Even though school rules forbid gum, Daniel was chewing his
gum loudly, snapping and cracking it, blowing huge bubbles that covered the
lower half of his face. He had me up against the brick wall on the playground,
his arms caging me in on each side, but he was smiling as he talked to me. He
had some of the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen, light and airy, like
your favorite pair of faded denim blue jeans.
“Hey, do you like Brian?” he asked, pushing his gum to the
side of his mouth with his tongue as he leaned in toward my head that was
already pinned to the red bricks.
“Yeah,” I answered as passively as I could, trying to
contain my excitement. Brian was the most popular guy in fourth grade. He had longer
hair that he flicked to the side with a toss of his head as he strode down the
hall and slipped curse words into everyday conversation. He was everything a
nine year old aspired to be.
“Well, he really likes you, too,” Daniel assured me. As one
of Brian’s best friends, I trusted him to know. “Do you want to go out with
him?”
“Okay.” Or, as I was screaming in my head, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
As someone who had not yet had any experience in the dating
world, I couldn’t believe my luck. My heart soared. I felt as if I had lifted
off my feet and was floating above all the boring kids on the playground who
Brian didn’t like, all the Nobodys with
whom Daniel wasn’t having a life-changing conversation. I was Somebody in this world that revolved
around Grand Avenue Elementary. I was
going with Brian.
That lasted about ten more seconds.
Daniel dropped his hands and ran off around the corner of
the playground to where Brian was playing basketball with the other cool boys,
screaming as he ran, “Brian! You’re going
out with Kelly Kizer!” This was followed by a torrent of laughter from
Daniel, who had just pulled one over on his friend by tricking him into dating
me.
I was mortified. I already knew that my thick, dinner-plate-sized
glasses and inability to feather my hair did not make me the most popular girl
in school, but I hadn’t considered myself to be so low in the pecking order
that I would be considered the most embarrassing person a guy could date. I had
friends. I was even friends with kids who were friends with Brian. I wasn’t one
of the kids who went to special-ed classes; I wasn’t one of the poor kids who
were made fun of for being dirty; and I wasn’t one of the overweight kids who
were called tub-a-lards. But apparently I had my own category of awfulness that
would make a cool guy cringe if he were declared to be “going with me.”
Fortunately Brian was so cool that all he had to do was say
to Daniel, “No, I’m not, you dick,” and that was that. We were already broken
up.
Daniel excelled at being a bully and getting into trouble.
The principal and Daniel were so well associated that Daniel would shout out
“Hey, Mr. Williams, how’s it hanging?” as he passed him in the hall as if it
were a scene from a John Hughes movie.
In the sixth grade, our math teacher, Mrs. Schwartz, tried
numerous methods for getting Daniel to behave. One day she placed a chair at the
front of the classroom facing the rest of the students and had Daniel sit there
until he could get the goofiness out of his system. I was ready to see Daniel
burst into tears, just as all his other classmates who had been relentlessly
picked on by him were probably itching to see as well. He sat there with his
head down for a while, looking up on occasion, and the rest of us were
instructed to go back to our multiplication worksheets. Then we heard a noise
coming from the front of the classroom: a gush of air, a treble in the throat.
Was this it? We looked up to see Daniel peering through his bangs, snickering
as he watched the class. One of his friends began to giggle as well. Daniel
lifted his head higher and looked around at all the faces, laughing outright at
his awkward situation, and we all began to laugh too. It was contagious. Soon
even Mrs. Schwartz was laughing, and to quiet the classroom back down she dismissed
Daniel back to his seat.
This “punishment” may not have been the success she had been
hoping for, but it was legions better than the week before when she had shouted
at Daniel, “If you can’t be serious, then you should just leave.” At which
point he had stood up from his desk, walked out of the classroom, and exited
out the door into the parking lot.
Daniel was both a bully and the class clown. Even though he
could be a total “dick,” as Brian would say, it was hard to hate him because he
was as funny as he was cruel. Plus you aren’t allowed to openly hate popular
kids. When I was young we didn’t call kids like Daniel “bullies,” we called
them cool. Because that’s how kids who can manipulate to get whatever they want
appear to other kids. But I knew Daniel fairly well, and despite the fact that he could be a combative asshole, I also knew he had a good heart.
My older sister and Daniel’s older sister were friends, so I
had known Daniel longer than most kids. One of the first memories I have of him
is a kind one. I was quite young, maybe only four or five, and I was graduating
from my swimming class. On the last day the other beginner swimmers and I were
all taken to the deep end where we were instructed to jump off the diving board
and into the water. We were all a bit terrified to be in the big kids’
territory. I remember getting out of the shallow end and walking in a line to
the deep end, past the bleachers where my sister and mom sat as they waited for
my class to end and my sister’s class to start. They and everyone else on the
bleachers would be watching me to see if I would be able to do the big jump.
When it was my turn, I got up on the diving board and walked out to the end and
looked down. There in the water was my swim teacher with the life preserver
floating beside her. As small as I was, it looked like she was at least one of
my body lengths below me. But I didn’t hesitate. I just stepped off the board
and into the water.
I had been so excited that I forgot to plug my nose, and the
water gushed up, burning my nose and filling my throat. I surfaced, coughing
and gagging, as my teacher offered me the life preserver and floated me toward
the wall. But I also heard cheering. I squinted and looked toward the stands
where two kids were shouting and clapping for my accomplishment. As I got out
of the water I asked my sister, “Who is that?” and she told me that Daniel and
his sister had been watching my big jump.
Daniel was not fundamentally or inherently flawed. Like all
kids who act up, there were reasons for what he did. Because our sisters were
close, I knew things about Daniel that the other kids at school maybe never
did. Daniel’s mother was mentally ill. She was institutionalized for a long
time and his father was busy running a few local businesses, so Daniel and his
sister were mostly raised by his grandparents.
Knowing all this about Daniel should have made me more
accepting of his behavior, but when you’re a kid all you care about is whether
or not someone is a jerk to you. He fell into drugs at a young age but turned
it around just as young. As early as his high school years, he found the
military and then found God. I remember championing his work to one of my
teachers, trying to help him get a better grade on a beautiful world map he had
made for a social studies final project. I wanted Daniel to be happy and succeed
in life. If happiness is being married with two kids, working as a computer
software engineer, and always having a smile on your face, then I think he has
succeeded.
