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or read his memoir below:
SWING YOUR PARTNER ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND
Billy the Tough Kid zooms and weaves his thick-tired bicycle through the after-school playground crowd, singing loudly with a copy-cat twang, “Swing your partner ’round and ’round! Pick her up and throw her down!”
Billy’s bike comes just close enough to students to make them jump or yell or giggle or hug close their skirts and book bags. Billy is skilled at pushing the boundaries of decorum a tad beyond School Rules. Just enough at the edge not to get disciplined. Just enough to call attention to himself. Just enough to cement a memory that lasts all the way from the 1940′s to the 21st Century.
Billy is a Tough Kid because we meeker students allow him to be. We kind of admire his brazenness—wouldn’t it be fun to be Billy the Tough Kid for a day? What would our Mommas say?
During Northington Elementary School recess one day, Jimmy, a toadie of Billy, calls a few of us into a huddle and shows off his genuine brand-new switchblade knife. We are in awe and are even allowed to touch the polished bone handle.
Jimmy is also the purveyor of naughty French postcards extracted from his WWII-veteran father’s stash, but most of us are too young to appreciate this. We kind of wander off to the safety of volleyball and tag games.
But his conspiratorial zeal makes an impression and remains sheltered in long-term memory.
I find my gentle giant in grammar school. John is a strong, to-the-point, seasoned kid who knows the ways of the world. Who, unlike Billy and Jimmy, never shows off, always dispenses quiet and sometimes misplaced gems of wisdom.
John is my temporary hero because he gives me a lift on his bike when we leave the school grounds. He drops me off at home but never visits. Instead, he pedals the heavy used bike up the hill east of Northington and disappears into the afternoon.
My next-door temporary after-school neighbor, Bubba, is a friendly playmate who has no interest in bullying or winning or showing off. We’re sitting in the shabby Tide Theatre, watching a B-grade movie, scarfing popcorn and sharing a dope (back then, cola drinks were nicknamed “dopes” for reasons we had to learn in later life). Actor Steve Cochran, a master of B-gradedness, pulls a gun on somebody and is threatening to blow his head off. I’m really into the story but suddenly realize that Bubba is crying in fear.
“It’s OK, Bubba…it’s just a movie.” He is still upset. Finally I say, “This isn’t real, it’s just play-like.” Bubba calms down because he understands the term “play-like.” It’s how we kids of playground and front yard and back yard and vacant lot communicate with one another.
“Hey, Bubba, let’s play-like you are the bad guy trying to rob a bank and I’m the gunslinger who’s going to stop you,” or “Let’s play-like we are Robin Hood and his Merry Men, out to get the sheriff of Nottingham.”
We would play-like in all our spare time during summer days that never lasted long enough.
What lessons did Billy, Jimmy, John, Bubba and all those elementary school companions teach me?
I guess that, without meaning to, they taught me to travel back in time and show some appreciation for them and who they were and who they came from and where they would wind up. They all had lives to live, and I had my life to live, and we all remain connected to this day by those tiny, seemingly insignificant encounters.
If I could meet them just one more time, what would I say today?
I’d tell Billy, Thanks for the memory of a class clown who could take a square dance song and make it funny, make me see it in a new way.
I’d say to Jimmy, thanks for showing me that great knife—I’ve never had one like that, but I still remember the joy and comfort having that knife in your pocket gave you.
To John, I’d say, Thanks for paying attention to a shy and observant little kid who didn’t have many friends, was no good at sports, but who could take the time many decades later to resuscitate a sweet memory of unconditional goodness.
To Bubba, I’d say, Thanks for making me aware that everybody reacts differently, in their own special way, to what is going on around them. I’ll never assume that people feel exactly the way I do, and I’ll always try to look more closely at who they are and how they feel.
Observing and appreciating people, not judging them, finding that shiny seam of innocence that runs through them, trying to see past the facade and bluster and acting-out that disguise and protect them from not-always-friendly realities…
That’s what I do on my best days in my best moods. And on the dark days, I try to imagine myself being the clown who knows how to swing my partner ’round and ’round just to get a laugh or a burst of joy out of us both
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
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