I WOULD NEVER BE MISTAKEN FOR AN ATHLETE. | I was told that when a young child challenges his parent, it’s actually a battle that he has no desire to win. He craves delineation, the clarification of what is and is not permissible, and being told precisely where the line is drawn is often the only answer he needs. I was also told that many actors, unsure of whether a director on a new production has any idea what he or she is doing, will challenge their new director to a symbolic duel, and that this, too, is a battle they do not truly want to win. What they really want is reassurance that there actually is a mother- or father-figure on the shoot, one in whom they can place their trust, and who will allow them to play--fully, freely and with fewer inhibitions. Which part is playground, which part is fence, and which part is forbidden, the Great Unknown? I was riding with my mother in the front of the Beast, the pre-seat-belt-era station wagon with what appeared to be miles of bench seat from one side to the other. I cautiously broached a tender subject, the most tender subject of a tender year: what to do about Bruce. Bruce was many things, including a little overweight, not very bright, prone to rounding his shoulders and ducking his head in reflexive deference to all, and operating without a clue how he might carry his massive vulnerability with anything resembling grace or style. Bruce wanted to be my friend, and this was something he was making painfully clear to me all the time now. I should mention at this point that I saw my existing social standing as problematic. I was smart enough to almost get lumped in with the Brainiacs, but it’s important to remember what the world was like before it was cool to be a nerd. I would never be mistaken for an athlete. Occasionally I could get a solid laugh, and a good sense of humor could lead to a certain kind of popularity--but only if it could be sustained, if you could be the Clown On Demand. It was entirely possible for me to end up a Zero--a kid who lacks the definition to belong anywhere. If I started hanging out with Bruce, it was over for me. It would be an unsurvivable mistake. I brought my dilemma to my mother, there in the front seat of the Beast. She was not a fan of eye contact, and since driving is a good excuse for not looking directly at your children, this was a perfect setting. I had a vivid sense of how she would respond, when I asked her what I should do about the terror I felt about Bruce and his awkward, slobbering-puppy advances toward friendship. She would refer, I was pretty certain, to some passage from the Bible that would remind me how Jesus exhorted us to be kind, especially to the unpopular ones, the ones to whom no one else would extend a hand. I knew that it wasn’t likely to contain any concrete tactics for me, no implementable strategies, but it would offer instead a hearty shame-based motivation to be a better person, to quit being so selfish. She started nodding, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you just hate people like that?” she asked rhetorically. I sat, stunned, staring out the front window until I had the courage to sneak a glance her way, to see if that was all I was going to get. “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” I mumbled, when I realized she was done. All at once, I saw that the playground had no fence, the Great Unknown was actually the Great Unknowable, and it was even possible that I had been wrong about the playground being a playground in the first place. It was also when I began wondering if there might be someone else in my world to whom I should be bringing questions like this. |