Tag: Friends

Class Photo

~ Linda Wright

In Junior High we were put into tracks. Even at twelve years old, we knew that Tracks #1 through
#3 were the most likely to be accepted at a college. These were the smart kids. We were Mr. Sampson’s Home Room, Track #8. We were the dumb kids, at least in school.

In the fading class photo, bald-headed Mr. Sampson is wearing his signature clip-on bow tie. He
looks rather like a man counting the days until his retirement. Thirty-one budding adolescents squint into the bright sunlight, staring at the camera lens. We were the ones who showed up for school on the day of the class photo in 1961. We stand in rows on the cement front steps of the Junior High School.

The eighteen boys in the snapshot are attempting to look streetwise or surly. Looking at the
photo now, I remember that one of these boys was whispered to have been in trouble with the law. He was older than the rest of us. The rumor was he had done time in a Juvenile Justice Center.

Standing on the lowest steps are thirteen girls, including me. Several of these female faces
can barely be seen, hidden by the faces in front. Some girls are purposely avoiding the camera. Those of us who are flat chested stand up straighter than those who have begun to develop breasts. We look embarrassed by our changing body shapes.

There are only three classmates I can still identify today: Michelle, Christina and Terry. Terry liked to brag about being sexually active. She wore the shortest skirts of any girl in our class and clinging sweaters, but there was little that could be considered feminine about her. Her short black hair appeared uncombed. Her gait looked like she had just swung off the back of a motorcycle. There was an unmistakable “I dare you,” look in her eyes.

Christina wore her blonde hair in a bouffant style that enlarged the natural roundness of her face. She started a Beatles Fan Club, passing out hand-made membership cards and collecting dues during Social Studies Class. Not many fell for her ‘get rich quick’ scam. Christina enjoyed telling shocking tales of wild parties she held when her parents were away. She bragged that at these parties plenty of drugs and alcohol were available and that by the end of the party there was only broken glass where once there had been a chandelier. I was skeptical that there was any truth in her stories. Now I realize that these stories had a striking resemblance to a Frat party. Perhaps Christina had an older sibling who was at college.

Michelle is the only member of that 7th grade class who is still a friend of mine today. She and I had been paired together by the School Principal because each of us had been absent from our elementary school more often than present. Michelle and I were accustomed to being set apart. Michelle had home teachers during her recovery from rheumatic fever; I had missed most of sixth grade while my body healed from surgery. Mr. Sampson assigned Michelle and me to the center back two seats and called it Row 6 ½. It was obvious enough to all, even without this special seating assignment, that Michelle and I were out of place in the classroom. We actually did our homework assignments, dared to raise our hands in class, and when we were called upon, we knew the answers.

After the first month, the Principal reassigned Michelle and me to classes in Track #2, but left us in the Track #8 Home Room. Each morning we sat in Row 6 ½, attempting to understand what “Truth, Beauty and Goodness” had to do with our lives.

The Marathon

~ Linda Wright

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

—James Thurber

It is Marathon Day in Boston. This year, I am not there to watch the crowds of people arrive from places around the planet. Even so, I know that there are people speaking many languages in the small town of Hopkinton, Massachusetts. They are filling up their bellies with high carbohydrate breakfasts, then getting in lines for their numbers. The media are taking up whatever space they can find with their cameras and video equipment. Enthusiastic fans are competing with the local residents for a space where they will be able to see the race begin.

For many years, I would position myself at the top of Heartbreak Hill, not far from where the runners would finally reach the city limits of Boston. As each runner came up that stretch of pavement, looking tired and defeated, I would clap and shout encouragement. It was Jeff who had taught me to show up at the most difficult stretch of the route to cheer.

Jeff moved into my parent’s attic one spring. His father had beaten him up for the last time. When my mother opened the back door that afternoon, she saw Jeff standing there with a bloodied face and a satchel full of clothing slung over his shoulder. It was not the first time my mother had harbored one of the children from that family. A little first aid, a home cooked meal and Jeff recovered enough to explain that his Dad was drunk again. Jeff had come home for spring break in his freshman year of college. His father had announced that he would not pay for any more school. It was time, his father screamed, for his son to go off to the war that was in Vietnam. No more would he have a son who shirked his duty and hid behind books to evade the draft.

When I arrived home from college a few weeks later, I could hear John Lennon’s music filling the space that previously had only held empty suitcases and dusty photographs. Jeff said very little to anyone. Some evenings, after we had dinner together, he would linger long enough for a game of cards after the kitchen table had been cleared of dishes. Most nights he would go directly to his private space with the unpainted plywood floor and bare rafters stuffed with insulation. He would read, play music and only occasionally go out to meet one of his friends.

In a few weeks, Jeff had a job as an orderly in the city hospital. He applied for nursing school and was accepted. Whether he was truly a pacifist or whether he did it to spite his father, he received an exemption from the draft. His war was a private one. His spirit seemed full of inward battles fought in solitude. He ran, it appeared, not just from his abusive father, not just from the war he opposed, but to save his own life.

Each morning, before he dressed in his scrubs and walked down the hill to the city hospital, he ran. He arose earlier than any of us and left the comfort of his loft to run. He ran in the heat and the cold, in the rain and even in the snow. His goal was to run the marathon; not to win the race, but to finish. The first few times that he entered a race, it took him so long to finish that the race officially ended before he triumphantly reached the point where the finish line had been.

During the next two years, while he lived with my parents, I drove him to and from the site of several marathons. Even though Jeff’s race for life was directly opposite to my own, I understood the importance of a cheering section and a friend to reach out with some fresh water along the way. So, at several points along the route, I would stand until I saw him come into view. Then, I would begin calling out his name and enthusiastic encouragement until I saw his dazed eyes acknowledge me.

The physical demands of long distance running were foreign to me. I could not quite understand why someone would voluntarily put himself through such an arduous and punishing experience. Having a bleeding disorder, I had chosen a life that was structured to minimize injuries. By that time, I had already spent years listening for the early warning signs in the twinge of a sore muscle. The smallest of body aches could indicate the need for medical intervention for me. To win my race for life, no pain was a gain. It horrified me to see him limp in at the end of the race, doubled over in agony and exhaustion. His muscles would be cramped and his body contorted. The heat and dehydration left him depleted that he collapsed into the car seat for the return ride. Even more baffling to me was the way in which he recovered within hours. He would be up the next morning running as usual before going to work. It was a lesson to me to observe how his body could endure this amount of pain without fear or mental suffering. How different from the sense of defeat, self-blame and guilt that I felt when my body was hurting. How unlike the days it would take me to heal an injured joint or muscle if there was internal bleeding.

In spite of our different strategies for survival, Jeff and I had each experienced our own wounds. And although our reactions were so dissimilar, I understood his resolve and resilience. It is a winning combination and it deserves applause.