My Struggle: always abridged

The basketball courts outside were white hot in the early part of the school year, where we sat to wait for our Physical Education teachers. We sat in straight lines, by alphabetical order, after putting on our standard issue grey t-shirts, with a yellow box where our name was scrawled. We wore standard issue blue shorts beneath the grey shirts, and I sat with my legs in what we would have called, Indian style, but what is now referred to as criss cross applesauce. 

Before class, I changed quickly, as ashamed of my nudity as any proper 12 or 13 year old boy should be. I changed quickly into the standard issue clothes, while the P.E. teachers traded jokes in their main office, sipping coffee, Mr. D’anna, Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Dixon. They didn’t police the changing room, which was fine by me because I couldn’t figure out how to open my locker. I used to stand there every day, fiddling for a moment with the lock, petrified that someone would notice I didn’t know what I was doing, eyeing the kid next to me, Sebastian, the gym leader, a tall red-headed kid who’d once smashed a home run during a little league game when I’d played his team in a scrimmage two years prior. 

My skin flushed as I tried to remember, which way you turned the lock, knowing that I wouldn’t ever get it, standing in front of the long wooden bench, turning and turning and looking around me to see if anyone else had noticed that I couldn’t do the most basic thing that every seventh grade boy could do, open a locker. After a while, people would start to trickle out towards the black top, leaving me nearly alone, but for the other one or two kids, slackers or kids just as scared as I was, and I’d finally put my blue duffel bag down on the cold cement floor and rummage through for my gym clothes. I changed quickly, standing up, fearful in my underwear. After I was done changing, I’d take my bag and put it on top of the two large grey lockers that book ended each row, which were seven feet tall, such that I’d have to swing my bag up in an arc and sling it on top of the locker. 

Sometimes, after P.E. my bag would be missing, and I’d go into a state of panic, my whole body in paroxysms, while I tried to remain calm, the kids all around me idly chatting, pushing one another as they changed for their next class. I hated being late to class, or doing anything to draw attention to myself. And yet, as the other kids put on their shirts and pants, I’d frantically start searching around the locker room, always near certain that my bag had been stolen that I’d have to spend the rest of the day wearing my gym clothes, sitting in English class, like a weirdo, wearing the shirt with my name scrawled across the front, Bertaina, in a nearly illegible hand writing. Every time it turns out that my bag had been taken into the P.E. coaches room. “Someone found this,” Mr. Dixon would say, and sometimes they’d quiz me as to why it had been on top of the lockers, and I’d try and answer, but couldn’t come up with anything satisfactory. Then they’d leave off, sipping coffee and going back to talking about whatever the hell they talked about. 

My last name was Bertaina, my first Andrew, which meant that I was always near the front of the lines, a blessing and curse. I was so painfully shy that I almost never spoke in class and even on my second round through at a Master’s I still flush red when I’m speaking in a group. I sat in the line, legs crossed, waiting for Mr. D, who elaborately adjusted his crotch while sipping a cup of coffee, regardless of temperature as he surveyed the scene of 30 seventh graders arrayed in rows in front of him, his brilliant mustache, blowing slightly in the wind, small glasses, perched on his nose, which looked so much like my father’s. 

However, he was often late to class and whether he was brewing coffee or chatting about sports or life I’ll never know. Groups of thirteen year old boys are not notorious for their maturity or discretion. But I would sit on the black top, a member of the boys A basketball team, soaking in the sun’s rays, wondering what the day would bring. I was athletic, with good hand eye coordination and good at nearly every sport we played.

And yet, I was painfully unsure of myself. Iv, who sat in the row of kids directly to the left of me, somehow must have sensed a sort of weakness in me, the same as other kids had figured out for a while in kindergarten. When I was unsure of myself, scared, I often recoiled, carrying on a mind numbing debate in my brain as to what I should do. At first, he would just idly push me, or slap me on the arm and tell me that he took karate classes. I didn’t react much, accepting the small indignities while trying not to react, waiting for the pushing to stop, the teachers to arrive, and the day to begin.

As time passed, the hassling grew worse. By November we’d move inside to take roll call in a kind of rec hall while we practiced gymnastics or square dancing, which terrified me as much as putting my bag away. We stood in line that morning, idly chatting when Iv walked over, slipped his arms around my neck and put me in a choke hold. I remember him telling me that he was in karate and that I was weak and tugging on his arms while he choked me. Strangely, I don’t remember what everything else in the class was doing, though the sight of teenage boys engaged in horse play and fighting is not entirely strange. The world went a bit faint as he whispered things in my ear and then suddenly he let go, and the world returned to me, straight lines, practicing the sit and reach, timed runs and eventually the dreaded pool hours. 

In the morning, I’ve been short with the children. I feel justified though as they take advantage of every break to pull one another’s hair or push each other. If they are not occupied by my full attention then they are at one another’s throats. It’s the afternoon now, and I’ve just finished working out. I’ve forgotten my towel and am drying off in front of the mirror with a pair of underwear, looking at my body in the mirror. In the distance, I hear a father telling his son not to cry. He tells him that his crying isn’t going to work this time. He tells the crying boy that he needs to go pee or he isn’t going to swim lessons, and the little boy is crying just as my girl cries, as though the world is coming to an end if she has to go pee. Eventually, the father’s voice turns from sharp to angry. You can hear the turn in his voice, a turn I recognize in my own voice. He’s not just trying to coax his son into the pool, or ordering him to do it, he’s angry, angry that his day, which no doubt has been full of small indignities and imperfections that he’s been forced to deal with is suddenly coming to a standstill over an argument about pee. 

And I am listening closely now, slipping my clothes back on as the boy’s cry rises. “What are you doing? You got hurt because you weren’t being careful! Now wash your hands!” I’m done listening now, or they are done, moving out onto the pool deck where the father will smile at the teacher and drop off his son, who almost no doubt will discover his friends, or his teacher and forget that he slipped in the bathroom or cried when he had to go pee. On the way back to work I think about how I don’t want to be that father. And I also think, what are we doing? What are any of us doing?