"Dan Bear Always Gets Shit On": A Character Study

I was there when the pigeon pooped on Dan Bear’s forehead. Though he denies it, I can say with absolute certainty that his first reaction was to throw his head back, his palms raised towards the sky, and then scream “Why Me?” Does this reaction seem like too much of a cliché to take seriously? Maybe. But it is the very cliché itself which is worth our examination. Let me try to explain.

For all practical purposes, there are two Dan Bears. The first Dan Bear is the “Real” Dan Bear. He goes to Harvard, and is interested in Biology, the Red Sox and the Patriots. The second Dan Bear, however, sometimes overshadows the first; he is Dan Bear the Myth, who lives in the imagination of his closest friends from high school. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we know the two are distinct entities, but with a wink we can overlook that detail. The Mythic Dan Bear is stereotypically cranky, geriatric, bookish, and down on his luck; in short, a perennial loser. Before we knew him for even a year, already we could describe by heart the time Dan Bear was at an IMAX theater, and the person sitting one row behind threw up all over the back of his head. We all loved to recite the story Dan told us about his first whale watch. He was looking out over the railing on the first level when a sea-sick passenger atop the second level vomited over the deck, directly on to poor Dan’s 9-year-old head. These stories helped give shape and substance to that nebulous myth of Dan Bear, still forming in our minds. As Nambew frequently reminisces, “Dan Bear always gets shit on.” He then eagerly reminds us that he means “shit on” to be taken both literally and figuratively (thanks for the help, Nambew). So, on that fateful walk between Comm. Ave and the Fenway Train Station, where the pigeon pooped on Dan’s forehead, there were already several anecdotal precedents.

At the very moment that fateful globule of aviary excrement impacted Dan’s cranium, undoubtedly the same thought ran through both our minds: this story would soon headline the canon of Dan Bearisms; irrefutable examples of his terrible luck. Suddenly, his “friends” had more ammunition to use against him. Of course, this stereotype was that of the Mythic Dan Bear, and not the "Real" Dan Bear, but for this one sublime moment, the two lives intersected. The “Real” Dan Bear suddenly became the Mythic Dan Bear; their identities conflated. Rather than try to deny it, Dan embraced the role, throwing his head back and screaming to the fates: “Why Me?!” For a brief moment, Dan embodied the myth itself. He had no other choice. Thus, like Oedipus’s futile attempts to outrun his fate, Dan Bear’s rebellion against his own caricature indeed had the effect of cementing his status. The Myth, Dan Bear’s blessing and curse, would not soon disappear.