and I am put in mind of

[rm]

When I was a kid, I went to a lot of different summer camps before my parents found a performing arts summer camp for me. So when I was young, it would be two weeks at one day camp, then two weeks at another, so on to fill up my summer.

There was one that I went to for a few years. We rode in white vans out to it, and I don't rmeember its name. Merely the tetherball courts and the "bunks" which weren't bunks since it was a day camp, but where we hung out when it rained. There are two people I remember, very clearly from that time, both of whom I wish I had known how to defend, back when we were all 7 or 8.

I don't remember either of their names.

One, was a kid who was intersexed. It was the sort of thing I recognized right away, in a time and place where a child really wasn't permitted to exist as a third gender. We were close, and people were cruel to me -- for beig friends with the fat boy, or the ugly girl and so forth and so on. But I remained their friend, but, didn't really know what to do or how, and we dirfted apart. I no longer recall their name, and I certainly don't think I did well enough by them.

The other, was a child I didn't really speak to, or know well. But he came to camp every day in the same blue shorts and tank top with yellow trim. He was horribly skinny and always dirty, both him and his clothes, and had such a restless energy and such a smile about him. He was a year younger than me, maybe two, he was so small, and everyone was mean to him, because he was always dirty and bruised, and I remember older girls wondering if he was poor or abused, but no one was sure, and then they would say he was just disguting anyway and that it didn't matter. He was both shy and mischievious.

I wish I could remember his name. I wish I had been kind to him. But today I think of him for the first time today in over 25 years, and I hope he's okay. I hope he is brave. And I hope he doesn't need to be.

Comments

[phaenix-ash.livejournal.com]

i have these kinds of thoughts a lot. i spent too much time standing by. i was never a bully but i was hardly a defender either.

...worst memories redeemed

[salimondo.livejournal.com]

For all I know, it's become something of a cliche nowadays to say it, but posts like this are the real measure of what she and the fans have accomplished together. I haven't read the book. This post, however, reveals the power that the enterprise has had -- in the hands of its most perceptive readers -- to recollect these non-remembered people and moments back to the table and thus open up spaces for the courageous and non-courageous alike to find reconciliation. It reminds me strangely of the overlooked Studio Ghibli film "Only Yesterday, (http://www.animeacademy.com/finalrevdisplay.php?id=388)" the idea that childhood crimes are so relativistically big. Thanks.