I want to pose a question, rhetorical as it may be, to anyone reading this. Have you ever had a lesson taught to you so many times you wondered how ya missed it? This is mine.
I have to first let you know about my size—6’6”, 245 lbs (or 198 centimetres and 111 kilograms). What you do not know is that I pretty much have been this size since I was 12. I am smaller now, actually. In sixth grade, I was 6’6″, 340lbs (154 kilograms), with a size 16 shoe. Being somewhat of a giant has always afforded me some luxuries, but being that size at 12 years old made me a proverbial “god.”
I cruised the hallways of junior high school, unfazed by the usual fears that come with that age. I was larger than all the students, obviously, but also my teachers, the principal, the vice-principal, most of the coaches, my parents. Pretty much anyone I encountered.
The only person near my size in my life at that point was the head football coach, who had played in the NFL; he was my height, but not nearly my weight. Add this unique feature to the fact that I was unusually mean and highly competitive, and it made for some interesting life experiences, along with some major failures.
The rehab facility
Around this time in my life, my mother was working for a major physical rehab facility in Birmingham, Alabama. She was the assistant kitchen manager and would often take me to work on the weekends or during the summer. Mainly if her dishwasher person didn’t come in, or some other labourer didn’t show. She would insert me into the crew.
Let’s call it an unpaid labour internship. She called it, “We put food in your belly and clothes on your back, so shut up and get to work.” However you wish to phrase it, I was spending time around people with different disabilities and challenges.
In hindsight, it was good for me. I hear a lot of people “feel weird” when faced with people in wheelchairs or with mental disabilities. For me, it was a natural thing. There were various degrees of injuries/disabilities around the facility—major sports injuries, car wrecks, issues from birth, anything you can name or think of.
One caught my attention immediately, for a very odd and probably racist reason. In my young life, I had never met a person of Asian descent. He was a man, in his late twenties or early thirties at the time, paralyzed from the waist down from an automobile accident.
While I was open and polite with everyone I met, for some reason I assumed this man didn’t speak English. When our paths crossed, I would just smile stupidly, and for reasons passing understanding, I would bow slightly. Which, for a few times, was just met with an awkward stare.
Eventually, he broke the silence. I learned two things from our initial exchange, the first being that his English was better than mine, and the second that he was speaking to me in a way that indicated he thought I was one of the mentally handicapped patients. My smile and bow technique were spot-on, I suppose.
After some convincing, and looking back, more than it should have taken, he finally decided that I was a mentally normal 12-year-old man-child. I don’t know how long he had stayed there for rehab, and I wasn’t there regularly, but we did meet a few times.
Lesson vs. education
In our last meeting, our conversation turned to basketball. The youth league team I was on had just won another championship—I had garnered many due to my size—and I was eager to tell him with pride. He informed me he was quite the basketball player as well.
Suffering from a foot-in-mouth disease, I told him how sorry I was that he couldn’t be one anymore, due to his disability. He, with infinite patience, told me he hadn’t even picked up the game before his injury. It took me all of about three seconds to mumble out an offensive response that I meant real sports. He smiled again and invited me to the gym downstairs.
I want to adjust the past with my memory and tell you I played well and made it a game. I cannot. He flogged me.
There are differences between lessons and education. Books and chapters have lessons. What he did to me on the basketball court was an education. Do you see the distinction? No? Well, I shall rephrase. He beat my ass.
At that period in my life, I hadn’t had much experience with losses. Be it from fights, sports, video games, I was a winner. That day, my friends, he beat my ass so thoroughly that I instantly truly understood what losing was. I developed a clear grasp of the pain, definition and feeling of loss. I want to lie; I want to adjust the past with my memory and tell you I played well and made it a game. I cannot. He flogged me.
We played three games to 21 points. My scoring over all three games combined would not equal one-third of a victory in one game. I realized I was in trouble when, halfway through the second game, my shirt, shorts and socks—hell, even my underwear—were dripping with sweat. I was panting, slowly dying from a lack of oxygen. The parting in his hair hadn’t moved. He, from his damned wheelchair, was patting me on the back, checking on me.
During the third game, I knew I was done when I puked up the chicken fingers I had eaten for lunch. He calmly told me where the mop was, and patiently waited for me to clean it up, then dry the floor, before eventually getting back to educating me. The final score of the third and final game was 21-1. He seriously asked me for a fourth. My response was to lie on the floor in a semi-fetal position, making noises I can only relate to beached whales.
Learn to sit
While I was lying there on that cool gym floor, gathering my faculties, he was speaking about his life in Japan. During the first part, I couldn’t tell you what he was saying. I was more focused on trying to live. Near the end, I became more lucid. He informed me that when he was growing up, a huge point of contention between him and his parents was that they wanted him to “sit” more. He explained that sitting was a large part of his family’s tradition.
He was having a conversation out loud, to himself, when he commented: “I fought so many times to not waste my time sitting around staring at walls, and now I will be sitting forever.” He laughed hard at this thought. He looked me straight in the eyes and told me, “Young man, forget trying to win, learn to sit.”
I replied with a meek, “Yes, sir”. Now I was beaten and confused. No clue what he was trying to tell me. Afraid to ask. With that, my education was over. I never saw the man again.
It would be years before I realized what he was trying to teach me. Years more before I understood it.
"СВЯЗАННОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ" DEAR ‘WHY’ KIDS: Build wisdom, not just knowledge»
фото 1 Стив Буйссинн с Pixabay 2 By DOD via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) 3 image by donations welcome с Pixabay
