St. Theresa, Grade 7

In a few weeks I’d settled into St. Theresa Secondary, I’d mapped out the layoff the land, so to speak, even made a few friends. Garry Martin welcomed me into his group of friends. We were a ragtag motley group of those who didn’t quite fit in anywhere else, but we didn’t just let anyone IN, either. It was a relatively small school, and not so many people as to have unlimited cliques. Some may have tagged us geeks, and that’s bullshit, but not actually wrong, either. We may not have been jocks—there was not a hockey player among us—but most of us played sports; many of us were in track and field, a couple loved to watch football, and Garry and I discovered we were both swimmers (although how we both managed to grow up as pool rats at the Schumacher pool and never share lessons or even meet is still a mystery to me). None of us had girlfriends, so maybe that’s where that came from, not that we didn’t like girls. We certainly talked about them a lot. But we were also still a little young for that, I think. I did have my string of crushes by then: Heather, Allison, and Patricia, by then. But I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do about those crushes. We were each of us experiencing a little arrested development at that time, I think. Or maybe everyone develops at their own pace, in their own time.

I remember playing tag in the school compound. We played with an Indian rubber ball. You got tagged by the ball, you were IT. This guy was chasing me, his name was Archie, I think, but we called him Lou for reasons that escaped me even then. Lou was IT. I ducked and wove between groups of people, trying to keep them between him and me, trying not to get boxed in. Long story short, he boxed me in. I found myself up against the gym wall, turned a little sideways, hands out to ward off the coming pain, waiting for the inevitable that never seemed to come. He made a couple fake throws to see if I’d bolt left or right before finally committing. He tagged me with that hard Indian-rubber, and bolted. The ball being Indian-rubber, and the ground being packed gravel, it didn’t bounce too far. I gathered it up, stretching out the knot of pain he just gave me. The ball was heavy. I looked down the gym wall and saw that Lou was running a straight line, not weaving at all. I took aim, and threw as hard as I could. I didn’t really have much of a throwing arm, I was more a sprinter and a swimmer, and could never throw too well; but this time the ball flew straight and true, arcing beautifully. But as I released the ball, I thought that I’d thrown too hard. I watched the ball as it rose and as it began its decent, then I looked back down at Lou, who was still racing straight ahead without any hint of variance at all, back up at the ball, and back down at Lou. And I felt a thrill rise up in me. I’d actually thrown the ball perfectly. The ball came down on Lou’s head before ricocheting up again, Lou flattened to the earth beneath it.