I rode my bike to the park, wondering what I was doing. I’d worked so hard for so long to stay apart from everyone. Now, just because Terry Kauffman asked me to, here I was riding to the park to meet him. It was nuts. Yet, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to meet him. I guess I wanted to get on with my life. Being alone all the time sucks. It sucks big time. Trying to live in your head eventually doesn’t work. I guess I had become fed up with it. I was ready for something different.
The park was really pretty, but it was a park and so kids my age didn’t hang there much. It wasn’t a mall, it didn’t serve food, it didn’t have a movie theater or an arcade or other teenagers and it was outside. But I liked it a lot. Hanging with other kids wasn’t something I did, so I knew this park well because that’s where I spent a lot of my time. The bridge was ancient, a picturesque structure of stone that crossed a slowly meandering creek which ran through several acres of woods. The wooded area comprised the rear portion of the park.
There were actually three bridges that crossed the creek in various locations as it flowed through the woods and then through part of the park as well, ending in a small lake. But when someone said, “the bridge,” everyone knew it was the stone bridge. It was sort of a landmark. It was built of large native stones mortared together and had the classic arched shape. Because it was usually shaded by large trees, it had lots of moss covering its lower parts. The combination of the nearby woods, the shade, the slowly moving creek and the moss-covered, appealing stone bridge made the area surrounding the bridge very popular.
Random benches had been installed so people could sit and just soak up the pleasant environment, and they were put to good use by the older people and mothers with babies and/or toddlers—the people who most visited the park most often.
There was a paved path leading to and across the bridge that became a gravel path where it entered the woods. I rode my bike to the bridge, then dismounted and walked it across the lawn to one of the nearby benches. It was that time between late afternoon and early evening and the weather was warm. The air had the feeling of late summer. The park, as far as I could see, was deserted. Other than bird songs and chirps and the scuttling of squirrels and maybe other small animals, the soft gurgling of the creek was the only sound that broke the silence; the bridge was far enough from the city streets that no traffic sounds reached where I was.
The day had been warm and the beginning of twilight had not yet been accompanied by a drop in temperature. I was wearing shorts and a polo shirt. No jacket. Riding here had warmed me so that I was sweating lightly. I propped my bike against the back of a bench and sat down. I’d taken my time riding; it was 21 minutes since I’d been on the phone with Terry.
I didn’t have to wait long. Within a couple of minutes, I could see someone on a bike coming up the path, and it quickly resolved into Terry. He was dressed much as I was, although he had on a tee shirt. When he reached the point on the path closest to my bench, he stopped and walked his bike over to me.
“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “Have you been here long?” He smiled his 500-watt smile. My stomach noticed.
“Nope. Just got here.”
“Good. Tim, thanks for coming. I don’t know why I was so uncomfortable talking to you on the phone. That isn’t me. Now it’s like I’m making a big deal out of this and making it mysterious and all, and it isn’t like that. Hey, can I sit down?”
He was still standing, holding up his bike, looking at me. I told him sure, sit down, and he did, laying his bike on the lawn behind the bench near where mine was propped.
“Okay, I’ll just get to it then.” He looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows, as if asking if that was all right with me. I nodded very briefly, not sure if my permission was being requested or not.
“Here’s the deal then. In our citizenship class, we’ve been given an assignment. Everyone has to talk to someone they don’t know, spend some time with them, get to know them. Then we have to, like, interview them, ask questions, and write an in-depth report on them, almost like a biography of them. Mr. Charles told us the purpose of the assignment is so the shy kids––well, he didn’t say it like that but that’s what he meant––in the class are forced to interact with people they don’t know with the objective being to get them to overcome being shy—which sounds ridiculous to me—or at least get them to see how to approach people and develop some social skills, and also so all of us can learn about the lives other kids have led. This is to acquaint us with other lifestyles and other ways to grow up that are different from our own. You know, different cultures and family traditions and like that? I know, I know, I’m sounding like a teacher, but it’s easier to say it like he did. If I tried to put it in my own words, it would sound even crazier.
“Anyway, I tried to think of who I could talk to and realized I knew and talked to almost everyone at school. Mr. Charles was very specific: we had to talk to a student at school we’d never met, never had any contact with. A complete stranger. I think he specified this to guarantee shy kids will be approached.
“This probably won’t be all that hard for most kids, but it is for me because almost no one at school is really a stranger. That’s just because I go out of my way to meet and talk to everyone. I like doing that and I do it all the time. Every day. Do that every day, every school year, and pretty soon there aren’t that many strangers around.”
He took a deep breath and looked out at the park. We were still the only ones around. He briefly moistened his lips before continuing with his explanation. “I began looking around, trying to find someone to be the subject of the assignment, and I knew I’d be pretty much limited to finding one of the new kids, and I still had to look pretty hard before I noticed you. But I caught sight of you across the quad a few days ago, and I’d swear when I did you were looking at me. I’d never noticed you before. I asked who you were, and I had to ask four kids before I found someone who knew your name.
“This was a few days ago, like I said. Since then, whenever I’ve seen you, I’ve tried to walk over to talk, but somehow, by the time I worked my way over to where you were, you weren’t there any longer. Very strange. I almost had the feeling you were doing it on purpose!” He laughed a little, thinking how preposterous that was, I guessed.
Actually, while I could understand how he might feel that I wouldn’t try to avoid him––who would try to avoid him, for God’s sake?––I could also understand why he wouldn’t have noticed me in the past. And it wasn’t just that I tried to be inconspicuous. Even without that effort, I wasn’t very noticeable. I was naturally slender––an unkind soul might resort to the word skinny; I much preferred slender––and I was also short for my age. Plus, I was a very plain kid. What percentage of kids are extremely striking looking like Terry was, maybe five percent? Three?
And then there are the merely good-looking kids; then the ones that you take notice of because they appeal to you in some way, or perhaps some characteristic stands out; and then come the plain kids; and then the ones, if I were to be brutal and unfeeling, that I could call the ugly kids, but to be more PC, the appearance-challenged kids. Me? I would probably fit just outside the last category, maybe squeaking by in the category just above that. In other words, if I had to get by in life solely on my looks, I wouldn’t be eating lobster and caviar very often.
I was just a very plain, very ordinary kid who wasn’t noticed for his looks, his body, his sparkling personality or for any other reason, really. A kid hoping to grow into his looks and body. Right now: Mr. Unnoticeable, that was me. I had slightly unmanageable, curly dark brown hair that wouldn’t cooperate no matter what I tried to do with it. I had a sprinkling of blemishes on my face, just a few, really, and they seemed to be clearing up at long last. They weren’t enough to warrant scornful or sympathetic looks but enough to keep my ego firmly in check.
My features were regular but uninteresting. My eyes were brown. Not a deep, expressive, ever-changing, high-lighted and mysterious, beguiling brown. No, just brown. There are movie stars and there are extras. I was an extra. I was one of the people hoping desperately for the beautifying effects of age, while at the same time realizing most kids are their handsomest at 16. I was 16. I knew that this may well be as good as it would ever get. An uninspiring thought, believe me.
I had the opportunity to break in when he was chuckling at the absurdity of me avoiding him, and I took it to ask a question. “So why did you want to talk on the phone instead of just telling me all this in the locker room?”
He got a slightly embarrassed look on his face, and actually looked down for a moment. He forced his eyes back to mine before speaking. “Well, a couple of reasons. First and foremost, if I’d done this on the phone, or in the locker room when we were both in a hurry to get to our next class, it would have been so easy for you to just say no. I didn’t want you to do that and didn’t want to make it that easy for you.
“Second, it occurred to me that if I said what I just said to you, either in the locker room or on the phone, you could be offended by it. I mean, I was sort of implying a couple things about you that you could take as insults. I didn’t mean them that way at all, please believe me when I say that, but you could have been embarrassed by hearing me say them, you know, about me knowing everyone but you, about other kids not knowing your name and all, and if you were embarrassed, I thought it might be easier for you if you didn’t have to look at me, or feel me looking at you.”
He paused and I could feel his eyes on me—I was only looking at him briefly as he spoke— perhaps to see how I was taking this, how it affected me. I had a lot of practice at not showing how I felt about anything. His pause didn’t last long; I was sure he wasn’t seeing anything to distract or bother him. He went on.
“But then, when I called you, I realized that I needed to be able to face you and judge your reaction to what I was saying. And you needed to be able to judge how sincere I was.”
He looked nervous again. I realized it took him some real courage to say all that, to open himself up that way. I admired him for being able to do that. From all I’d seen, watching him, I really did think he was a nice guy who had empathy for others, and what he was saying certainly didn’t suggest anything different.
“Tim,” he continued after a pause, sincerity coloring both his voice and eyes, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me with this. I know we don’t know each other, but we’re not supposed to if we follow the rules of the assignment. We’ll spend some time getting to know each other, hanging out or whatever, and then when you’re comfortable with me and ready, I’ll interview you. I have a lot of in-depth questions I’ve been given to ask, and I have some of my own, but that’s all there is to it. Will you do it? Can we do this together?” He got a sort of hangdog, pleading look on his face that was adorable. I doubt very many people ever said no to anything he asked.
But this was not good. This, in fact, was terrible. Of all the things Terry wanted to meet me about, this was about the worst thing I could imagine. Here I was trying to keep my life private and doing a pretty good job of it even if I was becoming terminally lonely in the process. Now, this. Someone wanted to tear the lid off my life and look inside. Not just look inside but poke around a little, too, to see if there was anything interesting hiding in the corners, something—oh my God—something to write about for anyone to read. No, I definitely didn’t want that. Had he wanted, say, help in school in some subject, okay, sure. If he’d wanted to know what city I’d moved from, where my old school was, or why I had a northern accent, I could tell him. But let him get to know me really well, then ask probing questions about my life, about who I was? About why we’d moved here at the beginning of the school year? There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that ever happening!
But how could I tell him that? How could I say no to him? That was a problem. As scared as I was of doing what Terry wanted, I was responding to his warmth, his personality, his charm. I was sitting next to him on a park bench on a warm late afternoon, just the two of us, no one else around, talking quietly to each other, and I was loving every minute of it. Well, loving the feeling of it. Not loving what he wanted from me.
I felt a closeness to him, a feeling of intimacy that came from just us two being together. It was a feeling of comradeship I hadn’t felt in it seemed like forever, and I didn’t want to let it go. The only negative note in the entire situation was what he was asking of me. His physical presence, the atmosphere, the two of us talking, it was like therapy for an illness I hadn’t been aware I had. Being engaged in a conversation with someone that was meaningful and human, and not trying like usual to be off-putting, not trying to create a negative image of myself in that someone’s head, it just felt so good, so right.
If I just told him I wasn’t interested and walked away, it would be rude and I’d be slamming the door on a possible acquaintance that I badly wanted. If I told him okay, I’d be opening a can of worms I had no intention of opening. So, what to do? What could I do?
I tried very quickly to look at my two options, saying yes or saying no. And very quickly I realized that I really, really didn’t want to say no and have him just walk away from me. Spending just a few minutes with him was sort of like eating just one potato chip. I had to have more. I had to. Even if it caused me problems.
I needed to answer him but had no time to think. So, when a solution to my dilemma flashed into my mind, I jumped at it. It is probably better to think things out, but being young and foolish can get in the way of doing that. What did I know? Rash actions can lead to unpredictable consequences, but did I consider that? No. Not for a moment.
Okay, so what I decided to do was stupid. I know that now. But what I did was born of desperation and loneliness and not just a little bit because it was Terry Kauffman asking me, with all of his appealing looks and irrepressible charm having their affect on me. And I didn’t have time to think every little thing through to its logical end. So, I told him yes, with my fingers all but crossed.
“Terry,” I answered with my eyes looking down into my lap instead of meeting his, “I’m a little uncomfortable with this, but yes, I’ll help you. We can at least give it a try.” I tried a hesitant smile at him, lifting my eyes briefly to catch his.
“Hey, that’s great!” he enthused, and his smile against mine looked like a nova compared to a match. There wasn’t any hesitancy in his. He was elated. He thought for a moment, then added, “Look, it’s probably too late to get started tonight. We have to spend some time together, get to know each other. How about we meet for lunch at school tomorrow? Eat together? We can start talking then and make arrangements to meet after school, too, if you can do that. You don’t have a job, do you?”
I shook my head. He smiled again. I was getting to like that smile a lot. I’d seen it before, of course. But now it was directed at me.
“Okay, great. We’ll talk about all this tomorrow. I should be getting home now. But Tim, thanks, and I really mean it. I’m really looking forward to getting to know you. So, see you tomorrow at lunch then?”
Shyly, and I’m afraid a little reluctantly, which I hoped he didn’t detect, I nodded. He smiled back, then stood up, climbed onto his bicycle and rode it over to the path, where he turned, waved at me with his big smile still lighting his face, and rode off.
The shadows were starting to lengthen by now. There were only a few low-wattage streetlights in the park and they were flickering on. It was just beginning to get difficult to see much in the shadowy places where the trees were the densest. I stood up and grabbed my bike. My feelings were all in a muddle. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking. A conflicting mixture of feelings was surging through my head. But there were several overriding individual ones, several that wouldn’t go away.
As I rode home, staying mostly on the sidewalks because it was that time of day when drivers can’t see people on bicycles very well, the questions that were overwhelming all others were, could I really get away with totally making up an imaginary life history for myself to tell to Terry? How would I get away with it? What if I slipped up and got found out? But way in the back of my head, there was also one little thought that kept popping up. It kept poking at me, enthusiastically kept encouraging me: ‘yeah, man, do it! Don’t screw this up by chickening out.’