoke on the subject that day that he revealed something of himself to me – that faced with not just a police strike, but a complete breakdown in all systems of government, law, order, and economy; removed of his access to work that might earn him an income as Canadians have come to know it, he would stalk and prey upon other people. He would take what they had as his own, eat their food, and if they had none then their pets, and if they had none of those, then he would eat them. It was clear to me that he had given much thought to this agenda, and revealed it to me with complete sincerity, clarity, and sobriety.

I applauded his candour, and silently added him to my list of those who are to be killed on sight should the shit hit the fan as he described. Friendship, after all, can only be carried so far.