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David and the
Revelation by Forrest D.
Poston
We spend a lot of time looking
forward and even more focusing on matters at hand, but the
future and the present can easily mislead us if we don't
spend some time getting acquainted with past experience.
Sometimes I take it too far and get myself restressed over
some action not taken or some banana peel moment seen by
the opposite sex, but the more time I spend exploring my
biography, the more I find small moments tucked away, odd
bits that seem meaningful now in ways I would never have
imagined at the time. Perhaps I am inventing meaning as
much as discovering or interpreting it, but I'm not sure
that matters as long as the meaning reveals something,
something that is sometime more true in its nature than in
its history. Such is my story of David.
Our paths crossed few only a few years
in elementary and grade school, back at that age when kids
aren't supposed to be all that bright and aware, at least
adults often like to imagine such limited worlds. Even
when some of my other grades were not all my parents or
teachers wanted, I always got A's in that under-rated
"Works and Plays Well With Others". Partly that was
because I was too shy to get into much trouble, and no one
at school happened to push the buttons that could trigger
an instant temper that sometimes bordered on berserker
status. (And if I really wanted to do something, I was
usually good enough to avoid getting caught.) Still, there
were adversaries and enemies along the way. Some of them
still raise my hackles even as I write, but others were
more complex, and I see them differently today.
David is the one who stands out
now when so much else, so many names and faces, have
retired to the distant, dusty regions of memory. He had
red hair and freckles, Opie with an attitude, but I'll
keep the rest of his identity to myself. At the time, I
would have called David an enemy. Certainly, he was my
competitor. He was a bit of a bully, and I had a knight
errant-protector complex. That would have been enough to
put us at odds, but we were too similar to leave it at
that. (Similar? I would not have said so back then, but I
plead youth.) Naturally, we just had to be fascinated by
the same girl in our fourth grade class, not that she ever
knew it. For all our sparring and maneuvering around each
other, we were both too shy to actually give her a hint of
what was going on.
We clashed most directly for two
or three years, starting in third grade if memory serves,
but it was all limited to school. Even though our town was
small, it was big enough that we didn't cross paths,
especially since his family lived part way up the hill in
management territory, and we were down by the tracks in
labor country. In later days, hours at the city tennis
courts would broaden my social life in interesting, if
limited, ways, but pre-puberty I roamed within a fairly
set territory. So only once do I remember meeting outside
of school, just once during the summer after fourth or
fifth grade. It was enough to torque my perspective even
then, and not long ago a possible revelation finished
years of gestation.
Somehow our paths met by the old
Little League baseball field on Kaiser Ave. The field was
long ago replaced by a church, and the shortcut I was
taking is blocked, so our accident would now be
impossible. We had time to avoid each other, and I've no
idea why we cooperated with the nudging from the sometimes
mischievous universe, but we began a conversation. The
words themselves were soon forgotten, but the attitude and
two ideas remain. His family was moving before school
started again. Like many, his father worked for the local
aluminum plant, and several of my friends had already been
sucked away by transferred parents. Now, the tide had
caught up with my enemy.
But this was no enemy I was talking
with. With. This was a real conversation, an exchange, and
it was wrapped in a very adult moment somehow. That's what
I remember most. It was one of those times when part of me
detached itself and seemed to watch, almost film, the
moment from the outside, keeping a special record. And
there was absolutely nothing childish about the moment,
more as if we were equals sharing a moment utterly outside
of time, unrelated to age, a truce, and perhaps an
acknowledgement. He offered me a stick of gum, not even
bubble gum but "real" gum. I accepted, and we parted. Two
minutes, perhaps. Three? Certainly it was not one of the
hour long interplays I became known for later, just a clip
out of time.
Even then, I realized that it was
a moment of its own, a moment with a texture and content
different from the mundane. I was actually sad that he was
leaving, although I also knew that if he hadn't been
leaving, the conversation would probably not have taken
place. That day rippled the edges of my mind from time to
time, but nothing more came of it for perhaps 30 years.
Sometimes, I'm slow. I've had some very good friends over
the years, male and female, some who considered me a
brother in spirit, a deep, deep bond. And I've felt bonds
of other types, connections for which we have no name, so
we call it love or hate. I once recognized an adversary
from 10 feet away before we were introduced, a darkly
touched person. I once fell in love at the sound of a name
caught in passing days before I met the person named. I've
learned that these bonds have little to do with love or
hate but are matters of interactions, relationships of
spirit, indications that we have something to learn, to
teach, to share. Love, hate, sex, marriage are completely
different matters for we are connected in a myriad of
ways.
So what of this David? We learn
that like sometimes attracts like, birds of a feather and
such. We also learn that like poles of a magnet repel each
other. And people sometimes get caught in the middle of
that, drawn and repelled. Of all those friends who have
come and gone, all those who are still out there, not in
touch yet always on call if trouble comes, of all these, I
suspect that David may have been most like me in some way
the others are not. I don't know if we could have ever
found our way through the tides of our bond to get past
enmity to understanding. Perhaps that one moment was all.
Even if I used the marvels of the
internet to track him down, the dust and debris we call
experience may have covered that similarity past all
recovery. Even with a shared spirit, I can hardly expect
him to have made choices similar to my own odd, stubborn
path. What I do know now is that these bonds exist, these
connections beyond blood, and I try to be more aware, more
sensitive to the deeper, complex relationships with the
stranger on the street or the new friend, the passing
moment or the revelation. Naturally, most people think I'm
rather strange, but that doesn't bother me. After all,
they've always thought that, and it's always been true.
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Other Essays and Poetry
Something
Somewhat
Vaguely
Like a Resume
Being
Like
Children
The
Blessing and the Blues
The
Cat With a Bucket List
David
and the Revelation
The
Dawn, the Dark, and the Horse I Didn't Ride In On (an
odd, meandering, semi-romantic story)
Ghost
Dancer
in the Twilight Zone
The
Hair Connection and the Nature of Choices
The Mug,
the Magic, and the Mistake
Trumpet
Player,
USDA Approved
Videos
Poetry
Selected
Poems
The
Poetry
Process
Writing by Current or Former Students
Ms.
Write Meets Her Match in Jr. Ms. Write Now
by Heide Perry
I'll
Just
Have Cats
by Cara Hummel
Toys
to
Toys
by Allyson Bowlds
Scribbles
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