Back in high school, I managed to get along with most everyone pretty well (although those that I considered my friends all either went to my church or was someone I've known since first grade and now lives in Santa Cruz, California)... but as was the case there were always a couple people with whom I would have some issues. I was on the baseball team with one of them, and I recall the last couple of springs I was a student there it was always a bit of a chore to not have to deal with him at all.
I remember junior year we were both on the junior varsity team, and there was this one freshman who'd signed up for baseball but had never played it in his life. Thing you have to remember about my high school is it's small enough that no one ever gets cut from sports teams or theater products; rather, you have to participate in some of each on occasion. It should explain how "Aaron" (not his real name) ended up on the team. As I was saying, he'd never played baseball, he'd never swung a bat, and he'd never even thrown a ball in his life.
Naturally, Aaron would be a target for any domination-seeking jocks -- yes, they existed even at a high school as small as mine -- and "Bill" (not his real name) took advantage. I don't know what all went on between their exchanges, but what I do remember is Bill tried on numerous occasions to get me to beat him up. Now, I've never been all that physically strong -- and I certainly wasn't in high school -- but Aaron was that much physically weaker than me that I'm sure I could have mopped the floor with him.
All you need to know is I continually refused to beat Aaron up, but I couldn't explain why. I just knew it was wrong (Bill had called me a "pussy" for refusing). That being said, I once did try to half-way placate Bill and his minions by holding my hand in front of Aaron's face while he was walking by so he could walk into it (creating a fake face slap, if you will).
My senior year, Aaron wizened up and joined the tennis team. But I still had to deal with Bill during baseball season, and like the proverbial jock that he was he still targeted me (esp. with Aaron gone). I couldn't figure out what the deal was, because I didn't often see him outside of baseball season. The other thing was, Bill was a grade behind me, and about 2 1/2 years younger than me, which added to the confusion. So the spring seasons were hell, because I continually had to watch my back.
On our last pre-playoff road game (and, because of the senior service projects that I had to do, it was my last road game, period) the varsity team had a long trip to our opponent's field in Hebron, Illinois. Unfortunately, there wasn't a bus available, so we all squeezed into a van. To add insult to injury, I was the last one to figure it out, so I was the last one on the van, and my "seat" was a spot on the floor right by where Bill and his clique were sitting. I swear, it was going to be the trip from hell, as I would be spending an hour and a half cooped up right next to what I would consider some of my worst enemies. I was expecting them to give me "the business," as one might say.
...and they did. They peppered me with all sorts of personal questions, like "who do you wanna [have sex with]?" and "what kind of music do you listen to?" and "what do you like to do on weekends?" ... I gave answers. I even spilled out a story about how I'd met a girl (she didn't go to my high school or my church) maybe six months earlier but nothing ever came of it relationship-wise, and I was left all confused about how it was supposed to work. After that point, I basically remember Bill telling me that whatever I'd thought wasn't how it worked (and I still believe to this day that at this point he was telling me the truth); he then asked me if I wanted him to spread "the good word" to the individual -- let's call her "Anna" (not her real name) -- who was the answer to the first question from this paragraph. I said no. By that point we'd arrived at the ball field and exited the van. And then about three hours later when it was time to head back to Winnetka, Bill said I could have shotgun (i.e. ride in the front passenger seat of the van). I will say, I was quite confused but relieved. Turns out, neither he nor any of his buddies ever bothered me again.
It took me quite a few years to put the pieces together from these two hellish springs. I figured out that Bill apparently thought I was gay for some time (I'm not), and when he too realized that I was straight he finally left me alone. But some other pieces to the puzzle took me longer to figure out, like, why wouldn't I beat up Aaron? Or, why couldn't I even have the confidence or the fortitude to explain why I wasn't going to? Or, why did I need Bill to set straight my confusion with my by-then-dead situation with a girl I "hung out" with? (as opposed to "went out" with... my, how one little word changes the meaning so much) And why couldn't I understand anything related to social situations? (And why was I so persistent in making sure Bill didn't tell Anna that I was interested in her?)
Conclusion (finally!): I've been ingrained with a Christian mindset of sorts from a very young age, even though I didn't know it when I was a teen. I'd kinda forgotten about it for years, but with this latest change that God is putting me through this fall, he's bringing me back to where I was as a kid. I'm not interested in beating up people weaker than me. I'm not interested in screwing around. I know what it is that I have to look for, and it can only be that. Given my experiences from watching relationships in my family when I was a young tot, and the knowledge of how those things have worked for generations on both sides of my bloodline, I have to reject how they did things and focus on what God had put in me when I was very young. I'm not going to screw around; I'm only going to do it once, and I'm going to do it right. And God's going to be the one who puts it all together.
So it wasn't that I was weak or afraid (although I did very much live in fear when I was a teen, so maybe I was afraid), but that I knew certain things were right, and any slight or not-so-slight deviation from those things would be wrong. So no beating anyone up just because someone else told me to. And no screwing around just because someone wants me to, or even if I want to.
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