The Memory of an Elephant

by Alex Lasker

Years later she would tell him that this day was the most formative incident of her young life, that everything she did afterward was influenced by this searing memory. She thanked him for it, even though it changed her feelings about humanity forever.

Elephant calves will not sleep without an adult figure nearby—even human, if that’s all there is—and they’ll look up constantly to make sure someone is with them. The longing in a young elephant’s eyes is haunting, and the attachment between the two species quickly becomes profound, sometimes even more so for the humans.

age has taught me to save my energy and to stay out of sight of the two-leggers. Even though some of them can be kind and helpful, you never know which one might be your undoing. The world we travel in is circumscribed by theirs, I realized that long ago. They are the rulers of this earth, there are too many of them, and the rest of us are at their mercy.

The previous fall, she and her schoolmates had been shocked by the assassination of the young, handsome American president. A few days later, when her father returned from a safari with a wealthy Texas oilman and some of his friends, he told Jean and Amanda a disturbing story over dinner. When the news had reached them of the assassination, the clients had celebrated with cigars and champagne,

Adolescence is cruel, even in the best of circumstances, but without parents, or even girls to mitigate it, the toll was unfathomable.

The British system of boys’ boarding schools would not begin to change until the 1970s, when girls were finally admitted and teachers were taught to recognize, and counsel, struggling students. The system that had damaged so many lives would not be missed.

The next period, as I grew into male-hood and started gaining my independence, was the most exhilarating of my life so far, though at the time I didn’t realize it would not last; I thought life would always keep getting fuller. I watch my young male friends now as they go through the same foolishness, but I know to let them discover the truth in their own time.

And the Asians themselves were even more oblivious; the Filipino Catholic church was, and is, the biggest buyer of illicit ivory carvings in the world.

Little did she, or any of them, know that the counter culture would be over in a scant few years; that most of the world, including the silent majorities of the great metropolis’, could not care less. At the end of the day, the movement was absorbed by the corporate world and used to sell products. The civil rights and Vietnam War protests died out by the mid 1970s, and almost everything besides music, sexual habits and drug use went back to normal. No matter how much the Boomer Generation—or at least a vocal minority of it—wanted to believe otherwise, human nature never really changes, at least not for long.

The procession of elephants was duly recorded and sent out to the world as proof of the emotional depth and intelligence of the species. Thanks to Morgan Freeman’s sonorous narration, there was not a single doubter (with the exception of the Chinese and the Far East Asians) of the elephant’s place in the sentient wild kingdom, right next to dolphins and whales.

Whether it is just darkness that I will find, or if it is filled with friends and light, or if it is something I have never considered, I will go to the place all of life before me has gone. We elephants know that. I will either watch over this life from somewhere in the sky, or I will melt into the earth and know nothing but dreamless sleep. No matter what it is, I am ready.