Pickin' Them Bones
A trickle of blood began to seep instantly after the fist connected with his defenseless lower lip. Shocked tears flowed without delay.
He had meant no harm. That much was evident through his childlike laughter.
An innocent playground stunt had taken an unexpected turn and gone horribly wrong, turning a teasing smile into a bloody mess in the flash of an instant. And what began as some childhood tomfoolery would shape the course of not just the day, but the lifetime of another who served only to witness an introduction to human brutality on a cold, cloudy afternoon in the mind-cage.
The post-lunch midday chill did little to subdue the excitement brimming throughout a class of youngsters intent upon burning off every ounce of energy provided by pizza squares, green beans, milk - chocolate or standard - and an optional ice cream cup dessert. We, as fifth graders being subconsciously and otherwise prepped for the massive life, body, hormonal and personality changes on our horizons, were only concerned with harnessing every drop of free time and fresh air afforded to us.
On this day, not much unlike any other, the officialness of the unofficial recess that followed our lunch period provided more than a welcomed release for our collective pent-up raucousness.
And on this day, some were more raucous than others.
A screaming whistle brought a screeching halt to our post-lunch steam-blowing. Being a fifth-grader was a tough row to hoe, as we were saddled with the responsibilities of learning new levels of math, science, history, geography and reading. Topping it all off, we also needed to advance our English skills enough to put it all into words without sounding like fourth-graders.
Yes, rough stuff indeed. The pressure was immense and intense, especially for those about to have a script flipped on them to last a lifetime.
In my case, all it took was one well-placed punch to do so. If only it were me who was smacked, this would make more sense.
But ...
It was not my fight, or was it?
I was a quiet kid, one who went out of my way to not cause trouble, but also one who went just as far off the path to fit in. I've since come to learn that part of my efforts to be nice to others was merely my way of trying to ensure they would also be pleasant toward me. This has created a bevy of situations throughout my life that ended up anything but positive, and I positively admit this with utmost positivity.
How positive of me.
I've also learned that much of this stems from being a highly sensitive person, one whose sense of empathy toward others hangs on the ridiculous end of the spectrum. This meter is always running somewhere between the red and the redder.
Always.
The truth is, I can't stand watching anyone or anything suffer, and I will absorb any type of surrounding pain out of thin air as if it is my very own. While I believe that empathy is a virtue this selfish world needs much more of, care without boundaries, relegation or regulation is an exhausting quality that will often drain the life out of life itself.
I knew my sensitivity level had already been cranked significantly high as a child. It was as if things had more of an impact on me than I noticed them having on others around me. But I was 10 years old ... my grasp on personality traits or anything psychological or psychotropic was fairly nonexistent. What I was left to assume was that something was wrong with me; I was different somehow.
And as it turned out, I was. Except it wasn't a bad thing, or didn't have to be. But when your brain is perpetually stuck on full tilt from a monsoon of natural chemicals and hormones fueling such overactivity, it feels anything but natural.
Or, at least, it doesn't quite fit any defining examples of "natural" you are fed by comparison to your own vibes. The external and internal don't mesh.
Can you feel that?
Anyway ...
Bill was a classmate of mine - a portly child who was often referred to as "the fat kid" by less compassionate souls. This isn't a groundbreaking revelation by any definition, but kids can be cruel critters. Even if they don't really mean it or don't yet have a handle on their own misguidedness, the damage they often cause can unfortunately be permanent. I sensed this carnage present in Bill, who masked it with an outgoing smile and warm personality.
It is often said that those who laugh the loudest on the outside are also crying the hardest on the inside. Somehow, somewhere in my underdeveloped childhood brain, I already knew this. Bill, to me, was the living embodiment, and he was about to become an unwilling, unwitting catalyst.
As we walked the tunnel back into the school that day, Bill was being his usual jovial self, laughing about something that probably wasn't entirely understood by anyone but Bill.
It definitely wasn't grasped by Ralph - a sixth-grader whose rough-and-tumble persona hinted at an unsavory upbringing that he wore on his sleeve like a glaring badge of dishonor. Ralph's face said it all ... a permanent scowl dared a challenge from anyone and everyone. And word on the playground was that he could have been held back a grade or two, making him all that much more dangerous in his lore amongst us younger kids.
Now that I think about it, he bore a very close resemblance to Richard Ramirez. Yes, "The Night Stalker."
The mind shudders.
Ralph was not one to mess with by any means. It could have been entirely plausible that this was due to daily beatings suffered at home, causing Ralph to overcompensate for his powerlessness by exerting force anywhere he could in a sad state of affairs.
Or, Ralph could have just been an asshole for the mere sake of being an asshole. Still, a sad state of affairs, don't you think?
For reasons of overcompensation, general classlessness or for being a tall, thin tough guy, Ralph expressed exception to Bill's shared attempt at humor. It wasn't a joke aimed at Ralph, though. In fact, I failed to notice Ralph in this scene at all until he crawled out of the shadows with violent intentions in tow.
Now here he was, tossing a challenge into Bill's face to repeat himself.
Now an increasingly familiar whirring sensation - that I presently identify as anxiety - began to spin my thoughts. A sense of growing danger deepened within the confines of my childish consciousness. It was as if I was suddenly becoming removed from both myself and the surroundings I knew to be actual a few seconds prior.
This all seemed to be lost on Bill, however. If he shared any sense of perceived danger, he was doing a bang-up job of covering it. Ralph's ominous challenge was met with outright amusement from the headspace of Bill, forcing a laugh from his mouth that clearly indicated he was not privy to this escalating situation or circumstance.
Or perhaps he was, and this reaction was a nervous attempt by "the fat kid" to follow his own program - make 'em laugh and they won't hurt you again.
Only this time, it served to be a failed means to a less than fortunate end.
Bill repeated his joke, which is one detail I can't recall among all of the others so starkly engrained in my memory. I imagine it was about a dog, or a cat, or something arbitrary like burnt eggs over breakfast that morning. He punctuated the joke with a nudge, bouncing his round frame into Ralph's taut, defensive stature that had taken on an edge of fighting proportions.
My senses were burning now. The impending doom was thick enough to choke on.
With Bill's face still suspended in mid-laugh, Ralph's left hand gripped the scruff of his neck with lightning speed before his right followed with a swift, solid punch that connected squarely into that joke-telling pie-hole of his. It created a sound I had never heard before in my decade or so on Earth; a hollow thud that bounced around the inside of Bill's skull before escaping his mouth in a sickening echo of defeat on so many levels.
The transformation on Bill's face was stunning and instant, with pain, fear, sadness and humiliation now flowing as freely as the blood oozing from his lower lip. A high-pitched wail came next, one comparable to an infant who has just woken up and realized its loneliness within a darkened room.
It was powerful enough to still screech in my mind's ear nearly four decades later. That sound ... I'm hearing it as I write, completely reliving the experience as if it's taking place right next to me, just as it did a hundred lifetimes removed.
While Bill was left holding his wounded mouth, understandably dazed and shaken from such an unexpected violent outpouring, it was my own response to the scene I could not comprehend. My senses exploded in an internal eruption, irrationally feeling as if it was me who had just been attacked. It wasn't a physical sensation; my mouth was still intact and painless. But, somehow, I felt emotionally overcome by what I had witnessed, completely transfixed and frozen in a numbing state of shock.
I was suddenly overtaken by my imagination, creating a scene of "the fat kid" taking home a fat lip to the awaiting despair of his mother. I saw her trying to comfort him while disguising her own concern and pain of knowing someone had assaulted who was once her baby. I imagined her anguish and tortured thoughts, inwardly wondering if her child was targeted once more for being different as he had been so many times before.
I imagined the helplessness in its entirety, and it crushed me. It remained with me for the rest of the day, the week, the month, the year ...
And, apparently, the life.
Did witnessing this foul act of childhood hooliganism berth in me a newfound power of empathy? Or did it further awaken something I was born with that was merely awaiting a catalyst for full-on, full-color engagement? Because from that day forward, I've carried with me a hyperawareness of those energies around me along with a keen, kindred understanding of the human experience.
I'm aware of the possibility that my imagination could be just that, rather than factual truths that warrant such energized emotional responses. I could be entirely wrong, which would mean I've wasted a whole lot of time speculating on what could be rather than what is.
But it's also caused me to think about others first - often to a fault - and conduct myself according to the notion that everyone is dealing with so many things oblivious to those around them.
Life is trying enough for us all. Should we not show compassion in accordance with these struggles, be they perceived, sensed or otherwise?
In conclusion
So ... I appreciate you, Bill. I'm still very sorry you had to be punched in the face so that a scrawny classmate like me could discover his overabundance of empathy and oversensitivity. But for what it's worth, despite some very weird trips and circumstances, I do think it brought about the awareness of a better person in me. I sincerely hope you are doing well these days.
Your mom, too.
And Ralph ... I know you may have been acting out of your own frustration and insecurity, but that you could have also just been an asshole. It is not for me to judge. I only hope that you have found peace somewhere along the way and never went to prison for a violent crime, or committed too many violent crimes you were never caught for.
To you both ... you can never know how much an incident between the two of you - quite possibly one neither of you even remember - had such a deeply profound effect on me, one that makes me feel empathy for those who struggle and sympathy for hungry animals stuck out in the cold.
One that makes me feel anxiety for rocks I perceive to be lonely.
One that makes me feel pain for a tree being cut down, among a crazy list of many other things you wouldn't even believe that make me think so, so much.
One that, quite honestly, drives me mad at times.
But one that, for all intents and purposes, allows me the depth and understanding to write such tales with the hope of connecting to others who may be grappling with their own confusion or malcontent. I think I can help. And that's what it's all about; that's how we survive.
Aside from maybe being able to relax a little more often, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Thank you, and take care out there ...
