Friends

Jeremy

               When I was seven I had a friend on the bus named Jeremy. I don’t remember his last name. We were both fairly poor but didn’t know it. We both didn’t have our dads around.  I remember talking about this with him. He lived with his mom and she had a boyfriend. My mom had just gotten a new boyfriend also.

               Jeremy and his mother came over to my house after school one day and we played for a little while. He was excited to see which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I had. He also saw that I had a Tiger Electronic hand-held video game. I forget which one but they were very popular at the time.

               Jeremy and I weren’t in the same class. I don’t know if we were even in the same grade. I only say this because I don’t remember playing with him at recess. But I do recall sitting and talking with him on the bus.

               It was a mixed community. Jeremy was black and I was white. Our bus was a tapestry of different cultures making up the lower middle class and downward in our area of Long Island.

               Jeremy was different from everyone on the bus though for another reason as well.

               Jeremy processed things differently and thought about things differently. If I had to guess now, looking back, I’d say Jeremy never played with us on the playground because he was in a different class, a special class. Jeremy’s mother walked him to the bus stop each day unlike the other kids.

               Jeremy could be annoying. He repeated himself and got stuck on certain issues. He was made fun of a lot by the other kids. I don’t think the term neurotypical was widely used in the child development sphere at the time. Even if it was, as a seven year old child in 1993 I wouldn’t have understood what it meant.

               But kids are kids and Jeremy was my friend.

               One day on the bus ride home Jeremy brought one of his hand-held games. This was not unusual. We often played each other’s games on the way to and from school.  I was seated behind him.

               I hadn’t played this particular game before and was engrossed. I played for a few minutes when I felt the bus lurch.  

               The bus driver Mr. Lou (a character unto himself wearing leather biker cap), spoke in his boisterous New York voice, “Hey you were supposed to get off back there.”

               Confused, I sprung to my feet and gathered my things.  No one was on the bus. This wasn’t unusual as my and Jeremy’s stop was the last one.

               Mr. Lou had noticed only about two hundred feet passed where the stop was so I wasn’t lost. I was relieved as I got off the bus. Seven year old me couldn’t imagine the trouble I would have been in if Mr. Lou hadn’t noticed me.

               I stepped off the bus and looked back toward the bus stop. Jeremy and his mother were walking toward me. I started running to them to hand back Jeremy’s game.

               His mother had an angry look on her face and immediately began yelling at me, “Did you steal Jeremy’s game? You give it back now! You can’t take my sons things!”

               I was hurt. I was confused. I was already upset that I had missed the stop. Now his mother was yelling at me and accusing me of being a thief.

               I wanted to shout and explain, “But it was an accident!”

               I didn’t have the words or presence to explain to an angry mom that it was just a misunderstanding.

               So I ran.

               I ran back to my house and looked out the window as she angrily walked by, holding her sons hand.

               I wouldn’t make eye contact with Jeremy’s mother on the bus stop from then on. He no longer came to our house. There was a undeserved shame in my mind and I was labeled a thief. I also didn’t speak with Jeremy anymore. Why hadn’t he explained to his mom? We had swapped games a hundred times before.

               A few weeks later on the bus a few of the kids were making fun of Jeremy.

               Kids can be cruel. I don’t remember exactly what was said but know that whatever I could imagine right now was not as bad as what unhinged packs of children are willing to say. Bullying is awful.

               They were saying hurtful things about him and his mother. Jeremy was crying, and it seemed that the more he cried the more the kids picked. When he was accused of having no friends he yelled to me, who was trying to stay uninvolved, lest I be next in the cross-hairs of the mean older kids.

               He yelled to the kids and to me that I was his friend.

               The kids looked at me. Several thoughts ran through my head. I did not think I was Jeremy’s friend anymore. His mother had in my mind made that abundantly clear. I also did not want to be involved or targeted.

               Confused and cowardly, I looked to Jeremy and weakly said, “I’m not your friend.”

               The other kids laughed and I sunk down in my seat trying to hide myself from Jeremy’s view.

               I remember the hurt on his face before I looked away.

               I remember him calling several times throughout the rest of the ride, “but you were my best friend.”

              That plead haunts me.

               The confusion. The hurt.

               Fast forward almost 30 years and I see that look mirrored in a place very dear to me.

Tommy

               Tommy gets stuck. He processes things differently.  My son gets upset and confused when he can’t be involved in the same way or when he doesn’t understand something. He’s becoming increasingly aware of his differences.

               I’m not upset with Jeremy’s mother. She was a poor woman with little education doing the best she could to protect her child in a rough world. Judging by how those other kids acted, she was correct. I carry around a shame about this story even though I see it for what it is.

               We know a lot more than we did even 10 years ago about atypical child development.  These days we can say that my son is autistic and has ADHD and has sensory disorders.  We can offer therapies to address many of his deficiencies. We make strategies to include rather than ostracize. To work WITH his mind rather than try to HIDE what is different. We’re moving in the right direction but I’m still scared.

               Children can still be cruel about what they don’t understand. I see this around my boy. I’ve already been enraged by hearing about two children getting my son worked up because they knew how to and they thought it would be funny. I get it, they’re just kids. Heck they’re just five year old kids.

               But it worries me. The world needs to be better. I don’t know what became of Jeremy but I hope he’s okay and I wish he could know that I’m his friend.