It started on my tenth birthday. It was a warm day in May (how cliche, I know) and I woke up to sticky notes all over my bedroom, all reading something to the effect of "Happy Birthday Pumpkin!" I got out of my bed to get ready for school, peeling sticky notes off of everything and putting them in a pile as I went, got dressed (mom still layed out my clothes for me) and headed downstairs. I already knew what would be on the table for breakfest, hot ham and cheese sandwhiches on white bread with milk. When I sat down mom screamed "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETHEART!" and gave me a big hug. I'm going to stop here for the first lesson. If you were lucky enough to know your mom, try to remember every time she gives you a hug. I know just from day to day life it's not a big deal, but looking back on it as something that I'll never experience ever again, there is definatly some magical thing that happens right then, trust me, remember the hugs. Moving on, after I ate my birthday breakfest I went outside to wait for my best friend Patrick and his mom to pick me up. Patrick was a hell of a friend. Even in elementary school he was still always the kind of guy you could trust. His parents had somehow raised him with a set of values that didn't make him too sheltered, but gave him a sort of "this kid's going somewhere" glow. His mom pulled up in her minivan and I got in the back seat with Patrick. Mrs. Fox was really strange to me, my parents were always the "Do whatever you want, you'll learn your own lessons" and Mrs. Fox was more the "Look at everything you do as a mistake and how you can get better next time." As I closed the door and buckled my seat-belt Mrs. Fox said "Happy Birthday Tim" and Patrick repeated the same. Patrick handed me a card and Mrs. Fox told me not to open it until I got home. I told Patrick to meet up at my house at 6:00 for cake and ice-cream and Mrs. Fox told me he would be there. As we hopped out of the vehicle Mrs. Fox yelled "Have a nice day boys!" like she always did and we walked into school. Im going to stop again here for a reminder. What happens next is one of those times where life really got me down, just keep in mind I'm not looking for sympathy, but this is a really integral part of the story. Patrick's first class was Science, but I had gym. I was a chubby kid, not awkwardly fat, just chubby, so I didn't like gym. After the actual class was over the teacher told us to go change our clothes so we went to the locker room under the gymnasium, the teacher of course waited outside. After I took off my shirt DeeJay yelled
"God Tim, put a freaking shirt on, no one wants to see that!" Looking back on it DeeJay had a really horrible home life and was just looking for attention, but everything is about perspective right? Since I was only ten and felt invincible I said
"Oh comeon DeeJay, your mum likes it, you should too!" and then everyone got quiet. What I didn't know was DeeJay's mom had died a couple of weeks prior, so I guess I deserve what I got.
"Say that to my face fatass!" so I walked up to him and said
"The only reason I'm so fat is because everytime I fucked your mom she gave me a cookie" I know, I had a foul mouth, but atleast admit that was a good comeback. DeeJay pushed me and I ended up tripping over one of the benches in the locker room and landed on my butt. DeeJay was already on top of it, kicking the snot out of me. All I could think to do was curl up in a ball and wait for someone to help. Each kick got harder and harder so I started counting the seconds between each impact, trying to focus my mind on something else. One, two, three, one, two, one, and then something happened. The final kick was the hardest of them all, I actual felt my entire body start to shake. My eyes closed and when they opened again I couldn't see colors and everything was happening in slow motion. More important than that, I could feel everything in the room. I could feel DeeJay's skin, his clothes, his shoes, I could feel the cold walls of the locker room, the lockers, the other kids, the floor, the stairs going up from the locker room, I didn't actually have to be touching any of it, I could just feel it inside of me. As the teacher pulled DeeJay away from me the feeling ended and everything went back to normal. She helped me to my feet and asked me if I was okay, I said "Yes" and then yelled "He hits like a girl!" Everyone else in the locker room laughed and she lead me to the nurse's office. The nurse gave me a basic lookover and said
"You'll be fine, just a little roughed up is all. You have to go see the principal with DeeJay and then I'll call your parents to come pick you up."
I won't bore you with all of the details, it was basically just an arguement about who hit who first, and we both ended up getting detention for a week. However that feeling, it stuck with me, like a scar almost, I could tell something about me had changed, I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. I didn't know it at the time, but 6 years later, that feeling would cause my death.
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