This happened ...

Last week, on Monday the 15th, the word-of-the-day on dictionary.com was remora (see definition at the bottom of this post). And when I saw that word, I took a quick voyage on the vessel of memory, recalling a short story I'd read, more than sixty years ago, in Boys' Life, a story called "Remora Runner."

In these days of Google and images and eBay and Amazon, the rest was easy. Online, I quickly found that the story had appeared in October 1954 issue (I would turn ten a month later), an issue that featured on its cover an image of Daniel Boone carving into a tree that message about killing a "bar" on that very tree.

(I learned, by the way, there have been lots of fake-news Boone trees; here's a link to some info.)

I probably loved that issue because of the Boone story; I had read children's books about him and had told my friends at Adams Elementary School in Enid, Okla., that I was related to Boone (you know, the "Daniel" part?). I'm pretty sure not a single one of them believed me. (Friends are rarely as clueless as we think they are.)

Anyway, I quickly found a copy of the magazine on Amazon ($26.48, if you wanna know) (eBay had a copy, but I would have had to bid on it), ordered it, and when it arrived, it quickly became my raft on the river of time.

I found the story, read it, and realized that I probably did not read it when I was 9 going on 10. A bit much for the Me of Then.

A quick summary. It's a tale about a high-school kid on the cross country team, a kid whose older brother had been a star. The kid has no real ambitions; he just wants to finish near enough to the front that his team will get points--and so he sort of attaches himself (like a remora to a shark) to one of the other (good) runners, a practice that annoys that other runner. Later, the coach (in good humor) tells our kid that he is like a remora.

The coach tells him to go home and look up remora, which he does, and then engages in some soul-searching: Am I really like one of those gross fish? (He consults at home "his father's big dictionary" [73]. Nowadays, a quick online search would have saved him the effort!)

Then comes the District Meet.

Let's guess what happens ... Hint: The runner he customarily follows is struggling, has a "stitch" in his side. The team now needs our kid to ... step up. Can he do it? Will he? Will his team win the District Meet?

Although my parents paid for my subscription to Boys' Life, I can't believe I read that story, as I said, back when it originally came out. My custom--if I recall--was to read the jokes and the comics and look at the ads for rifles (I was stunned this week to see how many there were).

Though memory, as we all know, can be a traitor, I think it's more likely (and I seem to remember) that I read the story a couple of years later in study hall at the Hiram School. Up in front of the study hall, you see, was the little school library--with its books and maps. And magazines, including Boys' Life--back issues and all.

So, avoiding homework (as was my wont), I was probably up there, looking at back issues, re-reading the comics (avoiding the circle-the-direct-object English assignment), when I saw the Boone cover, started paging through it, and read "Remora Runner." I really can't recall in the ensuing decades that I've ever seen the word remora. But it stuck with me, that word. So when I saw it pop up in my email last week, I was surprised to see that the remora fish is not mentioned in the definition. (There is some discussion of it in the Origin section of the entry.)

And--once again--I wonder: How can I recall a story from Boys' Life in 1954--a story I read once, a story with a word I remember but have never seen again--but I can't always remember now to put the soap pellet in the damn dishwasher?

**

from dictionary.com

remora [rem-er-uh] noun

1. an obstacle, hindrance, or obstruction.

QUOTES: ... notwithstanding the remora of their dismasted ship, and the disadvantage of repairing damages at sea, the French fleet arrived in safety ....

-- David Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer, 1839

ORIGIN: Remora comes directly from Latin remora “hindrance, delay,” composed of the prefix re- “back, backward, again” and the noun mora “delay, obstacle, pause.” Other English words ultimately derived from mora include moratorium and demur. Remora is first recorded in English in the early 16th century as a name for the suckerfish, which has sucking disks on its head by which it can attach to the likes of sharks, turtles, and ships. This name is found in Late Latin in the 4th century a.d., so called because the fish was believed to slow the progress of ships. In Book 32, Chapter 1 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23–79 ) gives mora as a classical Latin gloss of Greek echenēis, literally meaning “holding (back) a ship,” and marvels at the supposed power of these fish: “But alas for human vanity!—when their prows, beaked as they are with brass and with iron, and armed for the onset, can thus be arrested and rivetted to the spot by a little fish, no more than some half foot in length!” (translated by John Bostock and Henry T. Riley, 1855). Remora in the archaic sense “obstacle, hindrance, obstruction” entered English by the early 1600s.