The Tennis Player

Part 1
Chapter 1

Mr. Skinner’s class was always one I looked forward to. He was my favorite teacher by far. He tried to bring himself down to our level, which was a pretty low one as we were 9th graders and maturity was a word we wouldn‘t have to grapple with till next year. I’d heard upper-grade high-school teachers didn’t put up with much.

Of course, even with 14-year-olds, good teachers didn’t generally put up with shenanigans. They knew how to control a classroom just with their personalities. Mr. Skinner was one of those. Not a disciplinarian; he didn’t have to be. He had the ability to make us ashamed we were disappointing him. I can’t even describe how he did that, but he had us in his sway.

Mr. Skinner was empathetic. I knew that because he told us that at the beginning of the year. “Guys, I know there’s a lot going on in your lives right now. You’re in the process of, well on the way of, changing from little kids to little adults.”

He stopped, looked at us, and said, “Huh? Nothing? I’ve been throwing that line at classes for 40-some years, and it’s always gotten either a moan or some rolling eyes before. What’s wrong with you guys? Lighten up! Okay, I’ll try it again.”

He took a deep breath, eyed a few of us challengingly, then said, “You’re becoming little adults,” and he spread his arms, smiled and almost defied us not to laugh. He won; we laughed.

“That’s more like it. Look guys—and by ‘guys’ I mean both young men and young women—I was your age not long ago, and I haven’t forgotten how that was. You know I haven’t been teaching for 40 years. I’m nowhere near that age. I remember being one of you, and I want you to know, I have a great deal of empathy for you. Any problem you’re having that you’d like to share with someone, come to me. School problems, relationship problems, parents, other kids, grades, how ugly you are, whatever.”

He grinned again and pointed at me. Was he saying I was ugly? Me? I’m not the smartest kid in the school, not even in this class, but I could figure out pretty quickly he picked me because I wasn’t ugly, and he wanted to add humor to his speech. He made a point of making even sensitive and delicate subjects light. I did wonder if he somehow knew I wouldn’t get upset, that this slur would roll off my back. Something to think about.

“I might not be able to solve all your problems,” he continued, “but I can make suggestions, and I’ll always be on your side. Frequently that’s all you need: someone on your side.”

We found he was serious, even when he was grinning. He did want to help. Kids who were too shy to talk in class, he didn’t make them. Kids who had problems with taking tests—either from the standpoint of how much time they had or the pressure brought by other kids turning pages when they were still on the first page—he had them come in and take the tests with only him in the room and gave them all the time they needed. He told them he wanted to see what help they needed with the subject, not how they did under pressure with the clock inexorably clicking away.

By giving kids that needed it that latitude, he was making a point about being on our side and giving extra help to those who needed it.

Over the school year, he commiserated with a couple of boys who got dumped by their girlfriends and a couple of girls, too, just by talking to them. He was sincere about helping us, and we found out he liked us as individuals. He knew all our names within the first two days of the semester, and when he’d see us in the halls, he’d use them. His perpetual smile helped, too. It was so comforting having a teacher like that on the faculty.

He was a good teacher, too. He was sensitive about not embarrassing us, but sometimes in some assignments it was hard to avoid that. He seemed to recognize when that was happening and became careful. He tried to keep us all at ease.

But more than anything, and maybe more important than anything else, he inspired us. He brought so much life to his lessons, he was so animated and enthusiastic, that he made us want to learn. How many teachers do that? He did. It was a pleasure going into his class each day.

He wasn’t very old, probably in his early 30s. He was tall and very slender, and while he wasn’t a terribly attractive man, he made up for that with sparkling eyes and a subdued humor as he spoke to us. We were enamored. And we worked harder for him than any other teacher because we didn’t want to disappoint him.

Which brings me to what this is all about.

I’d better introduce myself. I’m Ronnie Murray. Irish descent. Lots of bright red hair, entirely uncombed or brushed, just a mess sitting high on my head. Made me look taller than I was. Some kids would get teased about how red their hair was. Kids get teased for any differences from the norm. Those who went into a shell from the teasing weren’t happy kids. I felt sorry for them. I didn’t have that problem. I was a pretty confident kid.

No sulking and hiding and studying the floor with my eyes; that wasn’t me. Not a bit. I was outgoing to the max. Friendly with everyone, not a shy bone in my body, and I was lucky enough to be pretty athletic. A lot of 14-year-olds are a little clumsy. New bodies, changing shape and size; losing coordination; losing baby fat; gaining muscle—there are lots of reasons why suddenly we aren’t as carefree, as happy-go-lucky as we’d been. I saw it happening all around me. The successful kids made fun of themselves when it happened. Some kids weren’t able to do that. Life for them was harder.

Somehow, I’d avoided that. Where other boys were tripping over their own feet now, I was becoming more coordinated, could run faster, and had no problem with any of the things we did in gym class. I played basketball and spent my time under the boards, giving as hard as I was getting, but joking about it, too. We did some gymnastics stuff, even wrestled. It sounds awfully braggy to say it, but it was kinda apparent that I was either near or at the top in everything we did. And teasing about the red hair? I followed my instincts: I laughed it off, and it stopped. I laughed along with the teasers, and to push it farther after that would have made the critics look bad.

My hair was red, but the rest of my face was unpimpled and attractive enough that girls insisted I sit at their table during lunch. I guess that meant I was popular. The thing is, a lot of popular kids at 14 aren’t sure how to handle it and become arrogant and overbearing. They act superior and do other obnoxious things because they can. They form cliques; they get unpleasant.

I didn’t do that. I was friendly, not superior. I tried to be nice to everyone. I didn’t understand why more kids weren’t like that. I was popular without the negatives. I hung with everyone. That was just how I was.

I was certainly one of the larger kids in our ninth grade. Not by a lot, but I was a bit taller, probably a bit heavier than the other boys. Bigger.

I was well into puberty. As most of us didn’t shower after gym, I didn’t really know about the other kids. Showers were optional, and kids these days were modest, a lot more than my dad said kids were back when he was one of them. Some of us showered, usually the older kids. I was thinking that I wanted to—and would. Maybe soon. If I did, I’d probably be teased about my bright red pubes, but that wouldn’t last long and wouldn’t be a problem for me. I’d ask why they were looking down there, and my tone of voice would depend on the nature of the teasing. Being large for my age brought benefits.

As I said, I was confident. Enough so that when we were all leaving Mr. Skinner’s room that first day, I stopped and waited till we were alone. I smiled at him and asked, “How’d you know I wouldn’t take offense at being called ugly?”

He smiled back. “Ronnie,”—damn, he already knew my name —“I like kids your age, and I don’t want to embarrass anyone. So, I get the files of all the kids I’m getting each year. I read them during the summer. I knew you’d laugh it off. I think you and I are going to get along great this year. I think we’re going to get to know each other pretty well. You’re going to be useful to me.”

I was going to ask him what he meant by that—it could have been creepy if I took it that way—but I needed to get to my next class and never got around to asking. He never became creepy.

Mr. Skinner had reasons for everything he did. I came to that conclusion early on. I spent a lot of time watching him. It was because of him that I wondered if I’d like to teach some day. He’d be a good role model if I did decide to go that way.

He grinned at us when he told us about our next assignment. “Some of you will be going to college. One thing college profs will assign—or TA’s; you know what those are? No? You will; you’ll probably get TA’s in the first year there—will be a research project. I want you to learn how to do one as it might be part of your college experience. Heck, you might even have an assignment like this next year in high school. So, I want you to learn how to do one. I’ll go into some detail of what I want, but first, just to make you uncomfortable—I love making you guys uncomfortable, taking you out of your safety zones, broadening your horizons—I’m going to give each of you a partner. Someone to work with. The paper you’ll end up writing will have both your names on it. You’ll work on it together.”

He stopped and picked up a piece of paper from his desk. “I’ve chosen the partnerships. I spent some time doing this. A few of you will want to change partners for whatever reasons 14-year-olds feel are important. This will be my response if you come to me to get reassigned: suck it up. These will be your partnerships, and that’s final. Okay, here we go.”

He read off the pairings. I knew these kids and was surprised at who he’d matched with whom, but I also thought I saw reasons for some of them, which made me think there were reasons for all of them. There were different reasons for some than others. I didn’t have time to figure them out as he was reading off the names.

Then he came to mine: “Gleason and Murray.”

Wow! Okay, this was going to be interesting. Clark Gleason was as much of a nonentity as there was in the class. He’d been with us since first grade. But no one knew him. And it wasn’t because he was standoffish or for any of the usual reasons that some kids just don’t fit in, don’t make friends, and are sort of left on the edges of our close-knit society.

Clark just didn’t make any attempt to get with us, and by third grade, everyone accepted that that was who he was. He didn’t want to be one of us, and so we allowed him that privacy. We didn’t understand it at all because even at our age we understood the need for social contacts, for friendship. It had been offered to him; he hadn’t responded. If someone spoke to him, he answered with as few words as possible. He wasn’t rude or arrogant. He just stayed entirely within himself.

We asked him why. Why not join us, have fun with us, not be so by himself? He shrugged and just gave us a wan sort of half-smile and didn’t answer.

And so, we eventually stopped trying.

Now he was 14 like the rest of us and still entirely alone. Even the teachers didn’t understand him. He did his assignments, answered questions when asked with as few words as possible, and when asked things that needed more than that, needed an extended vocal answer that was personal rather than academic, he just shook his head, looked the teacher in the eye and said, “I can’t answer that.” Then he sat down.

Clark was about the same physically as the rest of us. Decent-looking, maybe even better than decent in an off-beat sort of way. Good-looking, maybe, not cute but pleasant features, blondish-brown hair, dark eyes. He’d be even better looking if he ever smiled, I thought. He was almost as tall as I was but more slender. As he never joined us on the playground, I didn’t know if he was athletic or not, but I supposed he wasn’t. If he was, why not join us?

The teachers we’d had growing up mostly had learned not to call on him. Oh, early on, some thought their mission was to make him join in. He hadn’t. One, an eager first-year enthusiastic one, even gave him detention for not giving a speech she’d assigned him. Somehow, he didn’t serve the detention. We didn’t know how that worked, but the kids in detention said he didn’t show up, and that was all we ever knew. The eager teacher left him alone after that.

Now I was paired with him. I looked up at Mr. Skinner. He wasn’t looking at Clark. He was looking at me with very unreadable eyes. Then he called out the next partnership.

Okay, I found out what that blank look on Mr. Skinner’s face had been. He’d been challenging me! I learned that when I went up to speak to him after class. Rather than answer my question of ‘why me’, his eyes spoke to me, saying, “Ronnie, I dare you to get through to Clark. You can’t do it! If I can’t, then neither can you.”

My reaction: oh yeah?

With other teachers, I might have had a different reaction. With him, I was all in. He thought I couldn’t do it. I’d show him! Maybe no one else had gotten through to Clark in eight years, but I would. Even though I’d been one of the ones who’d failed before.

I just had to figure out how to approach this problem. There had to be a way.

I could get mad and yell at him and tell him I got all A’s, I was planning on doing so again, but if his name was on the report, he damn sure was going to put in the work, and we’d do it together!

Well, maybe I’d get angry at a last resort if necessary. That probably wouldn’t work, though, and in any case, that wasn’t me. It wasn’t the way I acted. Not the way I wanted to act, either.

So, something else. How about trying pity? “Damn, Clark, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this now. I can hardly get up in the morning. I’m feeling terrible grief right now. My dog, the one I’ve had since I was four—Billy Goat was his name; he was my best friend—just got hit by a car. I’m too shook up to work on this. I think you’re going to have to do most of the work, and I’ll help a little at the end if I can, if I’m not feeling like dying like I am now.”

That might not work because he might have seen me on the playground yesterday playing basketball and laughing when Jason got his pants yanked down as he was going up for a rebound. And I might have had a hand in the pantsing. Just maybe. I’m admitting nothing.

How about being aloof. “Hey, you don’t want to work with me? Well, hell, I don’t like you much, either. I’ll draw up a list of topics we can cover, then you pick half of them, and I’ll take the other half. You can pick first because I’m the better student and don’t need easy.”

That was just as uncomfortable for me as being mad. Thinking about these things, I realized I just wanted to be me. That was what I was good at. Play-acting? Not so much. And too, I realized that all these ways of getting him to engage with me on the project that I’d considered were based on problems that were mine. Not his. He didn’t need to do anything to help me solve my problems. I should be thinking of problems he might have that I could help him with. Maybe that was the answer.

Of course, I didn’t know him at all and if he had problems, how would I find out if he wouldn’t tell me?

I decided how to approach him, however. I’d just be me. That’s what I’d do and riff on that, if necessary. Hey, this was a school assignment, and he always handed those in along with everyone else. I had no idea how smart he was. He didn’t speak much at all in class, and teachers in our school never put large red grades on assignments they handed back so everyone knew what everyone else got. They put the mark somewhere on the paper where only the kid getting his graded paper back would see it.

So, how to approach him? Physically, that wasn’t going to be difficult. He ate in the cafeteria like all of us but sat alone at one of the small tables against the wall farthest from the door and serving line. He read a book and seemed oblivious to whatever else was going on.

What would I say to him after approaching? I decided that would depend on him.

Lunch time.

The cafeteria was raucous as usual. Any room full of 14- to 18-year-olds, many of them wanting to be the center of attention wherever they were, was bound to be cacophonous. This room was no exception.

I threw some of the mostly unappetizing glop they had for us onto a plate and carried the tray over to where he was sitting. Clark. Clark Gleason. He didn’t look up when I got there and stood next to the table.

I waited.

It would have been both rude and obnoxious for him not to acknowledge me, and he was neither as far as I knew. Maybe a bit antisocial, perhaps even on the autism spectrum for all I knew, but not expressly unfriendly or offensive.

He looked up at me. His eyes showed nothing. He didn’t speak.

“Hi, Clark. I won’t introduce myself; you know my name like I know yours. You heard my name called with yours today, so you know why I’m here. I won’t ask to sit down, but I will ask you a question. Are you willing to work with me on this research paper?”

I thought that was brilliant! Whatever he said, it would define what happened next, and it would be his decision.

I could read his eyes then. Usually, he showed nothing at all. Now, I could see something. I could only interpret it as looking torn. I didn’t understand that, but no one seemed to understand anything when it came to Clark. Maybe he was simply uncomfortable because I was practically forcing him to talk. But no, I didn’t read it like that. It seemed more than discomfort.

I waited.

NEXT CHAPTER