Letter No. 15: The Tripod

Selena and I recently watched Napoleon Dynamite again. I have seen the movie enough times that some of its jokes arrive in my memory a few seconds before they arrive on the screen. Still, Uncle Rico standing alone in a field with a football and a camcorder makes me laugh every time.

Rico carries his equipment into the grass and creates what appears to be a private scouting combine. He plants a tripod in the ground, points the camera toward himself, then backs away with a football in his hand. He is the quarterback, the prospect, the film crew, and—depending on who reviews the footage—possibly the talent evaluator.

The camcorder is an ideal audience. It does not question his throwing mechanics or ask how many years have passed since high school. It never suggests that professional scouts may not be searching through homemade footage of middle-aged men throwing footballs in empty fields. If the throw looks good, Rico has evidence. If it does not, the camera is unlikely to object to another take.

Then he says it.

“Coach should have put me in.”

My laughter faded. The scene was still funny, but something sorrowful had entered it.

I had watched the movie many times, yet until that evening with Selena, I had never really noticed the tripod. It had always seemed like an ordinary piece of equipment doing an ordinary job: holding the camcorder steady.

Now it looked like something else.

The football was evidence. The camcorder was a witness. The tripod held the witness in place while Rico continued making a case he had apparently been arguing for years.

He could still throw. He had always been good enough. Coach had made the wrong decision. If he had entered the game, his team would have won, someone important would have noticed, and an entirely different future might have opened before him.

Rico was not simply recording another football throw. He wanted the throw he made today to prove what should have happened years before.

His tripod is easy to see because it is standing in the middle of an open field. The tripod equivalents in our own lives can be much harder to notice.

We usually do not set them up without a reason. Something happens that leaves the story shaking—a disappointment, a rejection, a betrayal, a frightening season, or an opportunity that passed without us. We need an explanation sturdy enough to help us understand what happened, so we choose an angle, steady the camera, and begin recording from there.

Sometimes the angle says we were overlooked. Sometimes it says people cannot be trusted, that our value depends on what we accomplish, or that we must always be the strong one in the room. It may tell us that our best years are behind us, that life would have been different if one person had made another decision, or that keeping everyone else together is our responsibility.

The tripod may serve an honest purpose at first. It gives a confusing experience a fixed horizon. It preserves something we are afraid will otherwise be forgotten. It gathers evidence that the wound was real, the gift mattered, or the opportunity truly was lost.

There is nothing foolish about wanting the truth of our experience to be seen.

The difficulty is that a tripod is designed to remain still.

Life keeps moving, but the camera continues facing the same direction. New people and experiences enter the room, and we position them inside the old frame. A new relationship is examined for evidence that people eventually leave. A new opportunity becomes another hearing in the case that we are always overlooked. Rest feels irresponsible because the camera has spent years recording us as the person who never needs help.

The tripod does not have to distort what happened to become dysfunctional. The old story may be entirely true. The problem begins when every new story is required to stand inside it.

After enough time, we may forget that an angle was ever chosen. The recording begins to feel like the whole view.

That may be the most formative power of the tripod. What began as a way to steady our understanding gradually begins to steady our identity. We learn where to stand in front of the camera. We repeat the stories that fit inside its frame. We notice details that support the old conclusion and overlook whatever falls beyond its edges.

The camera was supposed to record the story. Eventually, the frame begins to form the person standing inside it.

That is why a tripod can become so difficult to move. After years of arranging life around its legs, the angle begins to feel less like a choice than reality itself. We may no longer know who we are without the story it keeps in frame.

Taking down the tripod does not erase what it recorded. It does not declare the wound harmless, the disappointment insignificant, or the missed opportunity unimportant. It simply allows the present to stop reenacting the past. Perhaps change begins by noticing the angle—and what has been living just beyond it.

On the screen, Uncle Rico retrieves the football and returns to his mark. The tripod has not moved. It holds the camera steady while he offers one more throw to a past that cannot reconsider its decision. The camcorder can preserve the evidence. It cannot return him to the fourth quarter.

Selena and I kept watching. Rico remained inside the frame he had chosen, while beyond it the field stretched in every direction.

The rest of his life was waiting outside the picture.

Until next Sunday…

George

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