Ferdinand's Flowers

In September of 1987, Teddy appeared in the doorway after returning from his first day of high school. Disheveled, dirty and bruised, his backpack strap had been torn out and he had dragged it up the road. The collar of his Les Miserables t-shirt was ripped with scattered blood drops across the front from his nosebleed.

Teddy’s mother, Leslie, had taken him to see the show on Broadway over the summer, and it had quickly become his favorite. He had been particularly excited to wear the t-shirt she had bought on his first day in high school.

As a ninth grader, Teddy had expected a certain amount of teasing, but was quite unprepared for the torrent of mental and physical attacks he received. Looking up from her newspaper as he entered, Leslie jumped out of the chair upon seeing him, and ran to the door.

“Oh Teddy, what happened,” she sighed sympathetically.

Dazed and upset, he tried to explain,

“Well, they were all razzing me between classes from the start of the day - making fun of my shirt, calling me names, and bumping me when we passed in the hall. I was surprised when I saw them on the bus, but then they just followed me off at the bottom of the road and started attacking me. It was all the usual, “sissy”, “gay boy”, “girlie”.

Then one of them grabbed my backpack, swung me around, and threw me into the ditch along the side of the road. The others kept yelling that they didn’t want me around, and they just wouldn’t lay off. Then, Johnny turned the corner in his old woody wagon, and it scared them off. He stopped to offer me a ride up the road, but I told him I’d just walk it off.”

Johnny was the older man who lived a few doors down from them. Teddy spent a good deal of time visiting with Johnny on the weekends. He was able to help with physical tasks Johnny could no longer do around his house. But one of Teddy’s favorite reasons for visiting was just to sit and talk with him. Despite his age, Johnny had an incredible memory and fascinating stories to share. He had served in World War II and often told Teddy his service stories. All were a fascinating glimpse into the life of a soldier during the time.

“Oh Teddy! Come here and sit down,” his mother said, shuffling him to the couch. Running to the kitchen, she grabbed some wet tissues to wipe up his face. She tried to reassure him that everything would be alright, but Teddy wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t know mom. I don’t think they’re gonna just stop. I just don’t fit in there. Even the other 9th graders in my class were more stand-offish when they saw I was getting picked on.”

“Teddy, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.” she declared resolutely. “Those boys are the ones with the problem. You keep being yourself and don’t let them intimidate you. What you do doesn’t affect them in the slightest. I can talk to the administration if they don’t let up. It’s only the first day. This will not continue, I promise.”

“Ok mom, if you say so,” he replied reticently. He was completely unconvinced that she was right, but too embarrassed about the day to continue the discussion. “I’m gonna go upstairs, lie down for a bit, then organize some stuff for tomorrow.”

“Ok dear, dinner will be ready soon, I’ll come up and find you, but it shouldn’t be long.”

The following week was marginally better. At least, the physical beatings had stopped, but the teasing, name calling and hall harassment continued. In fact, the entire high school experience was quickly turning into what promised to be an extremely long and depressing slog for Teddy. He hadn’t even visited Johnny on the first weekend because he had been too embarrassed, but this week he would.

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“Teddy, my boy! I was beginning to think you had abandoned me, my friend. It’s so nice to see you. I’ve got a leak in my bathroom sink I could use your help with, and I want to hear all about how high school is going.”

Teddy, slumped into his usual spot. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss high school. “It’s fine, I guess,” he claimed, unconvincingly. “I’d rather hear what’s been happening here.”

Johnny knew him well enough to know that everything was not fine, and was still unsure what he had witnessed after the first day of school last week.

“Fine, huh? That’s not much of a glowing review,” Johnny answered as he shifted some newspapers cluttering his chair onto another pile and sat down. Johnny’s house was quite messy, although he often claimed he could find anything at any time. Teddy had even seen him do it on occasion.

“I don’t know, Johnny, they just don’t really get me. Now some of my other friends are acting weird, like they don’t want to be seen around me either. It kind of sucks to be honest,” Teddy said, finally getting some internalized feelings off his chest.

“Not sure, they get you, huh?” Johnny parroted in his typical repetitive style. “They don’t need to get you. Only you need to get you, Teddy. That’s what this whole life thing is about.”

Teddy knew Johnny was essentially saying the same thing his mother had said last week, but somehow coming from him, it held much more reassurance. Teddy always felt that Johnny somehow held the magic key to making sense of everything. His advice always came across as wise and rooted in experience, perhaps because he had so many stories to share.

“Being who you are is all you can be, Teddy. No sense in trying to be someone else. No one has to live with who you are but you, and believe it or not there’s always someone who will care about you no matter what. I mean, you’re sitting here with an old dog like me, aren’t you?”

Then without skipping a beat, he asked, “Did I ever show you that book? Great little story, you should definitely read it.” Teddy stared blankly at him as Johnny got up, crossed the room, and started lifting piles of books from one stack to another.

He hadn’t a clue what the old man was looking for, but hoped it might be a book he read from his days as a soldier. Johnny had been sharing books with him for as long as they had known one another, works by Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack London among others.

In the 1930's, the Nazis and their propaganda minister had systematically gone about burning thousands upon thousands of books they felt didn’t help their cause of world domination, and white supremacy. Johnny’s response was to bring copies of as many of these books as he could carry from America to read on any down time he had. It was his own form of silent protest.

As it turns out, many of these books are now considered among the greatest books ever written. From what he had read, Teddy couldn’t believe anyone would be so insistent upon destroying them. But Teddy had learned a lot about World War II and Johnny’s life as a soldier, all of which gave him a great admiration and deep respect for his friend particularly given the mission at the time.

“Ah, here it is,” Johnny exclaimed, pulling a thin red book from a stack of magazines. He turned around, walked back across the room, handed it to Teddy and said, “Read it.”

Teddy looked at the small book, looked at Johnny, and replied, “It’s a kid’s book. I’m 13 years old, Johnny.”

“Yeah, so, read it,” he insisted impatiently.

“You mean right now?”

“Well it won’t take you more than a minute or two, will it?”

Teddy slowly opened the red cover and flipped to the first page. As he began reading the title in his head, Johnny said, “No, no, just read it out loud.”

Hesitantly, Teddy began, “The Story of Ferdinand”, by Munro Leaf.

“Once upon a time in Spain

there was a little bull and his

name was Ferdinand.

All the other little bulls he

lived with would run and jump

and butt their heads together,

but not Ferdinand.

He liked to just sit quietly and

smell the flowers.”

Teddy continued, eventually reading aloud the entire tale of the flower-sniffing bull who was stung by a bee and consequently found himself in a bullfight he didn’t want to be in. Once in the ring, Ferdinand refused to fight and sat down in the middle of the ring sniffing the flowers the women wore in their hair that day. As a result, he wasn’t asked to fight anymore, and left to spend the rest of his days sniffing the flowers in the field, just as he had always wanted.

It was a simple, yet poignant tale, and had Teddy known that most of the bulls in Spain who refuse to fight are simply slaughtered, it may not have been quite as meaningful. However, at that particular moment in his life, Teddy was still blissfully unaware of this fact, and the sweet story left a tear in his eye.

“Now, you see,” Johnny said gruffly, redirecting the conversation, “that bull decided to be who he was and stuck with it. He didn’t care what everyone else saw or thought about him. He did what he wanted to do, and became who he wanted to be in his life. Now take that with you and read it anytime you’re worried about who you are or what others think of you.

“Thanks, Johnny, that’s a nice story.

“Hitler tried to burn that one up too, Teddy,” he reminisced. “And the very day we freed the poor souls who were left, we handed copies of that book out to any children who walked out of those camps.” It was one of the only times Teddy had ever seen him get teary.

Then he composed himself and continued,

“Everyone bought that book and talked about it for months the year after it came out. Hitler and Franco despised it. Roosevelt and Gandhi adored it. People sat at their dinner tables finding all sorts of hidden meanings in it. But you know what, Johnny? That story is exactly what you read, a sweet lesson for children. Leaf didn’t understand all the fuss either.”

“Wow, all those people were really that interested in a kid’s book? How strange.”

“It was the time, Teddy, a very strange and awful time in history. Handing that book out to those kids was one of the proudest moments in my military career. It made me realize what all of this had been for, and how important it was that we came out on top. So take it with you, and don’t forget it” he declared, getting choked up again.

“What about your sink?” Teddy asked, remembering Johnny’s earlier request.

“We’ll get to that another day. You should head home for dinner with your mom.”

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Munro Leaf wrote The Story of Ferdinand on a fall afternoon in October of 1935. Leaf became an established children's book author, and went on to write 40 children's books. This popular tale was a mere shadow of the political footprint it left around the globe at the time it was written.

In Europe, The Story of Ferdinand was the talk of dinner tables, with the bull representing a fascist, a pacifist, a communist or an anarchist, depending upon who you asked. Hitler, who abhorred the story, demanded it be banned in Germany, and that all copies were burned along with the works of many other legendary authors.