These two ten year old boys rode past me on their dirt bikes, one to my left, the other to my right. The second hit his brakes and did a skid in the gravel alongside the road, kicking dust and stone into the air. He stood on his pedals and rode off, looking back at me with a wicked grin as the dust he’d stirred up settled across my face and body. He got to the corner and made a left, when I finally muttered, “You little prick,” under my breath.
This is not the first time I have been the target of abuse from children. The first time was as a kid myself, probably ten or eleven years old. I was riding my bike out by the bay one day and I passed a boy who was much younger than me, maybe five years old or so. I smiled and said hello to him, and he snarled his lip and held up his pinkie at me, much the same way as you’d flip off the rat-fucker who stole your parking spot in front of the post office. I was stunned. First of all, I didn’t know why this boy was being insulting to me, someone he’d never even met. Secondly, I didn’t even know if I was being insulted.
One winter day few years later, I was riding a four-wheeler in the same area, a friend of mine riding behind me. I had remembered that altercation with the kid flipping me the pinkie and had told the story often, including to the guy riding with me. Suddenly, we see a young boy playing in the snow on the side of the road, and I recognize him as the pinkie kid. So I tell me friend, “Hey, that’s that kid! Give him the pinkie!” My friend pulled off his glove and flipped the kid his left pinkie. The kid, almost as if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment, shakes the mittens off his hands and flashes both his pinkies at us. We drove on, both of us shaking our heads in disbelief.
Many years later, when telling this story to a friend, she told me what the kid’s gesture represents: not worth fucking. Okay, but wait a minute here. There’s no way that kid knew what that meant. I was thirty five years old and I didn’t know what it meant! Regardless, the kid meant something at least, and it wasn’t polite.
Then there was a kid named Rusty who used to skate at the roller rink some weekends. For months, I’d been trying to be alone with this cute blond girl (I cannot remember her name… Cindy? Jenny?) and had skated with her a few times during the ballads. But then one day, Rusty made his appearance, and the blond girl fell for the charm of Rusty’s long, sandy hair, no matter that he was significantly younger. He was a good skater too, and while I certainly had some pretty tasty chops in those days, a new kid with long hair streaming out behind him was something no thirteen year old girl could pass up. I disliked him immensely. He was competition, and that put an end to my hopeful relationship with the nameless blond. I’m not much good at competition. I need to be wanted.
Rusty turned out to be all right. We became friendly after a few weeks when all the drama had blown over. He was okay, but there are a lot of kids that age who aren’t. Most boys from 12-15 are douches.
I was at a wedding reception once and saw this early-teen boy dressed up in a suit and wearing sunglasses. He never took them off, either. He walked around with his tan suit, no tie, shirt unbuttoned one hole too many, sunglasses, acting like he were the coolest cat in town. He was trying to look cool, to be impressive, but in truth, to anyone over the age of 15, he looked like a douche. I kept tabs on him all night. There were no girls his age. Hell, there weren’t any boys his age. He was on his own, in his own world of imagined coolness.
Now I’m not saying that kid was a jerk like pinkie-boy or the kid on the dirt bike. This kid was just alone in his little world, acting in his own movie. He might have been a pretty nice guy. The kid on the bike, however, is a jerk.
As he rode out of side around the corner, I saw his future. Lots of detention, for a start. He’ll try out for the football team when he gets to high school, will make the freshman team as a wide out, but because he’ll never grow very big, his football career will end there. He’ll be highly skilled in mathematics, but will be too busy working himself into the popular social circles to enhance his education. He’ll get summer work at his father’s used-car lot, cleaning the incoming cars before they are re-sold. When he graduates, he’ll start selling cars but quickly find he’s no good at it, and instead find a fulfilling career as a waiter. When he’s twenty-one, he’ll knock up one of his co-workers, a sixteen year old hostess. He’ll move away immediately, to some city on the west coast, and he’ll learn to surf. He’ll pick it up quickly and move on to the big waves before he’s ready. He’ll have a wipe-out coming out of a tube and get hit in the back of the head by his board. His rescuers will be unable to resuscitate him. His death will be tragic for his family, but the funeral will be sparsely attended by any friends of his own. Even the mother of his unborn child will not come.
That’s a lot to put on someone for being a kid, but the malicious grin he flashed me as the dust settled over me wasn’t just some kid being a kid. There was intent in it, intent to fuck with me. To get sand in my hair and eyes, all over my clothes. And it’s not like I’m dressed up out there either. Nothing fancy. With the way I look when I go walking, I’ll certainly never pick up a pretty woman on the trail. In fact, most of the women I pass eye me suspiciously, like I might be one of those wackos who prey on women who walk alone. I have this crazy beard, and I wear an old t-shirt and frayed jean shorts and old tennis shoes, and I probably mutter to myself a lot. I look like a goddamned crazy person. But neither does this make it right for this kid to stir up the dust around me. Just because I look dirty doesn’t make it okay to make me dirtier. It’s like taking a box away from a homeless guy. How much more sadistic do you need to be, kid?
So home again to scrape the dust off my sweaty brow and arms and ruminate on my own youth. Was I a douche too? I know I never intentionally sprayed another human being with dust and gravel. But I have almost certainly “acted cool” in a situation where I looked completely foolish. But when? What did I do? Have I blocked it all out? These are the sorts of things that stick with me, things I have done that occasionally pop up in my head and embarrass me all over again, but for the moment, I am thankfully oblivious of any of these situations. Okay, wait. I did intentionally leave some dumbbells out when I woman-of-interest came over for the first time, but that was only a few years ago, far past the time period in question.
So maybe the kid on the bike will have a pointless life, but what of the kid with the sunglasses? Where is he today? He’s probably got his degree and is working for some investment banking firm, struggling with the current state of the economy but earning a decent living. He lives alone in a small apartment in Queens, reads a lot of comic books, orders out for Chinese nearly every night. Occasionally he goes to the bar, thinking he’ll meet some nice woman, but never finds the nerve to talk to anyone who fits his type. He will masturbate infrequently because the stress of his job drains his desire. But he’ll be okay. He’ll make it.
And as for pinkie-kid, your guess is as good as mine. I firmly believe that someday I’ll cross his path again. I’ll flip him both pinkies from my sides, like a gunfighter in a duel. He’ll look at me quizzically, turn to the gorgeous woman at his side and say, “What’s up with this guy? What a douche,” and walk away, twirling his pocket-watch by the chain, wrapping it around his finger in one direction, and then in the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment