Kids can be the worst. It’s debatable whether they mean to be mean or not. It could be argued that they just trying to flex their mental muscles a bit and see what type of damage can be done. Others might say that it’s just part of growing up. But I think if your name was Chester in the early 90’s and you lived on Prospect St you might have had it coming.
Contrary to the wrinkles on my weathered face I was a kid once and cruel as hell. I got made fun of for the first few years of school, relentlessly, on the bus and in the classroom, so at the first chance I had on my street to pay that back to the new kid in town I literally frothed at the mouth. My eager rabidness to flex my mental muscles was much more deviant than just casual name-calling.
His name was Chester and for all I know he was named after his grandfather, or someone famous. But at nine or ten years old I certainly did not give a damn. Neither did any of my friends. What we knew is that Chester rhymed with molester and his moniker was born. But it didn’t end there. I wish it did.
I’m not sure why he was on the street. We had a tight-knit group. I was safe there with my compatriots. I was not safe in school. I went to a catholic school in the city of Watertown, a booming metropolis of nearly 25,000 at the time, but I lived in a much smaller town of about 4,000 about a half an hour away. None of the kids on my street went to my school. I had two very different lives. One where I was the butt of many jokes and then a safe one on my little street. My friends and I knew every kid our age in that neighborhood, that is every kid until Chester showed up.
I can’t remember much about him now. No defining features that could be pounced on, nothing to note except the name. I wonder if he told us his name was Chet if the same problems would have occurred. But the second he entered into our domain it was game on. It started small, name-calling, telling him he was a common stink butt, and then it grew and grew. The seed was planted and my deep-rooted desire for revenge culminated in a plan ultimate. One I’m not very proud of.
My next-door neighbor was frequently gone. She had a driveway that dove down to the back of her house where it turned suddenly from blacktop to grass. There marked the start of a short but rather steep hill. The dog had a runner back there, the line stretched from the shed to a tall sturdy pine tree. But the dog was often locked up inside. The driveway was ours to bomb on our bikes, hitting the edge of the blacktop turned to grass and flying down the steep hill. It was exhilarating and dangerous.
We had all attempted this feat hundreds of times. We knew where every nook and cranny was and how to avoid getting injured. We even sometimes dragged our bike ramp over to strategically place at the end of the driveway to get even more air, soaring down the embankment and crashing into the back yard. We never wore helmets or padding. I can’t believe my head is still intact sometimes.
But I realized that Chester would be desperate to fit into the gang, just like I was to fit in at the Catholic school in the city. I would have done just about anything to be accepted by the cool kids. I stayed up late and plotted. The next day I dragged the ramp over to the driveway. Our gaggle was out riding in the street when Chester came back to try to salvage his summer by friending us, probably at the behest of his grandmother or whomever he was staying with. Looking back he was probably going through a rough time. He didn’t know what a piece of shit I can be.
I convinced him to try the ramp. He went over and examined it like a chef looking at produce at the farmers market. I goaded him as did everyone else. He got mad. He rode maniacally to the top of the driveway, turning abruptly at the top and pedaling so fast and hard his face was orange and red. He hit the ramp square in the center and was about to complete the biggest bike jump of his life when it all came to a painful and dreadful sudden stop.
You see I moved the bike ramp back a few feet, calculating the amount of height and distance he would achieve, plus taking into account his height on the bike. Unfortunately, I was dead on. Chester hit the dog line directly in the neck. It stopped him from going forward, his body standing still in the air while his bike flew cartoonishly down the embankment. His momentum made his body swing, his neck the fulcrum on the plastic-coated metal line hung taught. He swung until his body was perpendicular to the pavement and then slammed onto his back, his neck red and swollen. His wind was gone and he wasn’t breathing.
I thought for sure I killed him. My life flashed before my eyes. I saw myself in a cruel 10-year-old kid in jail with serious hardened criminals. Lucky for me he started to make a gurgling noise that slowly turned into breathing. Someone went for help. I think I ran and cowardly hid in the cornfield in back while the older kids dealt with adults, explaining that they weren’t sure why he didn’t see the line, that they’d never seen anyone go so high in the air before. That we’ve all done it a thousand times and that had never happened.
I never saw Chester again. I never got in any trouble for that either. But I didn’t have to. I knew what I did was sinister and awful. We gathered around after and talked about it with child-like wonder. You’re supposed to learn something from events like these and I thought I had, but later in life would make plans as equally sinister, going back to the question my mother often asks me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
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This post is republished on Medium.
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