It’s the Year of the Sheep! Step back!
This is my year. The Chinese restaurant paper place mat told me so. And I’m gonna own it.
I used to be sheepish about my sheepiness. I used to mumble when people asked me what my Chinese sign was. I used to suffer with silent envy when someone else mentioned that they were a Horse or a Tiger or, gasp, a Dragon.
Why couldn’t I be a Monkey, I thought to myself. Monkies are comic gold. Or a Rooster, giving me a handy excuse to say Cock! in polite company. Even a Rat would’ve been better. Much hated, sure, but they’re crafty survivors. And living here in Baltimore, they’re like the unofficial Spirit Animal of the city.
A snake’s badass. I woulda loved to be a Snake. I’m a Scorpio in Western astrology, so I know the pleasure of being badass and having the deadliest sign. In quiet moments I dreamed of being a Scorpio-Dragon.
I dunno. Maybe it’s too much to have the coolest sign in both, to be a Scorpio-Dragon. Maybe the world just can’t handle that. Maybe I’d be too badass. Anything else, though, would’ve been better.
Rabbits are cute. Pigs are tasty. Dog’s are better than people.
But a Sheep? Dumb mutton. Something to be ordered around and shorn of its self-respect.
Eventually I noticed that on some calendars, the Sheep was listed as the Goat instead. It was only a modest improvement.
Goats, particularly little ones, are very In right now. But as a teenager in the 1980s, goats held no appeal for me, with their disturbing eye slits, their undiscriminating diet, and their reputation for tiresome stubbornness.
How could I puff this up? How could I get the Sheep/Goat on par with at least an Ox if nothing else?
Ram. That’s it. Not some dumb farm animal, some sacrifice victim to the ancient gods, or some ridiculous Medieval stand-in for Satan. But a Ram.
Big, curling horns for smacking into another motherfucker’s big curling horns, sending mighty CLACK echoing down from the mountains and through the valleys like distant thunder. Staring down majestically from the highest of peaks, holding silent sway over my dominion. The Ram.
I began telling everyone I was a Ram.
Yes, it was desperate. No it wasn’t real. But it was more real than Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat,” and that managed to reach the no. 8 slot on the Billboard Hot 100 back in 1977.
For a couple of decades I was adamant, insisting I was a Ram. I mean, mostly I hid behind being a Scorpio, but when forced into the bright, red glow of Chinese astrology I made my lineage plain. I was a Ram! A Scorpio-Ram.
Eventually, however, mortality confronts us.
No, don’t worry, I’m not dying. Pretty healthy, actually. But you know, the inevitability of it all. And the nature of the life we live while we get to live it.
We’re all sheep in the end: Told what to do, finding comfort in the herd, holding our peace more often than not, and occasionally laid upon someone else’s sacrificial altar of emtion.
Oh, and in my case, there’s also the big mop of curly hair. That too.
So to hell with it. I hereby rid myself from dreams of fierce Ram masks and the misbegotten puffery of demonic Goats. I am a Sheep! Hear me bleat!
And one other thing. I just became an Uncle for the first time. Her name is Navah. And she too is a Sheep.
We are blood. We are proud. We are legion.