When I was growing up I knew a kid named Matt Something. Matt was pretty much the worst kind of kid to grow up with if you were introverted and socially awkward. He ingratiated himself to the strong and preyed on the weak; he was a worm. Everyone, at some point, knows that kind of person. Hell, at some points in my life I may have been that kind of person. But we experience life and we grow and we change or we don’t – and that’s how you get ASSHOLES.
Anyway.
In the 8th grade, I was riding my bike home from my friend Bryan Cole’s house when a convertible came uncomfortably close in passing me, all the while blowing its horn. I flipped the bird and pedaled on.
My bike didn’t have a review-view mirror, but something told me to look behind and, sure enough, I could see a certain convertible headed back my way. It pulled up to me and in the passenger seat there’s Matt Something, tiny and mean, and there’s an adult driver. Well, adult to 8th grade me. Probably a high school kid. Judging by his blonde hair and sharp chin, maybe Matt Something’s older brother. Let’s call him Chad.
Once I stopped my bike, Matt immediately asks, “Did you just flip us the bird?”
I’m stunned. I didn’t think an act of such casual disrespect would actually get me into trouble. Fortunately, while I’m catching flies, Chad says, “He was just waving hello.” Chad then looked at me and says, “Right? You were waving hello.”
I nodded dumbly and then found my voice, parroting what Chad had said. Matt, smelling blood in the water, badgered me for a few moments, attempting to get the truth out of me.
The entire time he’s doing this, I’m terrified. I’m small and out-numbered and this guy has a freakin’ car. If this goes badly for me, it could go badly in a big way. I’m imagining a beating, unconstrained by anything resembling the fairness or the law, all delivered under the blistering Tennessee sun out there on that blacktop.
Chad, though, insists I was just waving hello and I stick to that story and Matt must, eventually, relent. They drove on.
For years, I didn’t realize that Chad knew the score and was just giving me an out. I thought I had unentangled myself from that situation by being smart enough to keep my mouth shut. And maybe both of those things are true. None the less, I owe a huge thank you to Chad for not being the same kind of asshole as Matt Something and seeing a weird, introverted kid for what he was.
It’s only after time has matured me into my own version of Chad that I realized what he had done. Being more mature now though, I realize he was also enabling Chad’s behavior. Tolerating Matt’s badgering of me, trying to pacify him with a lie, Hell, even just turning the car around – these were all enabling him. And that, gentle reader, is how you get assholes.
It would have been better for him simply to say, “No, we don’t act like that.” I am attempting to be the Chad that says that. To be decent, and when I am unsure, to be silent and listen. I do not always succeed in this, but I am trying.
For if I am a decent person, it is only because as I grew up I had shining examples of what is was to be a decent person around me. I owe enough to the world that I must endeavor to return that favor. And I honestly believe in these difficult times it will be our communities and the smallest of human kindnesses that will get us through it.
See the author’s published work here.
Related Posts
The American: Chapter 48 Next Post:
The American: Chapter 49
