In W. D. Wetherell's short story “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” the narrator is a nameless fourteen-year-old boy who is smitten with a seventeen-year-old beauty named Sheila Mant. The story is told by an older version of the main character, who has the benefit of hindsight. In fact, he tells us at the end of the story that “I never made the same mistake again” regarding his choice of Sheila over his true loves: fishing and nature.
Although other characters are referenced in the story, it is only Sheila and the narrator that have any meaningful interaction. If we want to look at what other characters think of the narrator, we can really only consider Sheila.
Look at how she reacts to the narrator's choice of transportation:
It was her face that bothered me. It had on its delightful fullness a very dubious expression.
“Look,” she said. “I can get Dad’s car.”
“It’s faster this way,” I lied. “Parking’s tense up there. Hey, it’s safe. I won’t tip it or anything.”
She let herself down reluctantly into the bow.
Sheila isn't crazy about the canoe. That was an early sign that she didn't share the narrator's interests.
Then, at the fair, Sheila decides to leave with the older guy, Eric Caswell, who just happens to have a Corvette. As she parts with the narrator, she says,
“You're a funny kid, you know that?”
What this really means is that there is something different about him, something she doesn't understand. This doesn't seem to bother the older version of the narrator, who follows with a bit of self assessment:
"...funny, different, dreamy, odd, how many times was I to hear that in the years to come..."
Sheila and the narrator don't connect because they are too different. But the narrator's admitted individualism remains intact throughout his life. Sheila wasn't wrong, but she doesn't know why. He's “funny” because he is himself, his true self, unlike Sheila, who is a reflection of the expectations of others.
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