on tiptoe for an hour with my nose pressed against a wad of gum I’d been chewing—though I’ve never liked gum and chewed it only because it was forbidden—the punishments didn’t bother me much. They were just the cost of doing business. I stopped my stunts because, as we got a little older, the other kids stopped laughing. What used to be funny no longer was. I was moving in their minds from “odd guy” to something approaching “jerk.” I wanted to stop before I got there.
At least one teacher thought I had already gone to “jerk” and beyond. In the fifth grade, playing kickball at recess, I caught a popup and hurled the big rubber ball toward a tall girl named Michelle,who had edged off first base. My throw caught her flush on the side of her head, knocking her glasses off. Her face looked naked without her glasses, and she seemed nearly featureless.
Double play! Game over! I was thrilled. It was just like the miracle endings I’d read about in sports novels, where the no-talent kid suddenly leads the Hogansville Cougars to the state championship of an unspecified state. So I was dumbstruck when Mrs. Thompkins dashed across the asphalt, grabbed me by my upper arm, and shouted into my face that I was a vicious little brat and she was going to keep me after school and call my mother. I was in more trouble than I’d ever dreamed of. She’d see to that.
It was against the rules, she said, to aim the kickball at someone’s head. I’d done it deliberately. I was just mean .
That rule was news to me (and to everyone else, I believe). I was astonished at the accusation and flattered that she thought I was athletic enough to drill the ball from third base and hit a moving human head on purpose. I wished I were that good. I’d been aiming vaguely at a spot between her and first base, and had simply thrown the ball as hard and high as I could to get it there. I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even think to defend myself, and it took me another moment or two to understand that her accusation wasn’t even the main point. This mishap was her excuse to punish me for screaming in class, rolling on the floor, throwing my book.
I was shocked to realize she didn’t like me. I was a kid . Adults weren’t allowed to dislike kids. None of the stupid stunts I’d pulled in class had anything to do with her. She was just there—an authority figure, a role not a person, a face I could throw myself at as if I were a cream pie in a Three Stooges movie. It never crossed my mind that what I did in class could ruffle her. We were both diminished by this new understanding. I was distressed to realize that the next time I did something stupid for a laugh that I wouldn’t just be exploiting the role she played but also hurting a fellow humanbeing. I saw myself as at worst mischievous but still innocent. My teacher, and maybe others—the principal, my classmates—saw me as a brat, a creep: someone who enjoyed being aggravating. For many days afterward, I lay on my bed after school and studied the overhead light, troubled by the difference between how I saw myself and how others perceived me.
Some military brats react to perpetual dislocation by becoming socially adept, at ease with new situations and new people. I was not of their company. I was one of the ones who withdrew into themselves as my family moved from Fort Hood, Texas, where I was born, to New Mexico, England, Ohio, North Carolina, California, France, and Alabama. Always being the new guy, the person learning the new rules and the new pecking order, wore me out.
After my father was transferred from North Carolina to San Bernardino, California, my family lived off base, “on the economy,” as the military said, and I was suddenly attending Del Rosa Elementary with kids who mocked my southern accent, especially the over-enunciated way I’d been taught to say “the” with a biblical long e sound, like thee , while they used the casual and, I thought,
At least one teacher thought I had already gone to “jerk” and beyond. In the fifth grade, playing kickball at recess, I caught a popup and hurled the big rubber ball toward a tall girl named Michelle,who had edged off first base. My throw caught her flush on the side of her head, knocking her glasses off. Her face looked naked without her glasses, and she seemed nearly featureless.
Double play! Game over! I was thrilled. It was just like the miracle endings I’d read about in sports novels, where the no-talent kid suddenly leads the Hogansville Cougars to the state championship of an unspecified state. So I was dumbstruck when Mrs. Thompkins dashed across the asphalt, grabbed me by my upper arm, and shouted into my face that I was a vicious little brat and she was going to keep me after school and call my mother. I was in more trouble than I’d ever dreamed of. She’d see to that.
It was against the rules, she said, to aim the kickball at someone’s head. I’d done it deliberately. I was just mean .
That rule was news to me (and to everyone else, I believe). I was astonished at the accusation and flattered that she thought I was athletic enough to drill the ball from third base and hit a moving human head on purpose. I wished I were that good. I’d been aiming vaguely at a spot between her and first base, and had simply thrown the ball as hard and high as I could to get it there. I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even think to defend myself, and it took me another moment or two to understand that her accusation wasn’t even the main point. This mishap was her excuse to punish me for screaming in class, rolling on the floor, throwing my book.
I was shocked to realize she didn’t like me. I was a kid . Adults weren’t allowed to dislike kids. None of the stupid stunts I’d pulled in class had anything to do with her. She was just there—an authority figure, a role not a person, a face I could throw myself at as if I were a cream pie in a Three Stooges movie. It never crossed my mind that what I did in class could ruffle her. We were both diminished by this new understanding. I was distressed to realize that the next time I did something stupid for a laugh that I wouldn’t just be exploiting the role she played but also hurting a fellow humanbeing. I saw myself as at worst mischievous but still innocent. My teacher, and maybe others—the principal, my classmates—saw me as a brat, a creep: someone who enjoyed being aggravating. For many days afterward, I lay on my bed after school and studied the overhead light, troubled by the difference between how I saw myself and how others perceived me.
Some military brats react to perpetual dislocation by becoming socially adept, at ease with new situations and new people. I was not of their company. I was one of the ones who withdrew into themselves as my family moved from Fort Hood, Texas, where I was born, to New Mexico, England, Ohio, North Carolina, California, France, and Alabama. Always being the new guy, the person learning the new rules and the new pecking order, wore me out.
After my father was transferred from North Carolina to San Bernardino, California, my family lived off base, “on the economy,” as the military said, and I was suddenly attending Del Rosa Elementary with kids who mocked my southern accent, especially the over-enunciated way I’d been taught to say “the” with a biblical long e sound, like thee , while they used the casual and, I thought,
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