I have a friend we’ll call Otter who proves it’s never too late to find one’s place in the world or life purpose.
Otter, in his mid 40s, is very intelligent but because of dyslexia, was never one for book learning. Most of his life he’s gotten by working low pay, manual labor jobs. Otter is the guy I call when I need some holes dug, rocks moved, or things built that aren’t too complex but have an artistic flair.
Otter reminds me of a character right out of a hobbit tale. He loves mud, and streams, beaver sticks, and living a simple life. He never has much money but he doesn’t need much money, so it all works out.
Otter is likely what they call a sigma in the red pill world. He just does his own thing his own way, desiring to be neither an Alpha leader nor a beta provider. He’s rarely in the company of women, but when he is they are always unusually beautiful considering his own odd appearance, and even when the relationships run their course they remain friends. He’s very in touch with his emotions, and can dive right in and carry on conversations just like a girl.
Otter lives in the house where he grew up and takes care of his elderly widowed mom. He does odd jobs around the neighborhood when he needs spending money, which so far has worked out for him. He has worked as a security guard and other jobs in the past when he was living on his own, but since his dad passed and he moved back home, he’s prefered to work part time, here and there.
About four to six months ago, Otter started talking about a man he met who did chainsaw art. Otter was intrigued, so he started hanging about, offering labor in exchange for learning the basics. Soon it was harder to get Otter out to do an odd job, because he was so busy at the studio.
The man he’s working with is a jolly and positive older man with an infectious energy. Otters own father was a drinker who never really had time for Otter, so while his parents were married for life, Otter is more like a guy raised by a single mom than not. He prefers to use hand tools over power, as I don’t think he ever had a guy show him how. I get the feeling that’s all changed now, as it seems he’s running all sorts of woodworking tools now, under the patient guidance of his new boss, who has become somewhat of a father figure to him.
I haven’t seen him for a few months but then he surfaced, with some of the most amazing photos of the things he’s been up to. It would not be doing it justice to call it chainsaw art, it’s truly on the sculpture fine art scale, and I can tell Otter is absolutely loving every minute of it! Owls, bears, dragons, fish, benches, totem poles, and more, he’s making them all.
The guy who never seemed to really fit in has found his place at last, and his work is selling for $2,000 or more a piece before he even has them finished. He’s already better at it than people who have been doing it for years, I can only imagine how far he will go with it.
It makes me so happy to see Otter so happy! Sometimes, ya win one if you just keep poking along until you find your niche!
Let those who have ears hear.
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
Perhaps Fuzzie model for him he could
Sort of like one of my uncle’s. Expect he was a medical retired SEAL living with his aging parents and found horticulture.
this warms my heart and feeds the Mommy in me. my Aspie-girl is also very severely dyslexic (so much so that when they tried to test her when she was young, they couldn’t score anything, so they just stopped and started treating her). while she’s gone through all the training for it and has adapted as much as possible, it still affects her greatly – writing and reading will always be a huge struggle (audio books are amazing for her). i try not to think too far ahead for her, but when i do i sometimes worry a bit. hearing stories like this soothe my Mommy heart and give me lots of hope. thank you for sharing.
Some people claim that dyslexic I am.
But dyslexic they would be.
I am glad Ame! I think a big mistake in education today is they spend way too much time teaching kids who are outside the box to “test well” when really it would be much better to focus on real world life skills, like greenhouse work, or art, or trades or actual skills they can make a living with. Not everyone will or even needs to be “book smart.”
@RPG
A liberal education, the kind taught one hundred years ago, concentrated on giving young minds the kind of knowledge that would allow a student to learn a job after their secondary education was completed.
What I mean is that concentrating on educating for future employment was not their focus but rather on training the mind think and learn on its own without further instruction from the liberal (liberating) arts.
This focus on teaching to work later is entirely the wrong approach. Children should be taught to think so as to increase their options later in life. Educating for employment does not free the mind and body. It enslaves them.
Model for him I could. Maybe RPG display completed art she could? Make Otter famous we will.
oh, i agree. i pulled her out to homeschool in 9th grade – until then, it was war every year with the school system. she’s really smart, though, and very industrious and creative and a risk-taker. i look forward to seeing how her life plays out over time.
she recently hit a HUGE milestone – she worked through the process of forgiving her dad and his parents, and that has changed her. she’s like a whole different person – it’s amazing and beautiful to watch!
At first wondered what type of “happy ending” RPG meant she did I did
or perfectly perfect 🙂
Yoda,
We need to get your mind back on track. For this there is one word, “Boobs.”
Roman, true, the problem, at least as I have experienced in today’s educational system, in the US, is that it neither teaches how to think, nor practical skills. It is mearly hoop jumping, sheep herd, bulls#it.
Yoda, one must employ click bait headlines today, it seems! Lol. Actually it was unintentional, but hey it worked!
Boobs are good, but the wrong boobs entrap they might. Bigger picture Jedis must seek!
Travel in pairs they do.
Fuzzie not always so but mostly true… traumatic when not.
Not to take away from boob fantasy. I mean. Reality, it may be, but thankfully rarely so. For those it is, may the force of healing be with them…
Boobs admittedly powerful they can be. Not sure how to explain this, I am. Part of my daily experience they are. Excite me they do not. As glorious as they may be! Lol.
I realized something in talking to Yoda on this subject. They are wonderful and exciting thing because they are attached to girls. By themselves, they are inanimate.
No bear, it’s the other way round, girls can be exciting because they have boobs.
Girls would have 0.0 impact on men if it weren’t for recreational and procreational sex.
Travel in pairs they do.
Jedis mean you do
Roman & RPG / education….there are a lot of people who can learn something better if it is directly connected to a practical application. For example: I have heard from both a machinist and a landscaper that they find many potential hires, graduates of our public school system, who do not understand either fractions or decimals.
Maybe these kids would have learned these topics better if the teaching had encompassed the use of a ruler or a micrometer to measure something in the physical world.
So true David. What I do involves a fair amount of complex science. While I always loved life science, I never had any interest in chemistry until I had a practical application of it to tie it to. Now I find it very interesting and I understand it well. (I was an English major in college. Writer, newspaper reporter, and editor for 15 years before switching careers bc once the Internet got going, “everyone was a writer” and the market for writing tanked. But I digress… 😉 ) Had chemistry been presented to me in school in way it was tied to something rather than “here memorize this chart” I probably would have been more engaged. Very true!
@ Ton so true! Men would not talk to or bother with women folk at all were it not for that! Certainly not the difficult and uninteresting ones, especially! I know some women who are physically very beautiful, and lucky for them bc they have sadly little else going on, not nice, no interests besides themselves, no character… sad. But they don’t lack for boyfriends!
Otter also gives great relationship advice. He helped Vixen out quite a bit, getting her to see things about her current dating situation I have tried and tried to but it didn’t get thru.
Otter is also somehow able to get my oldest daughter to do hard physical labor, and cheerfully so, something that is most unlike her otherwise (usually she’s like, “ummm, get wet, sweaty, or dirty? No.”)
But he’s not only relationally/interpersonally savvy, he’s really smart in other ways, too. For example I recently bought more land and it has a plowed under creek on it. (Farmers would do this to avoid dealing w regulation that would require big setbacks and such that made the land unusable.) Otter has been helping me with getting it to resurface and to do stream restoration so that it won’t just be a wide muddy strip like has been. As I researched restoration techniques I was amazed that exactly what Otter had proposed is a method used by the leading hydrologist and stream restoration expert in the nation. I know for certain Otter knows nothing of that guy, or hydrology (formally anyway) and yet he completely gets it intuitively!
RPG,
It would seem that Otter is a bit of a magician. Getting Vixen to see the light? That is something!