Cowardice

In this month of introspection, I am also revisiting some of my past sins - things that still bother me, things that will never let me be.  I suppose a third person might say they are not terrible, but I would disagree.  I have such a capacity to hurt others, and I haven't always kept it at bay.  There are several, but one has been visiting me more often lately, the day some thirty-five years ago when I hit Dan H. in the face. 

Dan was an awkward kid, and I am not sure he had many friends.  He tried a little too hard sometimes to fit in, and i don't think he was very successful.  I did not hate Dan, nor did I dislike him, but I hit him one day, and I don't think I will forgive myself

We were at the local bowling alley for our gym class the day it happened.  Every week we would load up in a bus and make the one-eighth mile trip to the bowling alley.  Once there, we were loud and raucous, no intention of becoming better bowlers.  We had adolescent fun, seeing how far we could throw the balls in the air down the alley, or how many lanes we could cross with one ball, even trying to hit a sign eight feet in the air halfway down the alley, with sixteen pound balls.  I am not sure why were never exiled from the place.

I was with a few friends that day, exercising new parameters of my stupidity when Dan must have said something to me I didn't like.  Left alone, I probably would have ignored it, or retorted in some equally crude manner.  But on this day, my associates didn't let me leave it alone.  They chided and goaded me to retaliate, not to take that kind of abuse from an oddball like him. I resisted their campaign for the moment, but the malice had been placed in my mind.  We finished our games and eventually went out to the bus.  I lagged behind and waited for Dan to get on the bus and into his seat.  My friends must have seen the look on my face, as they followed me slowly, a few feet behind.  As I made my way up the stairs, I still had no plan, but I knew I would do something, and I would do it soon.  When I got within a few feet of his seat, I heard a voice from behind me saying "hit him, hit him."  And I did, right in the face.   

I stood there for what seemed to be minutes staring at him.  I had hit him very hard, and when he brought his head back to look at me, there were tears in his eyes.  I felt like I had witnessed the assault instead of perpetrating it.  We were both lost, until a voice across the seat broke the silence.  It was a the voice of a man who I have come to detest, it was the voice of one of my football coaches tagging along to chaperone us.  He had come to be everything I would not want to be as  a teacher.  He didn't care about any of us,  was petty and cruel, and he rarely taught anything.  The fact that he was the one who admonished me that day make the whole affair more shameful. He saw me hit Dan, smiled his awful smile, then cautioned me in his terrible, sarcastic tone, "sit down Morsches, before he hits you back."  I knew then how despicable my deed was. 

I don't think about the physical pain I inflicted that day, or the fact that I had frightened him.  I think about how I humiliated him, when all he wanted to do was be accepted.  It was a horrible, horrible thing to do.  I had bad moments in high school, often thought I didn't connect as I should, but I had other things, other good things.  By in large my friends were very decent people, I had a good athletic career, and I never had to try to impress anyone to be accepted.  I gave Dan his moment though, and I don't know if he ever accrued the kind of attention he desired. For one moment, I was everything I detest in the world, everything I have fought since.  I was the bully, the ugliness that destroys young lives.

I looked for Dan in the intervening years, especially at reunions.  I wanted to apologize, to tell him what a coward I had been. Now I appreciate the folly in this quest, the absurd notion that Dan would want to come back to a reunion.  And I know why.