Some hang on to grudges formed long ago. Parents were harsh or begrudging. Friends were duplicitous or disloyal. No one wants to be visited by the sour times from the past, but it seems that most often it’s the bad memories that come to call. Why is that? Is replaying the low moments filling a hunger? I’m not prone to this sort of pessimistic dwelling, but I know a few who are, and when they speak of ancient cruelties perpetrated upon them, my platitudes like “rise above” or “let it go” fall flat.
In an effort to understand the lingering resentments of others, I search for negative feelings that I might be holding on to. My mother was hypercritical and my father was moody. So what? They tried to be good parents and they had their own worries—their marriage was always troubled and they both had responsibilities outside our home. Overall, I figure they did the best they could.
So, no protracted bitterness there. Then a familiar dark memory floats upward and bobs at the top. There is one umbrage that I have never been able to put from my mind, an act so audaciously vicious that it visits me while I sleep and while I drive. It crashes into my head during times of peace, making me wonder if my calmness offends, if my psyche craves discord. Seriously, my anger at this incident was so extreme at the time that years later just thinking about it makes my breath come faster and my heart pound harder in my chest.
Here it is:
When my oldest son, Curtis, was seven years old he went to a private boys’ school in Gerrard’s Cross, in the UK. One of his classmates, Thomas, had a twin, Teresa, and the two of them got out of school at the same time; and the school Teresa went to was in Beaconsfield, the village where we lived. As the girls’ school was near our home, Thomas’s mother, Lila, asked if I would mind picking Thomas up in Gerrard’s Cross and dropping him by her car at the girls’ school. As I understood her tricky situation and this didn’t sound like too huge an imposition, I agreed to help her out.
But it did turn out to be an imposition. More often than not, Lila was late, leaving me in charge of her twins—in addition to my two boys, who were tired and wanting to get home. Also, as it was a peak time at the school, traffic was snarled and slow-moving throughout the neighborhood. It took ten minutes to get near the pickup point, and when we got there, Lila had still not arrived. So Teresa got in my car, I pulled to the side, and we waited.
While this isn’t pertinent, but sort of is, Lila always looked noticeably, exaggeratedly great, as if she were on her way to a wedding—clothes stylish, accessories to match, jewelry draped, makeup flawless, hair perfect. On my part, petty resentment crept in. If she spent twenty minutes less on her face and hair, maybe she could be on time to meet her son and pick up her little girl.
I was tactful when I pointed out that what should take one minute was taking half an hour, and that it would be better if she were on time. But careful wording is wasted on some, and she continued in her tardiness. This went on for a couple of months. I wanted to be liked and this kind of good deed was what I thought likeable people did, so I put up with it—until one afternoon, on the way from one school to the other, Curtis was uncharacteristically quiet. I didn’t find out what was wrong until we got home, at which point he cried miserably and told me that everybody in the class had been invited to Thomas’s birthday party except him.
I was furious. I called Lila.
“Is this true?” Voice trembling with rage.
“Well, Thomas doesn’t like Curtis,” she explained. “It seems that during playtime Curtis is always the bad guy.”
“That’s because he’s smart enough to know that in order to have a fun game of cowboys and Indians, someone has to be the Indian.”
“That may be true, but Thomas doesn’t understand that.”
“Then explain it to him.”
“I’m sorry. He simply doesn’t want your son at his party.”
“But I’ve been doing this helpful favor for you.”
“I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other.”
“I won’t be delivering Thomas to you anymore,” I said. And I hung up.
I’d been taken advantage of and my son had been hurt. It was the angriest I’ve ever been—and that intensity of emotion is something a person never gets over, which, I suppose, is why it’s stayed with me. If I have such an extreme physiological reaction to this single long-ago incident—the pounding heart, the rapid breathing—what must it be like for a person who holds on to a thousand of these injustices, bringing them out to be examined and endured again and again? It’s not healthy, I know that much. And in the face of this inability to transcend, I am helpless.
As a mini-epilogue, Thomas was asked to leave the school shortly after that. Lip-to-ear whispers had it that he simply couldn’t keep up with the work, which isn’t surprising as he was too stupid to understand that if you’re going to play good-guy/bad-guy someone needs to step up and be the bad guy.
