Fun with Rick and Jane.
Nov. 4th, 2012 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI don't spend a lot of my time back in my distant past. I've assiduously avoided every one of my school reunions; have kept mostly away from the classmates-and-such-dot-coms of the world (although I did just get a class action settlement check for just under $4.00 for their attempt to scam me into thinking I had friends looking for me); and I spend far more time with friends of today, be they near or far away, than I do with old newspaper colleagues or church youth group peeps.
Facebook causes most of the exceptions. As I connected with a couple of long-time, all-the-time friends there, I saw others I remembered, and they me, and I'm perhaps now in vague touch with a few dozen. There are also the groups- one community, one elementary, and one high school- which I check maybe once a week, mostly for pictures of long-gone people or icons of places and events in that time of my life. This past week, I've been checking more often, because of the far worse damage down there done by Sandy. This one picture, for instance, made it all more real to me than any hanging crane or high water-line building:
That's the Ocean Parkway, which runs out east from Jones Beach very close to Long Island's literal south shore. It's where my father took me to do my practice expressway-style driving in high school; other such roads were closer, but this one was (a) a straight, level grade and (b) virtually free of traffic outside of high season. Seeing what nature did to that told the tale for me as viscerally as any image could.
I saw that in the "East Meadow" community group last night. This morning, the "high school" group brought an image even more visceral. I won't share it, and will change the names to "Rick and Jane," but neither picture nor names are needed.
----
Rick and Jane were kids in our small Methodist church. He was my age; she, a year younger. They went to a different elementary school, but I knew, especially, him well enough from however many times a week we met in the house of God. Definitely Sunday School, maybe scouting or choir.
There's no nice way to put it; Rick was a bully. And I, at least one of his bull-ees. I was shy, and bad at sports, and though he couldn't know me as a geek from schoolwork, he must have had that bull-dar that I'm sure registered it. I don't remember how often, but I remember one moment vividly. I can almost recall the exact spot- somewhere near the Fellowship Hall stairway- where, for maybe the only time in my life, I fought back. It wasn't much, and it might not have been legal, but I can't recall him ever bothering me again.
Jane had her own way of messing with my head. Since we didn't go to the same school until junior high, and she not until a year after I got there, I had much less contact with her, other than recognizing her and knowing she was Rick's sister. One of the first days of eighth grade, I took my usual one-block walk to the school, and there she was, at the schoolyard fence, all of 13. Smoking with her friends, and looking entirely un-spiritual.
I was so naive back then, it came as a shock that someone I knew from church(!) could be that ungodly. (Officially, we were told not to smoke- at least not until we were 16 or so- although the ciggie companies were marketing right into our faces.) I never said anything about it to her, and maybe not to anyone else, but it left a mark that raised my own radar- this one for hypocrisy- to a new, and very adult, level.
----
I think Rick was in my confirmation class, but I can't confirm that. Neither he nor Jane were in any of my classes or other connections, and in time, they just disappeared. (Jane, at least, moved to another state by the time of her graduation a year after mine). She still considers East Meadow as her home town, though, and that led to her posting a snapshot of her brother and some other alums on the high school Facebook page this morning.
Along with this offhand note: Rick died in 2000.
No word of how, or why, but my emotions about it are total Mixmaster right now. A big part of me wants to mourn and forgive, yet I'm hearing the soundtrack of "Schadenfreude" and wondering if he met a bad end from his bullyish beginning.
Jane, best as I can tell, has done better. Still in the state they moved to, seems to be happily married, perhaps even more politically progressive than I am. I certainly have nothing to forgive her for, but I don't think I'll take the opportunity to say anything about any of this to her, not knowing enough of those why's and how's to risk triggering anything.
I will, however, tell it all here. And maybe, the next time I'm bullied in some less physicial sense (be it by judges or overzealous litigators or faceless emissaries of Big Corporate America), I'll just remember Rick and know that, all these years later, I'm the one that's still standing.
Facebook causes most of the exceptions. As I connected with a couple of long-time, all-the-time friends there, I saw others I remembered, and they me, and I'm perhaps now in vague touch with a few dozen. There are also the groups- one community, one elementary, and one high school- which I check maybe once a week, mostly for pictures of long-gone people or icons of places and events in that time of my life. This past week, I've been checking more often, because of the far worse damage down there done by Sandy. This one picture, for instance, made it all more real to me than any hanging crane or high water-line building:
That's the Ocean Parkway, which runs out east from Jones Beach very close to Long Island's literal south shore. It's where my father took me to do my practice expressway-style driving in high school; other such roads were closer, but this one was (a) a straight, level grade and (b) virtually free of traffic outside of high season. Seeing what nature did to that told the tale for me as viscerally as any image could.
I saw that in the "East Meadow" community group last night. This morning, the "high school" group brought an image even more visceral. I won't share it, and will change the names to "Rick and Jane," but neither picture nor names are needed.
----
Rick and Jane were kids in our small Methodist church. He was my age; she, a year younger. They went to a different elementary school, but I knew, especially, him well enough from however many times a week we met in the house of God. Definitely Sunday School, maybe scouting or choir.
There's no nice way to put it; Rick was a bully. And I, at least one of his bull-ees. I was shy, and bad at sports, and though he couldn't know me as a geek from schoolwork, he must have had that bull-dar that I'm sure registered it. I don't remember how often, but I remember one moment vividly. I can almost recall the exact spot- somewhere near the Fellowship Hall stairway- where, for maybe the only time in my life, I fought back. It wasn't much, and it might not have been legal, but I can't recall him ever bothering me again.
Jane had her own way of messing with my head. Since we didn't go to the same school until junior high, and she not until a year after I got there, I had much less contact with her, other than recognizing her and knowing she was Rick's sister. One of the first days of eighth grade, I took my usual one-block walk to the school, and there she was, at the schoolyard fence, all of 13. Smoking with her friends, and looking entirely un-spiritual.
I was so naive back then, it came as a shock that someone I knew from church(!) could be that ungodly. (Officially, we were told not to smoke- at least not until we were 16 or so- although the ciggie companies were marketing right into our faces.) I never said anything about it to her, and maybe not to anyone else, but it left a mark that raised my own radar- this one for hypocrisy- to a new, and very adult, level.
----
I think Rick was in my confirmation class, but I can't confirm that. Neither he nor Jane were in any of my classes or other connections, and in time, they just disappeared. (Jane, at least, moved to another state by the time of her graduation a year after mine). She still considers East Meadow as her home town, though, and that led to her posting a snapshot of her brother and some other alums on the high school Facebook page this morning.
Along with this offhand note: Rick died in 2000.
No word of how, or why, but my emotions about it are total Mixmaster right now. A big part of me wants to mourn and forgive, yet I'm hearing the soundtrack of "Schadenfreude" and wondering if he met a bad end from his bullyish beginning.
Jane, best as I can tell, has done better. Still in the state they moved to, seems to be happily married, perhaps even more politically progressive than I am. I certainly have nothing to forgive her for, but I don't think I'll take the opportunity to say anything about any of this to her, not knowing enough of those why's and how's to risk triggering anything.
I will, however, tell it all here. And maybe, the next time I'm bullied in some less physicial sense (be it by judges or overzealous litigators or faceless emissaries of Big Corporate America), I'll just remember Rick and know that, all these years later, I'm the one that's still standing.