Why I Own a “Death Frisbee”
(Otherwise Known as a Deerstalker)
I have come to believe in the importance of manipulating the environment in which we live to best suit our needs. I crave the feeling of control over my life so I respond to that craving by controlling my surroundings through projection—I project the properties of who I am into the physical world in the form of symbols. The result is a degree of satisfaction that comes from a congruence between what I appear to be and what I actually am. My mission is to gain as much control over my slice of the universe as possible so that I never lose track of who I am and of what drives me.
This pursuit I have created for myself has led me to the process of slowly accumulating objects that represent some element of who I am and rejecting those that do not; I am a connoisseur of meaningful symbols. Many of these objects will wear out with time or lose relevance but there is one object, my deerstalker, that I will always treasure and keep with me in life.
Sherlock: What kind of hat is it anyway? Is it a cap? Why has it got two fronts?
John: It’s a deerstalker.
Sherlock: How do you stalk a deer with a hat? What are you going to do, throw it? Some sort of death frisbee?
One afternoon about a little more than a year ago, I was plopped down on my bed plugging through homework when my mom flings open the door. She bustles in with a tape measure and insists that I stand up and allow her to measure my head. I, of course, ask why she might need to measure my head and she explains that she has found an app that allows you to discover how smart you are based on the circumference of your head. Hearing this, I gladly go along with my mom’s shenanigans and ask her to send me a link to the app. As soon as she finishes measuring, she dashes out as quickly as she had come. The whole exchange couldn’t have been longer than a minute and it flitted from my mind shortly thereafter.
A few weeks later on Christmas morning I open the gift that I had constantly pressed for. I pulled from the box the symbol of a most idolized detective—a deerstalker cap.
“You didn’t actually think I was measuring your head to see how smart you are did you?”
“Oh.”
Sherlock is what I consider to be a paragon of greatness and thus someone worth trying to emulate. That is the whole point of the hat after all—to remind me to mimic the great detective himself. Previously, I have described him as such:
…he is the best at what he does because he loves what he does. In all Sherlock Holmes adaptations, Holmes does what he does for his own sake, and that is what may inspire greatness in the individual.
He is representative of complete immersion into one’s work, of relentless problem solving. Holmes is the epitome of the mind at work. He is a character fundamentally linked to the concept of genius. Sherlock Holmes is brilliance personified. How could I ever want to emulate anything less?
No matter who I become or where I go there is one thing I know will never change. I will forever value the human mind and its capabilities. This veneration for brilliance and all that it can accomplish has been carved into the very core of my being. Therefore, I must project that essential part of my self.
I will carry my “death frisbee.”
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