Heaven is (sometimes) a Playground

The first boy I met in my new neighborhood was named Bill. Bill was a pretty average kid. Average height. Average looks. Average intelligence. Lived in an average home with middle class parents, 1.4 brothers and sisters, a dog, and a Grandma living in a converted bedroom upstairs.

The one thing extraordinary about him was a single-minded devotion to sports. Watched it, played it, and talked about it. His class writing assignments were about sports, and he threw away his notes in a sports-themed wastebasket. He took off his sports-related pajamas in the morning, and put on sports-related clothing to go to school. I’m not sure I ever saw him read a book, but if he did, I’m sure it was about sports.

And so, I traded in a life of playing in the woods and climbing trees amid the idyllic beauty of East St. Louis, for days spent playing basketball on someone’s driveway, or football and soccer on an empty lot.

It was a lot of fun, and helped me to fit in at my new school, which was walking distance from our house. It consisted of grades 1–6, with 3 classes in each grade. Class, as usual, was pretty boring, but after lunch we would get recess for half an hour. The girls would walk around and talk or giggle, or do whatever it is that girls at that age do, while the boys would all gather together and play smear the queer. The rules were pretty simple. There was a football, and a whole bunch of guys, and one of those guys would get the football. He was then the queer, and every other guy would chase after him, catch him, and then pound him until he let go of the football. Someone else would pick up the football and they would become the queer. We would then chase after him, knock him down, and pound him until he let go of the ball. And so on. There were no other rules, no fouls, and no penalties. It was probably the greatest game ever invented.

Everyday, I would look forward to recess just to play smear the queer. When I was just starting to play the game, I tried to be the queer a few times, but I didn’t really like being pounded by the other boys. In fact, almost all the boys tried being the queer at one point or another, but it seemed like only about 5–10 percent of them really liked being the queer, and they would do it every chance they got. What I really liked, was chasing down the queer and either taking him down myself, or holding him up so all the other boys could jump him.

My ability to smear queers gained me a great deal of respect amongst my classmates, and I became a pretty popular kid. I got to sit at the cool kids table, and some of the cute girls wanted to “go” with me. I wasn’t exactly sure that meant, or whether I was entitled to anything or if I had any responsibilities, but I knew it meant that I was pretty cool. People picked me early to be on their teams when we played games, and wanted to work with me on school projects, and not because I was smart. I found out school was totally different if you were popular. It was fun.

I then decided to remain popular for the rest of my school years, and the first thing I did was join Bill’s little league team. Bill was a good player, and even had his name mentioned in the newspaper. That was big, because at the time, newspapers were like the internet, except without the pop-up male enhancement ads, cat videos, and pornography. I was a little nervous because I had not played a whole lot of baseball but I didn’t figure it looked that hard. It was.

Bill and I went to our first practice and we saw Randy, a friend of ours. Randy was the most popular and best athlete in our class. We also ran into someone else we knew named Pete. Pete was the least popular and worst athlete in our class. Plus, he ran funny. We talked about who would play where, as we went through a few practices. On the day of our first game, the coach told everyone where they would be playing. Randy was pitching and Bill was at shortstop. This was no surprise since they were the best players. It was also no surprise that Pete was in right field. At that level of little league, kids almost never hit the ball into the outfield, and never into right. You could put a pail of wet rags in right field and you would do just fine. Then the coach told me where I was going to play. Right field. Worse, I was batting 9th. Even worse, I was starting, and after playing the mandatory 2 innings, I was to be replaced, and Pete would take over for the rest of the game

After we had played a few games it was clear we had a winning team, and I had to admit the coach was a good judge of talent. I had struck out every time at bat and dropped the one pop-up hit to me, and I couldn’t disagree with his decision to replace me after playing the minimum two innings. The pail of wet rags would literally have been just as good as me, and, depending on where the pop-up landed, a non-zero percent chance of actually being better.

At the end of each game, the coach would pass out little stars for hits and good plays the kids had made during the game, and the assistant coach would glue them on our hats. This was a good way to motivate the players, and an even better way to let the crowd and other team know which kids were good and which kids stunk. About halfway through the season, when the stars had accumulated, you were able to tell with a very high degree of precision where each kid ranked, from the very best to the most pathetic.

Randy, with his hat full of stars, would stroll up to the plate, and the crowd sat up straighter, paid closer attention, and the dads cheered while the opposing team would pound their gloves and move way back. I, on the other hand, with my hat clean as a whistle, walked up to the plate, saw the outfielders mingle together in centerfield, and heard a father say, “Jesus! That kid must really suck! I’m sure glad he’s not my son!” Sadly, that was my father, but I grudgingly understood why he said it. To help him out, I would wave to some other dad on my way to the plate.

I would then pound the outside of the plate with my bat, just to make sure I could reach the low and away pitches, and then take 3 good rips at the ball. It didn’t matter if the pitches were in the dirt, over my head, or 3 feet outside. If the pitcher balked, or threw the ball over to 1st base, I still swung. I didn’t plan on being out there any longer than I had to, and I wasn’t going to waste any pitches. I would then walk back to the bench, flip my bat back up against the screen, and say to the coach, “Well, I gave it my best shot. Is it the 3rd inning yet?”

At the halfway point of the season, both my batting average and fielding average stood at a robust .000. I had pretty much given up hope of ever getting a hit, but I had observed something while I was riding the bench. Most pitchers at that level couldn’t actually get the ball in the strike zone too often. I figured if I just never swing the bat, I would have a better than average chance of getting on base by getting a walk. For the rest of the season, I would grab a bat, stand at the plate, and take a few “warmup” swings. From that point on the bat may as well have been nailed to my shoulder, because it wasn’t moving. I walked more often than not, and I got to run the bases which was fun. Unfortunately, they didn’t give out stars for walks, and my days of being a popular kid, which lasted about 8 weeks, ended.

I was back somewhere in the bell curve, never being picked on like Pete, but finishing my elementary junior high, and high school years in obscurity. I finally received my diploma with no meritorious, academic, or athletic achievements. Randy was voted outstanding senior athlete, even after all of the elementary schools converged into the middle school and high school, and went on to play baseball in college. Pete wasn’t there. He must have tired of all the bullying.

In the ninth grade, he hung himself.

I only knew about it because one of the friends I ate lunch with lived across the street from him. He was pretty shaken up, and we were all sad, but it seemed to blow over relatively quickly. There were no announcements. The administration did not acknowledge it, and there were no assemblies or talks about bullying. The teachers did not talk about it. It was like he moved away, and the issues were left to resolve themselves, and the memories would gradually fade away.

Except they didn’t.

I don’t think any young person can truly understand something such as Pete, and what happened to him. Maybe they just haven’t had the life experiences yet, or maybe grief doesn’t develop until someone is older, as some sort of evolutionary mechanism — grief, or more specifically the avoidance of grief, could only be a useful emotion among older people taking care of others.

I was never a bully, and the few times I was mean to someone, I ended up feeling bad afterwards. I never teased Pete, and I wasn’t ever really a friend, but I knew that I, for one, never really forgot about him either. As I got older, I found out my feelings, about this and similar events, started changing. I started feeling worse about what happened. I realized more and more, just how much had been lost, I wished that I could go back and change things, and was upset that the school didn’t do anything. However, it wasn’t until I became a parent that I really understood the almost unimaginable pain and anguish that the boy’s suicide must have caused.

I only talked about Pete once since that day. As cyberbullying was becoming more common, when even the leaders of our country were engaging in childish name-calling and mocking people, sometimes even young girls, I talked about him with my sons.

A couple of years ago, when I was playing around on the computer, I ran into something extraordinary. A facebook site had been set up as a memorial for alumni from my high school. People posted when someone passed away, and people would ask questions about things such as funeral arrangements, and express their condolences. I recognized the writer of one of the posts as a member my class, and he wrote:

“Does anybody remember in the late 1970s a student by the name of Peter Wise?”

What followed was a string of comments, considerably more than any other post, by people in my class. They expressed sentiments similar to my own, such as sadness and regret, as well as their own memories about Pete, and even their stories of being bullied. If I was still teaching, I would print the entire thread and spend a day in class just talking about it.

I guess sometimes time just doesn’t heal all wounds.