A Moment of Little Importance

You've never been much of a fighter. Your father instructed you and your brothers with advice to take the high road, turn the other cheek, and to walk away. You, being the genius that you were, actually listened. You could not have testified to the depth your brothers absorbed this wisdom; long division was more than enough of a challenge for them.

You were quite content in the upscale city neighborhood that had been your world for 13 years. Of course, there were the inevitable conflicts of childhood, no matter how much effort you made to avoid them. You won the biggest fight of your young life purely by accident: a bigger kid, who had decided one day he didn't like you, picked a fight and landed a punch on your forehead instead of your nose, and consequently broke his hand. You could have been famous, had you just kept your mouth shut. Nobody had been around, and your opponent certainly wasn't talking. But you couldn't take credit for something you didn't mean to do, so inevitably you told your curious friends just how the other kid earned the cast on his hand. The incident was laughed off, and you went back to being happy in your existence. You were confident you had seen the worst the world could throw at you.

Then your parents conceived the absolutely wonderful idea of moving to the country. They confided their opinion to you that the city as a whole was too dirty, too violent, and too chaotic. They assured you that they hadn't wanted to uproot you, but they had to think of their own needs.

You never knew for sure why the kids in your new rural neighborhood took an instant dislike to you, but you had some strong theories; you saw them as they stood there in their grimy jeans and faded T-shirts and sneered at your polo shirts and dress pants, and you knew right away you were their newest target. Your brothers were marked as well, but you in particular seemed to have excited their contempt. Day after day, for months after, they made your life miserable, using everything from constant verbal abuse to destroying your schoolbooks at every chance to test your breaking point. They stopped short only at violence, but you never assumed you were safe from that. Still, you endured it; you never broke and you never gave it back, to their immense frustration.

You took it all for two reasons. First, at the lofty age of 13, you had absorbed your father's ideas of a higher truth. Second, and more immediate, they were many and you were one. You would have thought that you would feel strong and proud in carrying out your father's ideals, but instead you felt weak and cowardly. You couldn't take your problems to your parents; you knew instinctively you were on your own. You couldn't even count on your brothers. Uneasy allies at the best of times, you would all turn on each other at the smallest provocation in a crisis. You wouldn't have believed that any sense of loyalty existed between you and them: you, so enveloped in your books, your masculinity challenged regularly, and your two brothers, preoccupied with sports and fast cars. But just when you thought you were home free, a crisis presented itself, and you were given a chance to prove your worth and your loyalty for what you thought would be the world to see.

Your parents announced one day that after only two years here in the idyllic country, they were moving the family back to the city. They admitted they weren't fitting in here; they felt lonely and oppressed. None of the neighbors liked them. They claimed to be sorry to uproot you from the place they thought made you happy, but they had to think of their own needs. You were gentle with them, and allowed them the luxury of their perceptions.

You should have known that at least one of your brothers would try to take advantage of the situation. You never knew how much planning went into the scheme, or even if both of them were in on it, but it blew up in their faces. You were then swept up into their mess, and nothing was ever quite the same afterward.

The day everything changed started normally enough. The blowhards of the neighborhood took the time at the bus stop to make disparaging remarks about your clothes, your honors-level classes, and your general lack of coolness. You ignored them, resisting the temptation to smile. The day progressed as usual, and at last you were relaxing in the afternoon at home in front of the television. Your brothers were out and you had the rare luxury of watching the shows of your choosing.

It's a bit past three, and you're comfortably settled in. A violent Japanese cartoon involving warring robots is on when the front door bursts open. Your younger brother Mark stumbles in, disheveled and breathing heavily. His eye is swelling and his lip is bleeding. His clothes are dirty. He tells you your older brother Randy is lying on the street outside with a broken nose.

"What happened?"

"Jamie Costa and two of his friends did it," he replies. "They came after me, and when Randy came to help, Costa sucker-punched him!"

You will never be able to explain what happened next. You only remember the sensation of something--a tenuous, fragile something, strained far too long--snapping. All rational thought, including your father's advice that once sounded so wise, is driven from your mind by the overwhelming need to act. It should scare you that Jamie Costa is not one of the typical bullies in the neighborhood, all talk and no action, but is instead by far the toughest kid in your school. It should alarm you that Costa has never really bothered with you or your brothers before, and furthermore, you know he usually doesn't go after anyone without a good reason. But none of this occurs to you; all you know at this all-important moment is that you have taken enough abuse from this place.

You charge down into the cellar and grab your much-neglected hockey stick--you suddenly like the way it feels in your hand--and storm outside. Your brother is lying in a crumpled heap near your family's mailbox. Three teenagers stand around him, frozen in tableau. You are supremely confident in your righteousness as you march toward them; visions of Costa easily taking the stick away from you and strangling you are allowed to intrude for only an instant before you banish them.

As is customary with armed confrontations in your experience, you observe protocols by opening up a diplomatic dialogue:

"What the fuck is going on?"

"Payback," Costa claims simply. He has the compact toughness of a bulldog, and you are surprised to notice that you tower over him. He in turn appears astonished by the very idea that you would stand up to him. "What's with the stick? You afraid to fight fair?"

"Three against one?" You have just enough bravado to laugh. "I'll take all the help I can get. And you're the last one to cry fair, if you suckered my brother."

Costa has the grace to look ashamed; but in looking away, he sees Mark peeking out the window, and his anger flares.

"That little shit tried to rip off my friend!" He declares, and smacks one of his cohorts on the shoulder. "Tell him."

"Mark borrowed a bunch of Nintendo tapes from me," the boy--you think his name is Sean--explains. "I told him he could use them for as long as he wanted, but my friends heard him say at school today that you guys are moving soon. They said he was talking about how he ripped off this dumbass on his street. He told his buddies how he borrowed my games and was planning on moving away with them. They said he was laughing the whole time."

It is right about now that you suspect you backed the wrong horse. It sounds too much like something Mark would do, as he had been caught at similar--though not quite so ambitious--stunts in the past. You also remember the recent influx of video games in Mark's inventory, and the lack of explanation he offered at the time. The monumental adrenaline surge you experienced moments ago is receding, and you are starting to think clearly again.

"Okay, we'll sort that out," you say. "But it doesn't change what you did to my brother here."

"Sorry," Costa shrugs. "I guess I overreacted when he came at us."

You can barely believe it. Jamie Costa is apologizing to you? You contain yourself and pull your brother to his feet.

"If Mark has your games, I'll find out," you promise them. "Come back in an hour, and I'll make sure he gives them back to you."

All three of them appear taken off-guard. You suppose they expect you to blindly defend your brothers and deny the accusation. But they see that this is not the case and nod in agreement. You drag Randy into the house, feeling extraordinarily brave when you turn your back on the three of them, but in the end you somehow know you have nothing to worry about. A quick backward glance as you approach the front door proves Costa and his friends to be far away, walking back the way they came.

The next hour consists of a series of ice cube wraps being applied to Randy's nose--which is not broken, but is bleeding profusely--while you conduct a stern interrogation of Mark's recent video game transactions. The sudden sense of empowerment you acquired this afternoon seems to endure, and Mark appears to treat you with new respect. Eventually, he breaks down and admits that Sean is telling the truth. You advise him to gather all of Sean's games and have them ready, and you warn him that you probably won't be able to protect him if Costa truly wished to punish him for his theft. He complies.

The three teenagers return at the agreed time and watch in silence as Mark hands over a small fortune of video games in a shoebox. He even offers a sullen apology. Sean gratefully accepts his tapes back and turns to leave. Costa looks at you and gives a little nod. You will always wonder how he feels at that moment. Does he consider himself the winner in this encounter, or the loser? Or is he simply acknowledging an equal opponent? You wonder if it even matters.

As it turns out, Costa is the only one who acknowledges your role in this mess. You're sure the other kids in the neighborhood will somehow twist the facts around to make you look stupid, so you don't expect much will change on that front. Your brothers never get around to thanking you for coming to their rescue, but you can't really blame them; apparently the fact that their bookworm brother stood up to the toughest kid in school and saved their collective skin is something they're not able to cope with. You leave them to come up with a story to tell your parents how they got their respective wounds, and you make sure not to be around when an explanation is asked for; you are afraid you'll give something away in your face when they're lying. Your parents, as oblivious as they are to the lives of their children, sense something is not quite right in the carefully matching accounts of how their injuries were suffered--at no fault of their own--and send them to bed early as an arbitrary punishment.

You think your role in this drama has been successfully concealed, but there is a curious moment when you are helping your father with the dishes later that night. You're just going about your business, thinking humble thoughts, when he stops what he is doing and turns to you.

"What is it?" he asks. You notice that he has, in some small way, suddenly diminished in your eyes.

"What do you mean?" You are the essence of puzzled innocence.

"You look like you have something you want to tell me. I know your brothers were lying about how they got hurt. Did something happen today?"

An impossibly long moment passes, and finally you just shrug.

"No," you reply. "Nothing important."

With that, you give in to the inevitable timidity and compromise of adulthood, but--in a mixture of bitter cynicism and modest pride--you will remember your experiences today, and the discovery that the most profound moments in one's life are diminished by the fact that they can never be shared.

Copyright © 2003 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Mon, Nov 3, 2003.