Sometimes you just have to tie down memories
Sometimes, I feel like some things are more damaging to me because I keep them locked away in the deep well of my mind rather than putting them on paper or thinking about them. If I drop them down the hole, and drown them in the waters at the bottom of the well, I like to think that they are gone. Unfortunately, I'm discovering only too late that sometimes the memories don't stay where I put them. This post is my attempt to tie down a particular thread in my life by putting it in writing. Considering how much I love to have people listen when I speak, it means something when I say that I'd be obliged if you didn't read what follows in this post, and that even if you do, that you don't comment on it. This particular post is my form of visiting a free psychologist.
When I was nine, I moved from a small town in Kansas, to Topeka. Whether by nature or by nurture, I don't know, but I'm a coward at heart. My first instinct when I face danger is to run, and when I can't run physically, I run mentally. Retreating into yourself makes it hard to interact with people, though. Because of this, I've always been shy and afraid of trying new things, and uprooting a young child from his few hard-won friends and neighborhood and taking him to a totally unfamiliar place is pretty hard on a developing kid. I didn't know anyone in the neighborhood. I didn't know anything in town. I didn't know anybody at the church my parents took me to. And as usual, schoolchildren were merciless to the 'new kid.' I was teased, hit, kicked, and excluded from most school activities with other children.
After 3 years without much change, I got to leave the elementary school that I hated. I hated it for the other kids. I hated it because of the way that recess seemed to revolve around playing sports instead of using swings, slides, and monkey-bars (the bits I liked back at my old school in rural Kansas). I hated the school because of the teachers that constantly compared me negatively with my older brother. One teacher's first sentence to my parents in a parent teacher conference was, "Well, he's certainly not as gifted as his brother..."
When I got to go to the junior high school, I was ecstatic. While all of the students would be going with me, we would be adding another 3 or 4 schools worth of students. For once, it meant that being in a crowd of new people wouldn't be so awful, because then (at least) I could be anonymous.
I wasn't anonymous for long. My reputation as a nerd quickly got around. The kids again teased me for my good grades, for my participation in academically-oriented extracurricular activities instead of sports, and for simple things like not knowing the rules to basketball when we were forced to play in gym class.
About halfway through the year, a new student arrived at the junior high. His dad worked for a big company as a veternarian and had been transferred into the Topeka office from somewhere on the East Coast. The new student's name was Nikolaus Drake Richardson, and he was immediately popular. He was good at sports. All of the girls had crushes on him. He came from a slightly richer family than the average students at the school. But in addition to all of these things, he was in the Gifted program with myself and the other nerds.
Nik was also in the same gym class with me. I hated gym class. It was one non-stop humiliation session as I tried desperately to make it through a class period without messing up too terribly at some game I didn't understand with teammates who didn't like me and resented the fact that I was assigned to their team. During the Autumn one day, we were playing football (it was supposed to be touch-football, but that didn't stop most of the guys from trying to hurt each other while playing). My team was down by just a little bit, and I was trying to do what I usually did during the forced games of football. I would run in the direction my teammates ran, but try to keep myself as far away from the ball as I could so as not to interfere too much with their attempt to win. This day, however, I was keeping close to one guy on my team, and one of our teammates on the other side of the field decided to throw a pass to the guy I was next to. My reflexes aren't fast, and I'm not very coordinated. I tried to get out of the way, but I wasn't quite fast enough. The guy who was supposed to catch the football and then make an easy point for our side yelled at me to get out of the way, but I tripped. Then he tripped over me, and the ball went rolling across the field.
I felt badly about our loss. I thought it was bad enough that I had (at least) participated in losing the game for our side, but my teammates thought it was a bit more serious than I did. When we were back in the locker room, one of the guys held me against the gym lockers while some of his cronies spit on me.
Nik (who was on the winning team) saw this and came over to the angry jocks who were spitting on my shirt and ordered them to stop. He normally spoke very loudly, but when he told them to go take their showers and leave me alone, his voice was firm and deadly quiet. It was the sort of quiet where you know that violence is only a moment away and one false move will bring the fury of hell down upon you. For Nik to take on four jocks at once would have been a bit of a hard fight, but beating up the most popular guy in school doesn't earn you many points in the popularity contest, so they took one last look at me and retreated to the showers. I thanked Nik and I can still remember his words to me that day. "Don't let them do that to you, Matt. If you let them walk all over you, you'll end up becoming just like them."
Nik and I got to be good friends after that. He introduced me to role-playing games, and we played Starcraft online with each other for hours on end some weekends. It was great. I spent many a weekend over at his folks' place north of where I lived, and he gradually started to pull me out of my shell. He introduced me to new friends, and gave me a lot of confidence.
Nik and I both joined the Debate and Forensics team at the high school. We both excelled at policy debate, and while I was a skilled orator, Nik was a superb actor. Because we both had talents in this area, we went to a lot of the same tournaments together. I remember some of the long tournaments when we would sit and play cards for hours and hours. Peon and the President was our favorite game, and I recall that I trounced Nik in most every single game. Even though he consistently lost, he laughed and played again and again.
Fast forward to 1998-1999... Senior year of high school. Even if I wasn't popular, I was tolerated, and people didn't treat me as badly as they once had. During high school, I didn't have to be afraid of people pushing me sideways into the lockers, tripping me in the hallway, or doing any number of the other things I had previously been used to them doing to me. And it was all because Nik protected me long enough for me to get on my feet.
On February 1, 1999, Nik killed himself and I couldn't stop it.
It's been seven long years, man.
I'm sorry, and I miss you.
When I was nine, I moved from a small town in Kansas, to Topeka. Whether by nature or by nurture, I don't know, but I'm a coward at heart. My first instinct when I face danger is to run, and when I can't run physically, I run mentally. Retreating into yourself makes it hard to interact with people, though. Because of this, I've always been shy and afraid of trying new things, and uprooting a young child from his few hard-won friends and neighborhood and taking him to a totally unfamiliar place is pretty hard on a developing kid. I didn't know anyone in the neighborhood. I didn't know anything in town. I didn't know anybody at the church my parents took me to. And as usual, schoolchildren were merciless to the 'new kid.' I was teased, hit, kicked, and excluded from most school activities with other children.
After 3 years without much change, I got to leave the elementary school that I hated. I hated it for the other kids. I hated it because of the way that recess seemed to revolve around playing sports instead of using swings, slides, and monkey-bars (the bits I liked back at my old school in rural Kansas). I hated the school because of the teachers that constantly compared me negatively with my older brother. One teacher's first sentence to my parents in a parent teacher conference was, "Well, he's certainly not as gifted as his brother..."
When I got to go to the junior high school, I was ecstatic. While all of the students would be going with me, we would be adding another 3 or 4 schools worth of students. For once, it meant that being in a crowd of new people wouldn't be so awful, because then (at least) I could be anonymous.
I wasn't anonymous for long. My reputation as a nerd quickly got around. The kids again teased me for my good grades, for my participation in academically-oriented extracurricular activities instead of sports, and for simple things like not knowing the rules to basketball when we were forced to play in gym class.
About halfway through the year, a new student arrived at the junior high. His dad worked for a big company as a veternarian and had been transferred into the Topeka office from somewhere on the East Coast. The new student's name was Nikolaus Drake Richardson, and he was immediately popular. He was good at sports. All of the girls had crushes on him. He came from a slightly richer family than the average students at the school. But in addition to all of these things, he was in the Gifted program with myself and the other nerds.
Nik was also in the same gym class with me. I hated gym class. It was one non-stop humiliation session as I tried desperately to make it through a class period without messing up too terribly at some game I didn't understand with teammates who didn't like me and resented the fact that I was assigned to their team. During the Autumn one day, we were playing football (it was supposed to be touch-football, but that didn't stop most of the guys from trying to hurt each other while playing). My team was down by just a little bit, and I was trying to do what I usually did during the forced games of football. I would run in the direction my teammates ran, but try to keep myself as far away from the ball as I could so as not to interfere too much with their attempt to win. This day, however, I was keeping close to one guy on my team, and one of our teammates on the other side of the field decided to throw a pass to the guy I was next to. My reflexes aren't fast, and I'm not very coordinated. I tried to get out of the way, but I wasn't quite fast enough. The guy who was supposed to catch the football and then make an easy point for our side yelled at me to get out of the way, but I tripped. Then he tripped over me, and the ball went rolling across the field.
I felt badly about our loss. I thought it was bad enough that I had (at least) participated in losing the game for our side, but my teammates thought it was a bit more serious than I did. When we were back in the locker room, one of the guys held me against the gym lockers while some of his cronies spit on me.
Nik (who was on the winning team) saw this and came over to the angry jocks who were spitting on my shirt and ordered them to stop. He normally spoke very loudly, but when he told them to go take their showers and leave me alone, his voice was firm and deadly quiet. It was the sort of quiet where you know that violence is only a moment away and one false move will bring the fury of hell down upon you. For Nik to take on four jocks at once would have been a bit of a hard fight, but beating up the most popular guy in school doesn't earn you many points in the popularity contest, so they took one last look at me and retreated to the showers. I thanked Nik and I can still remember his words to me that day. "Don't let them do that to you, Matt. If you let them walk all over you, you'll end up becoming just like them."
Nik and I got to be good friends after that. He introduced me to role-playing games, and we played Starcraft online with each other for hours on end some weekends. It was great. I spent many a weekend over at his folks' place north of where I lived, and he gradually started to pull me out of my shell. He introduced me to new friends, and gave me a lot of confidence.
Nik and I both joined the Debate and Forensics team at the high school. We both excelled at policy debate, and while I was a skilled orator, Nik was a superb actor. Because we both had talents in this area, we went to a lot of the same tournaments together. I remember some of the long tournaments when we would sit and play cards for hours and hours. Peon and the President was our favorite game, and I recall that I trounced Nik in most every single game. Even though he consistently lost, he laughed and played again and again.
Fast forward to 1998-1999... Senior year of high school. Even if I wasn't popular, I was tolerated, and people didn't treat me as badly as they once had. During high school, I didn't have to be afraid of people pushing me sideways into the lockers, tripping me in the hallway, or doing any number of the other things I had previously been used to them doing to me. And it was all because Nik protected me long enough for me to get on my feet.
On February 1, 1999, Nik killed himself and I couldn't stop it.
It's been seven long years, man.
I'm sorry, and I miss you.
posted by The Academian | 8:27 PM
1 Comments:
I was just notified that I received the Nikolaus Drake Richardson scholarship and Googled his name to find out more about who he was. Your thoughts and memories blew me away, and reading this about him made me even more honored to be receiving this scholarship. Thank you and God bless.
Post a Comment
<< Home