I Don't Get Stabbed

Now began a very strange few weeks, in which I lived in constant fear of Clarence. From the very first day he entered the classroom I had to improvise a plan for survival. The first order of business for me was to establish for myself his route home, and where he lived. When class ended on his first day I took my time leaving the classroom so that he went down the stairs in front of me. Outside, I let him get about a block ahead of me and then I trailed him as he walked home. His destination, I discovered, was only about five blocks from my house. He lived in a housing project by the name of Gilmore Village. His path to school overlapped my path to school for the majority of the distance but I soon started taking an alternate path to school. It was possible to take a left at the corner of Mildred and Sunset, then go up Rose Place to Genessee, over to Prospect Street and then ascend to the school from behind. It was a path that took an extra fifteen minutes but it was well worth it.

Obviously, at this remove of so many years I am embarrassed to state that I was so afraid, afraid to the point of paranoia. But since it is the truth, I have to describe it, or after all what is the point of all this document in the first place? Well, actually there is no point, why on earth would someone want to read such a lot of meaningless passages about something long ago forgotten by everyone? It is rather like one might listen to phone conversations of no import, recorded fifty years ago, spoken by people long ago dead, and furthermore about nothing. But I for one can’t imagine anything more interesting.

Going home was much easier, I just left class later than Clarence and trailed him home following always by about a block. This went on for abut three weeks, and then I had a very strange idea. I was walking behind him and I noticed that his hair was cut very short. The shortness of his hair made his ears stick out a little, and it was at this very moment that I was thinking about how his ears stuck out a little that it suddenly dawned on me. He walks home from school every day alone, and no one ever talks to him or even gets near him. Most likely he is just as frightened as I am. Then I had the further idea that if I were to be friends with him he would not be very likely to stab me.

I came up beside him, on his right hand side. I walked along next him and I said, “Would you like to be friends?” These were my exact words. And printed in my memory like a clip from an old film, is his reaction. He continued walking. He did not look over at me at all. And he said “yes.”

Now I don’t have any idea at all why this is true, but ten minutes later we were the best of friends. I have to draw the curtain on these two boys because although I can remember those words and although I can remember the shape of my friend's ears, I cannot remember a single thing that happened for the rest of that year, and when the curtain rises again we are in Mr. Hodenger’s seventh grade class, in 1956, the year of my father’s death.