Happy Birthday, David K_____.
I had a dream the other night which featured a brief appearance by fellow St. Pius X alumnus David K_____. I didn't recognize him, I just knew it was him. Grown now, as old as me. He was always very small, the smallest boy in class, even through eighth grade, when I last saw him.
I have something physical to remember him by, which I will apparently have forever, since it's still there: a scar on the back of my right hand, near the index knuckle. It's from his overbite, but he didn't actually bite me. I simply edged in too close while Bob H_______ (the tallest boy in class) was swinging Dave around by his ankles. The teachers would regularly remind us that Dave had a kidney ailment, requiring dialysis, and so we should treat him gently. None of us heeded this caution. Certainly not Dave, who flung himself about with Knievel-like abandon.
(I suppose it's possible that I may lose the hand someday, or maybe I will wander into a geriatric fog and forget the origin of the scar. Until that happens, let's just say I'll have it forever and will always remember how it occurred.)
Big Bob stepped on little David's head once. Like, with his full weight. Dave was laying on the floor, looking under a desk, and Bob, on the other side of the desk, stepped over it. (Again, unless the memory is taken from me, I will be able to mentally replay Dave's dismayed squawks until I'm done.) It was an accident, I'm sure, and an occasion of side-splitting mirth to almost everyone.
We were classmates from the first grade, 1975, on. That year (or maybe a little later), another friend, Chris I_____, began collecting tiny pencils. That is, whatever pencils he found lying around the classroom, Chris would head to the wall-mounted sharpener in the classroom's corner and grind them down to virtually useless stubs, saving them in a plastic bag. The black, smudgy points poked through from every side, like the beaks of captured crows. David saw this and got it in his little noggin to collect erasers, and so, with Chris' consent, he spent an entire snack time gnawing off the rubbery ends of Chris' collection--200 or so!--to facilitate his own. I don't remember what he kept them in, or what they resembled in it.
We played together on a little league team. I recall very little little-leaguing among my miniature teammates, but lots of standing around on/in the vicinity of a baseball diamond, looking in random directions, wondering what the rules were, chanting inevitably childish taunts at opponents and teammates alike (made worse by our dull Long Island accents: "We needa pitcha, notta belly yitcha!").
We shared a love of "monster weeks" on the WABC 4:30 Movie, when Japanese creature features were shown, as well as Planet of the Apes and its ever-more-contrived string of sequels.
I'd go over to his house in the afternoon every now and then. We'd play Shogun Warriors, shooting missiles and fists at Star Wars figures. His older brother Paul showed me that, when clenching a fist, the thumb should always go on the outside of your fingers. Apparently, even with the Great Mazinger as a role model, I still got that backwards.
Anyway, I always remembered that his birthday was October 16th. Happy Birthday, David. You sure left your mark on me. I'm looking at it right now.
I have something physical to remember him by, which I will apparently have forever, since it's still there: a scar on the back of my right hand, near the index knuckle. It's from his overbite, but he didn't actually bite me. I simply edged in too close while Bob H_______ (the tallest boy in class) was swinging Dave around by his ankles. The teachers would regularly remind us that Dave had a kidney ailment, requiring dialysis, and so we should treat him gently. None of us heeded this caution. Certainly not Dave, who flung himself about with Knievel-like abandon.
(I suppose it's possible that I may lose the hand someday, or maybe I will wander into a geriatric fog and forget the origin of the scar. Until that happens, let's just say I'll have it forever and will always remember how it occurred.)
Big Bob stepped on little David's head once. Like, with his full weight. Dave was laying on the floor, looking under a desk, and Bob, on the other side of the desk, stepped over it. (Again, unless the memory is taken from me, I will be able to mentally replay Dave's dismayed squawks until I'm done.) It was an accident, I'm sure, and an occasion of side-splitting mirth to almost everyone.
We were classmates from the first grade, 1975, on. That year (or maybe a little later), another friend, Chris I_____, began collecting tiny pencils. That is, whatever pencils he found lying around the classroom, Chris would head to the wall-mounted sharpener in the classroom's corner and grind them down to virtually useless stubs, saving them in a plastic bag. The black, smudgy points poked through from every side, like the beaks of captured crows. David saw this and got it in his little noggin to collect erasers, and so, with Chris' consent, he spent an entire snack time gnawing off the rubbery ends of Chris' collection--200 or so!--to facilitate his own. I don't remember what he kept them in, or what they resembled in it.
We played together on a little league team. I recall very little little-leaguing among my miniature teammates, but lots of standing around on/in the vicinity of a baseball diamond, looking in random directions, wondering what the rules were, chanting inevitably childish taunts at opponents and teammates alike (made worse by our dull Long Island accents: "We needa pitcha, notta belly yitcha!").
We shared a love of "monster weeks" on the WABC 4:30 Movie, when Japanese creature features were shown, as well as Planet of the Apes and its ever-more-contrived string of sequels.
I'd go over to his house in the afternoon every now and then. We'd play Shogun Warriors, shooting missiles and fists at Star Wars figures. His older brother Paul showed me that, when clenching a fist, the thumb should always go on the outside of your fingers. Apparently, even with the Great Mazinger as a role model, I still got that backwards.
Anyway, I always remembered that his birthday was October 16th. Happy Birthday, David. You sure left your mark on me. I'm looking at it right now.
posted by psaur at 7:48 PM
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