The Worst Thing I've Ever Done

The therapist my mother sends me to recommended that I begin to revisit my past in order to reclaim my future. He says that it is important to begin to recognize the folly of one's youth. He told me that it is only after we begin to recognize those things that we ought to regret that we can truly begin to develop character. I told him he stole this moving piece of advice from the play Hospitality Suites, which was later made into a film called The Big Kahuna. I don't think the therapist my mother sends me to likes me very much.

All of the worst things I've ever done were done in junior high. My therapist tells me that most people have a rocky time through junior high. I told him that junior high seemed no better and no worse than the rest of my academic life.

In junior high, there was a small group of boys that I would sit with during lunch hour and on the bus. We all had honors math together and so were equally ridiculed by the boys who had already begun to grow stubble. There was also a boy who wanted desperately to be part of our group of boys. He wasn't in honors math with us, but he had still not grown any facial hair. Whenever we were talking during lunch, this boy would interject with, "Oh, I like that movie, too!" or "Yeah, that's my favorite level, too!" or "I love to be thief class, too!" I know now that he just wanted to be one of us, not that being one of us was a particularly enviable position in the hierarchy of Edison Junior High. In retrospect, I knew then that he wanted to be one of us but was too callus to pay that any heed.

At some point, our little lunch group had had enough. During honors math one afternoon, we invented a rock band. At lunch that day, we began talking about this rock band in front of our hanger-on. We talked about our favorite albums. We talked about our favorite songs. We talked about our favorite band members. And this poor boy took the bait. "Oh yeah, DingBats is my favorite album, too!" "Eric is your favorite? I like that other guy better." "Which one? The lead singer?" "Yeah, that's him. He's got awesome hair."

Every lunch period became consumed with further elaborations about this band. We even began planning on buying tickets for the upcoming concert. We talked about saving our allowances, taking on extra chores to buy tickets as close to the stage as possible. I went so far as to fabricate a traumatic struggle with my parents for over a week about going to see a rock band concert without adult supervision. "Man, that sucks, Harold. My parents didn't even care that I wanted to go with my friends."

The weekend after the "concert" was filled with frenzied discussion. We talked about the best guitar solos, the best live versions of songs, how awesome the pyrotechnics were. "It was amazing! We didn't see you at the concert, man. Where were you?" "Dude, I was there. Where were you guys?"

The tide turned on the poor boy so quickly.

"There was no concert."

"What are you guys talking about? Of course there was. We were all there."

"No, we weren't. We made it up. We made it all up."

He tried desperately to stay afloat.

"Whatever, you guys. You're being stupid. We love them, and that concert rocked!"

But it was obvious. His face flushed. He rocked on his feet. His voice cracked and faltered. He tried to play it off as if he had thought we had been talking about another band the last several months.

No dice.

He tried to play if off as if he had known the whole time that we were kidding, that he had been playing along with us.

We weren't having it.

After that, he stopped coming by at lunch. We never picked on him or talked to him after that, but the damage had been done. Even at that age we could tell that the wind had been taken out of his sails.

The next year we metriculated to high school. He transferred to a different school.

After recounting this story to the therapist my mother sends me to, he told me that my experience was not uncommon among preteens. He said that most people have similar stories. I am unconvinced. And now that I have relived this incident, I fail to see how my character will be improved.