There are several things wrong with gym class being required for all students through their junior year and optional for high school seniors, and one of those things really bugged me was that most of us taking the classes were 14, 15, and 16; a few of us were younger and older.
That’s just wrong. There’s too big a difference between most 14-year-olds and most 16-year-olds, physically, and if you throw in those who are 13 and 17, or even 18 if they are seniors or retarded juniors, the differences are even greater. And that’s just the physical differences. There are mental differences, too, psychological ones I guess you’d call them. A lot of the younger kids are really still pretty much little children, really too young to be with the rest of us, the way they think, the way they react, while the older guys, like me, are mostly real mature, thinking and acting like men. That’s what we are now, in my opinion. It’s sort of a given, really. We say to each other, “Hey, man” and “later, man,” and stuff like that, confirming our status. And then, of course, it’s also true that some of us older ones aren’t mature at all, and some of us sure aren’t men, but I’m not talking about any of those.
Throw this mix together and there’s no telling what you’ll get. And outside during gym class, when we are all running around, and there were lots of us and only a couple of coaches, well . . . .
The coaches were up against it, trying to come up with activities where everyone could participate together at least somewhat equally, where the bigger guys wouldn’t hurt the small kids, even accidentally. Of course, the normal gym class games like basketball and football and softball were difficult in this regard. Even soccer. Older kids would thoroughly dominate young kids in those sports, and the younger kids stood a fair chance of getting obliterated if they got in someone’s way, and yelled at usually in very demeaning ways if they fucked up a game the older guys were trying to win. That wasn’t real good for the younger boys’ egos. Of course, most older guys tended to simply ignore the young ones, but if the young ones were anywhere nearby and were being ignored by the jock types who really cared if their side beat the other side in a silly gym class game, they’d often just get run over. The older guys wouldn’t necessarily be looking to hurt them; they just were paying about as much attention to them as they would a small speed bump in the road and would bounce over them with about the same lack of concern.
The coaches worried about that. They didn’t want anyone getting hurt in their classes, and had figured out that there were some things we could all do together where something other than age would decide the competitiveness of the activity. They’d found that activities which involved running and agility worked well. Some of the young kids were really fast and could dodge and juke like Border Collies. Some of the older guys were heavier and not real coordinated, and so even with longer legs and brick-shithouse physiques, they often weren’t any faster than the young kids.
So, we ran a lot. Besides just running laps or racing, which we often did, we also tended to engage in lots of other activities that involved running. The coaches were always trying to think up new ones, too, to keep things interesting.
◊ ◊
The assistant coach—he was really a gym teacher, but we called all our gym teachers, “coach”—blew his whistle and shouted, “Listen up, ladies.” That was supposed to be a joke, I guess, because our gym classes weren’t mixed-sex classes, and because he had a smile on his face when he said it. He was looking out at a group of about 100 of us, men and the young kids, too. I knew from him calling us that that the head coach wasn’t here right now. He didn’t like that kind of talk, and the assistant never would have called us that if the head coach was around to hear him.
“Listen up. We’re playing Duck Duck Goose today. We’re breaking up into eight groups.” We groaned our mandatory groan, but with a little more feeling than what we usually gave him. The coach got a little grin on his face; he knew how we’d all love this so much, thank you, and he was getting a kick out of it. Screw this! This was crap! None of us liked the idea of playing Duck Duck Goose, certainly not any of us older guys. He ignored the groans, still smiling, then went on to quickly form us into groups of 12 or 13 and had the groups spread out on the large grassy playing field behind the school, where we made circles of ourselves, circles that were far enough apart so no group would interfere with any other.
We all knew how to play, of course. Everyone’s played that game sometime or other, usually starting in kindergarten. We’d sometimes played it at our birthday parties when we were still little, and maybe even at Cub Scout meetings or during Sunday School youth-group activities.
None of us liked the idea of playing it in high school, though. It was a game for elementary or nursery school kids, not high school students, for cripes sake. But it was just the sort of thing this gym coach liked to come up with, because a young kid could play it as well or better than an older guy. The freshmen could jump up and run from a seated position on the ground quicker than we heavier, older guys, and running in a fairly tight circle back to where he’d begun and sitting back down was no harder for a young kid than it was for a man like me, and possibly even easier.
The coach made sure everyone understood how to play, appointed a goose to begin in each circle, then told us all to go ahead. Just before doing that, however, he also made it clear that if we didn’t participate fully, we’d be marked accordingly in his grading book. Everyone participating fully in everything we did was a real big deal here. I’d heard the head coach say, and say more than once, “You get out of an activity exactly the amount you put into it.”
Now I’ve got to make it clear that it was really humiliating for me to be playing this. Duck Duck Goose, for crying out loud! I was a junior, and I was 16, going on 17, and most of us in the circle were 15 and 14, with a few who looked 13 thrown in. I felt a little silly, sitting on the grass with my legs crossed, my head sticking up higher than the younger kids, waiting for someone to tap my head, thinking how silly I’d look if they said, “Goose!” and started running and I had to jump up and chase them, and what if I couldn’t catch them? They’d sit down in their place in the circle with a big smile, maybe a smug smile, on their face while I was still chasing them, and then they’d giggle. And after that, I just knew how silly I’d look walking around the circle myself, tapping everyone on the head saying, “Duck, Duck, Duck,” for crying out loud, and then saying, “Goose!” and running like a scared rabbit, being chased by maybe a 14-year-old kid while everyone was laughing. Probably mostly laughing at me, running away from some shrimp like I was afraid of the guy, someone I could pound into the dirt using only my left hand if I cared to.
And what if he caught me?
So I wasn’t real happy doing this to start with. And then there was another problem.
There was this kid. Ever since gym class had started a month ago, there was this one kid that, well, there was this one kid. I guessed he was probably 14, but he could have been younger. He was real small. But you couldn’t help but notice him because he had an attitude and a mouth on him. He didn’t seem to realize how small he was, how fragile he looked, what a little boy he was, because he acted like he was just as good as the rest of us, when you could clearly see he wasn’t. Come on, now! I mean, I’m getting to be almost six feet tall, give or take a few inches, and I weigh over 140. You know, a big guy, and I see myself as pretty much a man already. He must have been just over five feet tall, only a couple inches over at the most, and I don’t think he could’ve weighed more than 100 pounds, and maybe even less. He should have known he was a midget, but he sure never acted like he did.
This kid was really feisty. I was surprised he’d lasted this long, that someone in middle school hadn’t pounded him, maybe killed him, or at least rearranged his face for him so he’d know how to act properly around his elders. He just didn’t seem to realize he was a little kid. I remember the first time I saw him at our school. I’d never seen him before, but then, there he was. It was during lunch, and some of the seniors were sort of putting some of the younger kids in their places, just for fun, you know? I think they thought they were supposed to do that, the way they acted. We have a big open area that’s formed by the classroom buildings being built as they are, spread out, leaving this space in the middle. That space had lots of cement sidewalks and some trees and lots of tables where we ate lunch, this being Southern California where the weather is perfect for eating lunch outside about 98% of the time.
Ralph Wensted, who’s something of an asshole—and no one would object if you left out the ‘something of’ when describing him—but a big senior you didn’t mess with if you could help it, was giving some of the littler kids some grief, and I my eyes just happened to be on the kid when this happened; you’re eyes just have a mind of their own, you know? Ralph saw this kid I’m talking about sitting at a table eating his lunch and walked up to him. Ralph said a few things I couldn’t hear to the kid, then reached down, grabbed the carton of milk off this kid’s tray, and drank it.
Now this kind of thing happens, and the kid whose milk has been stolen always just looks mad or sad, sometimes doesn’t even look up to meet the big guy’s eyes and simply pretends nothing is happening, but no one ever does anything about it; the bigger guy will laugh, maybe toss the milk carton back in the kid’s face if he’s a real prick, and walk away. Except this time, this kid, the little feisty one who didn’t know his place, jumped out of his seat, his hands in fists, and Ralph looked startled, not expecting some kid a foot shorter than him and easily a hundred pounds lighter to challenge him. The kid didn’t just stand there, either. He stepped forward and took a swing at Ralph.
He missed because Ralph took a quick step back. Then, with the kid still a little off balance from throwing a punch, Ralph grabbed him. I could tell from the look on Ralph’s face, now that he had him, he didn’t know what to do next. The kid was shouting and wiggling and Ralph knew he couldn’t hit him, which I’m sure is what he’d have loved to do. But the kid was a shrimp, Ralph was a big senior, and he couldn’t hit him. Even pushing or tossing him down onto the ground would have been serious trouble for him. People in our school get expelled if they do stuff like that with the new rules that had come out.
I have to give Ralph credit for what he came up with. I mean, I don’t like the guy at all, he’s got this asshole business down to a science, but he figured out what to do real fast, and it was clever. He pinned the kid’s arms with one of his own arms, then used the free hand to yank the kid’s tee shirt up so it enveloped his arms and head, stopping him from attacking Ralph at all. Ralph then reached down and pinched one of his nipples, and the kid let out a shriek. Ralph laughed and turned and simply walked away. By the time the kid had freed himself from his shirt, Ralph was gone. The kid had tears in his eyes, and I never did know if it was from anger or humiliation or pain from the pinch. Getting your nipple pinched really hurts.
Anyway, that’s the kid I’m talking about. He had a mouth on him, and an attitude, and it was sort of funny, but if you were a man like I was, you didn’t want him around you too much because if he started mouthing off at you, what were you supposed to do? I wasn’t sure, so I was just happy he was in some year below me, probably a freshman, and I didn’t have anything to do with him. Except, in gym. Because he was in that class with me.
He had blond hair and I suppose if you thought like that, you’d say he was cute, but I didn’t think like that so I didn’t notice anything about that at all, but if you looked closely, you might think his face was kinda good looking. What I did notice, what I couldn’t help noticing, was that in gym, he seemed to be looking at me all the time. Why would he do that? I didn’t like it, and didn’t want anyone else to see it. What would they think, for cripes sake! I started frowning at him when I realized he was doing that after I caught him at it the third or fourth time, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to him. He kept staring me, and when we were running, or doing stretching exercises or gymnastics or something like that, I’d look around and there he’d be, hanging pretty close to me. Looking at me.
I had no idea what all this meant, but it seemed clear to me something was going on. It wasn’t my imagination that he was always close to me, that he was always looking at me. I’d stop running for a moment to lean down and tie my shoe, and there’d he’d be, leaning down to tie his own shoe, but watching me at the same time. I’d get back on the track and finish my laps, and at the end, he’d be three steps behind me.
The only place he didn’t seem to be glued to me was in the locker room. We had ten minutes to shower and change back into our school clothes at the end of the period. We were all supposed to shower, but the coaches only came into the locker room if there was a commotion of some kind, so a lot of kids, especially the younger ones, didn’t shower at all. They just wiped themselves off with a towel, put on some deodorant and got dressed. The locker room when we were getting dressed sometimes smelled so heavily of perfumed deodorant that it was hard to breathe. We older guys for the most part showered before we used our deodorant.
The first time I’d noticed this kid watching me, and realized he’d been doing it all the time, and hanging around me, too, well, that day I first noticed, I looked for him when I was undressing for my shower. I kept glancing around, wondering if he was going to be watching me in the shower, too, and feeling a little strange about that. I hadn’t felt like that about being naked around the other guys for a over a year now, but something about him looking at me, I don’t know what it was, but it was a funny feeling, walking naked to the shower, thinking about him maybe watching me. I looked for him, but he didn’t seem to be around.
That first day, I hadn’t seen him again after we’d reached the locker room, and it wasn’t until the next day when we were all dressed out again that he appeared. Then, there he was. Standing almost next to me. His eyes looking in my direction, every time I glanced his way. And that was a problem, too. His eyes. When he’d look at me, usually he’d have a blank expression. Sometimes a sort of grin, but usually he was pretty expressionless. But his eyes were always alive. If eyes could grin, then his eyes were grinning at me, almost challenging me. There was this mischievous twinkle in them. I had no idea at all what that meant, just like so much other stuff with him. But it was there.
After a couple days of this, I did just what you’d expect me to do. We were stretching, and for once, he wasn’t several feet away from me. No, this time, he was right next to me. I looked at him, stared at him in fact, and when he looked at me, I held his eyes. He didn’t look away, just returned my look with not much of any expression on his face. So, I did just what you’d expect me to do in this situation. Just what you’d do.
“Hey, kid, how come you’re always looking at me?” I said it with just the proper note in my voice, a little menace in it, using a little bit of a dangerous-and-muscular-junior-talking-to-an-insignificant-and pipsqueaky-freshman tone of voice. I even lowered the pitch of my voice some for effect.
“Huh? Me? I’m not.” Very innocent sounding, but not a bit surprised. And not a bit taken aback, either. He should have been surprised, shouldn’t he, if he didn’t know what I was talking about? And he should have been a little scared. He wasn’t.
And he didn’t look away, either. He was still looking into my eyes, as I was looking into his. He was a little shrimp of a kid. I don’t know how he could look at me like that. I’d have been scared to death, intimidated as all get out, had our roles been reversed.
He didn’t say it softly, either. This kid sure wasn’t bashful. I wasn’t about to take any of his shit, however.
“Kid, don’t try to bullshit me. Every time I look over at you, you’re watching me. Cut it out.”
“Huh? Did you say, ‘Every time you look at me?’ That means you must look over at me a lot, doesn’t it? So who’s looking at whom here, anyway? If you’re looking at me, you’re the one with a problem. Maybe you’d better cut it out. I don’t need you staring at me all the time. That’s kind of embarrassing.” His voice was almost angry, but his eyes were flashing. Though he didn’t sound it, I knew he was having fun, fun at my expense.
I didn’t know what to say! I sure wasn’t expecting anything like that from him. I just looked at him for a second, not believing my ears. Even if he was playing around, which I wasn’t absolutely sure of, this skinny little freshman was talking back to me, almost like we were equals? And anyone could hear him. What the fuck?!
“Kid, don’t give me that. Look where you are right now, stretching here right next to me. You should be over hanging with the little guys your age and size, not over here with the men. You’re right near me all the time. I just happen to look your way, just happen to, and you’re staring at me. All the time! I don’t like. Cut it out. You hear me?” I ramped up the menace in my voice, and made my glower pretty fierce. Not too fierce, I didn’t want him to start crying, but I made it so he’d see I meant business. No doubt about that.
“Since when do you own this field? I can stretch anywhere I want to. And what do you mean, ‘Here with the men?’ I don’t see any men here. Just us two boys talking. But right now, I’ve got to go run. I can’t stand here chatting with you all day, even if you’d like me to. And just so you know, my name isn’t ‘kid.’ My name is Kevin.” He said it rather fiercely, but that twinkle was in his eye. After saying it, he jumped up and started jogging on the track.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation, but I’d told him. Maybe that was just false bravado coming from him, him not wanting to lose face in front of one of his betters and all. I was pretty sure that’s what it was. I’d said my piece, and I’d sent him packing. I was sure he’d got the message. That was for damn sure.
We had to run three miles on the track that day. Twelve times around. I was about to start when it occurred to me I’d better try to locate the kid, just in case he really hadn’t understood and was going to try to run next to me or something like that. I didn’t trust him at all. I looked out on the track and finally located him. He was hard to see, mixed up in the pack, because he was so short. But I found him, then waited till he was on the other side of the track from me before I started running. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about him at all.
So I began my 12 laps, and by the time I was on my fourth, the kid was running next to me. I glared at him. He looked back at me expressionlessly. I sped up a little, knowing that with his shorter legs, he couldn’t keep up. He did, however. If I sped up, or slowed down, he just kept very comfortably on my shoulder.
I kept looking over at him. By now I didn’t have enough breath to yell at him or even talk to him, but I could glare at him, and I really did.
What pissed me off, then, was that when he’d look back, he still had a blank face, but his eyes were really sparkling. He was enjoying this, and his eyes made that very clear. They were a very dark color, blue or blue green or something; they were so dark it was hard to really say what color they were. But they had a glitter to them that showed me he was pleased with himself. The fucker.
So every day at gym, this kind of shit continued. What was I to do? He was a little kid. I couldn’t beat up a little kid, and telling him to stop sure hadn’t worked. I was pissed at him and all, but a little part of me, I guess, was flattered. I think I might even have liked it a little, if I’m being brutally honest. But, no, that isn’t right. I didn’t like any of this at all. But, well, I don’t know, really, because one day he wasn’t there, and I sort of missed him. Which was stupid of me because I didn’t like the kid at all.
Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, we were playing Duck Duck Goose. And as bad as that was, it was suddenly worse because the coach stuck this Kevin kid in my group. He probably did that because Kevin was standing right next to me when the coach was separating us into groups.
Our group walked to an open space on the field and sat down in a circle, and there was Kevin, sitting right next to me. It was bothering me a little because by now I was afraid people might have started to notice him around me so much, and I didn’t want that. Not at all. And here he was again. It had to look funny to everyone: me, this big, tall, mature guy, then him, a little shrimpy kid, us sitting next to each other. I wanted to tell him to move, but knew how much good that would do, and to be seen arguing with a nerdy dweeb who had a big mouth on him wouldn’t help me at all.
So I was an unhappy, somewhat nervous camper, sitting there playing Duck Duck Goose, watching the game progress and hoping no one would tap me and so I could just sit there until it was time to shower. Then the kid, Kevin, got tapped. He jumped up and chased the Goose around the ring. It didn’t look to me like he was trying very hard, because I knew Kevin could run fast when he wanted to, I’d seen him, and the kid he was chasing was sort of uncoordinated and clumsy, but Kevin didn’t catch him.
Then it was Kevin’s turn, and he began walking around, tapping everyone and saying, “Duck, Duck,” and moving past each one and I knew, I just knew what was coming next, and my mood, which was already pretty sour, got even worse, first for the humiliation of having to play Duck Duck Goose, then for having Kevin in my group and all. Here he came, closer and closer, and I was ready for it, and I was angry because I knew I was going to look stupid chasing him and I probably wouldn’t even be able to catch him. Then suddenly I felt a tap on my head and heard him say, “Goose!” in a laughing, challenging sort of voice and he was running and I was trying to jump up and I did and I was after him.
Now I’m a pretty fast runner, and being pissed and all was sort of helping that. I was catching up with him, somewhat to my surprise, but I was. You might think that would make me happy, and maybe improve my mood, but it didn’t; this was all happening too quickly for that. I was catching up, and then I was there, and instead of just tagging him like I was supposed to do, I tagged him sort of hard, and it sort of turned into a shove.
He was running fast, sort of frantic instead of playfully like before. He’d sped up just as I was catching up to him; he’d known I was on him; at that point he’d been trying his best to stay away from me, acting a little panicked, but still laughing, and that shove, from a guy that was considerably bigger, just knocked him off his feet. He went flying through the air and slammed down into the grass, and just lay there.
As soon as I did it, even before he hit the ground, I knew I’d screwed up badly. I felt awful. What was the matter with me, anyway? What was I thinking? I hoped I hadn’t hurt him. But man, he’d gone down hard.
I knelt down next to him. Other kids were gathering around, and then the coach was there. Kevin was starting to move a little. The coach got down on the ground and said to him, “Are you okay? Are you hurt? What hurts?”
Kevin didn’t reply, but started to pull his legs in to his stomach a little. Then I heard a whimper. I heard that, and I felt like someone had shoved a knife into my gut.
Kevin rolled over onto his side and just lay there like that, all huddled together. I could see tears in the eye that wasn’t down against the grass. That made me feel like dog shit. What did I do to this kid? He was just a little guy.
Kevin sort of picked up his head a little and looked around at everyone hovering over him, then used the inside of his elbow to wipe his eyes. He had to be embarrassed, almost crying in school. You don’t do that if you can possibly help it. If you break your leg, you still don’t cry. Not if other kids are around.
The coach helped him roll carefully onto his back, still on the ground. The side of his face where he landed was all red and a little scuffed. He put his fingers on it tentatively, very gently, and winced. The coach asked him if he could sit up, and Kevin nodded, and then the coach helped pull him up by his shoulders. Kevin immediately grabbed his left wrist, then supported it with his right hand, sort of cradling it. The coach was still on the ground with him, one arm behind him, steadying him as he sat there. Kevin was looking around, and he saw me.
His eyes weren’t sparkling. The only thing they showed was pain. He stared at me, I could see the pain, but there wasn’t anything else there. The coach told us all to get back to the game, and the other kids did that. I just stood there, watching Kevin, who was still looking at me, looking at me without any sparkle in his eyes.
The coach finally got him to stand up, then began slowly walking with him back toward the locker room. I watched, then hurried after them. When I reached them, I said to Kevin, “Kevin, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I’m really sorry.”
He looked back at me and didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “Stay away from me. You’re not who I thought you were.” Then he resumed walking.
I just stood there, watching him walk away. It was the strangest thing: I felt like crying.
Finally the whistle blew for us to go shower and change. I was just tying my shoes after dressing when I heard the head coach shout, “Tucker, my office, now.”
All the kids were like, “Ewwwwww!” and acting all pretend scared. Except me. I had different feelings. Because, unfortunately, I’m Tucker.