One day when I was six years old, I was leaving school as the bell rang. On the playground, I saw a fourth grader shoving a kindergartener around and punching him in the stomach. The kid was crying. It was terrible.
I couldn’t stand to see it happen, so I snuck up behind the fourth grader and punched him hard in the small of his back. He turned around and I caught a glimpse of his livid, menacing eyes before I threw all of my strength into kicking him in the balls as the kindergartener ran to safety. He grabbed himself between the legs and collapsed to the ground. I’ll never forget his face. His jaw locked open and shook a little. His mouth was an almost perfect O and you could see the pain in his eyes.
I looked down at my foot for a second and then turned to him, unable to comprehend or believe what I had just done. Our eyes met. He looked at me with an unspoken promise of revenge. I just stared him down with nary a trace of emotion on my face, watching the fear creep into his eyes.
“All right,” said a voice coming up to me. “What’s going on here?”
It was Mrs. Anderson, the principal. Just then, I saw the fourth grader look over at her and start bawling. He pointed up at me and sobbed, “He kicked me. It hurts.” Ha. Little scumbag.
I saw the kindergartener leading his teacher, Ms. Marsh over to us. I saw that there was a spot of blood that had pooled on his jeans. I pointed down at the fourth grader and looked Mrs. Anderson in the eye.
“He was punching him and shoving him,” I said, gesturing to the kindergartener.
Mrs. Anderson turned to the kindergartener and said, “Is that true, Evan?”
Evan nodded to Mrs. Anderson and looked over at me, giving me the thumbs-up. I smiled at him.
“Yes or no, Evan?” said Mrs. Anderson.
“Yes,” said Evan.
I shrugged and said, “I just felt like I had to do something.”
“Yes, Angelo,” said Mrs. Anderson, her expression serene, yet stern. “But sometimes you have to choose your battles wisely.”
I blinked a couple of times and shrugged my shoulders. “I think I did,” I said. As far as I was concerned, I certainly thought so. I thought it was too unfair to see somebody picking on somebody younger and smaller than them. It was just inherently wrong.
“Well, Angelo,” said Mrs. Anderson, “I know your heart’s in the right place. But for one thing, it’s my job to make sure people are safe and behaving themselves. For another thing, it’s dangerous to try to be a hero.”
I shrugged. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
There was no way I would let Mrs. Anderson suggest what I had done was wrong. Looking back, yes, it was impulsive, but I knew that I would have I had just walked on by and let Evan get the s**t beat out of him.
Mrs. Anderson turned to the fourth grader as the latter sat up.
“So, William,” she said. “Is it true that you were hitting Evan?”
William looked Mrs. Anderson in the eye. “Yeah,” he said, lowering his eyes with repentance. I pursed my lips to keep from smiling too much. I knew that since there was blood on Evan’s knee, William did not have a lie to tell.
“Why?” asked Mrs. Anderson.
William looked around for a moment, sighed, shrugged and said, “I don’t know,” wincing to indicate that it still ached between his legs.
“Well, that’s not a valid reason, is it, William?” said Mrs. Anderson with a frown.
William sniffled as silent, remorseful tears trickled down his cheeks. “No,” he said, through a silent sob.
“Are you going to apologize to Evan?” asked Mrs. Anderson.
“Yeah,” said William. He turned to Evan and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Now Angelo,” said Mrs. Anderson, looking at me. “Do you have anything to say to William?”
I groaned a little. I really did not want to apologize to William, but I knew that Mrs. Anderson would be angry if I did not. “I’m sorry,” I said, only because I had to.
Mrs. Anderson led me and William to her office. She suspended him for four days and me for three.
As I left Dr. Anderson’s office, I folded up my suspension notice and put it in the back pocket of my jeans. I walked home feeling a little nervous about how my mother was going to react even though I was convinced that what I had done was justified.
As soon as I opened the door to the house, my mother rushed up to me, gave me a long hug and stooped down to inspect my face for cuts and bruises, finding none.
“You’re not hurt?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
Her eyes became sad as she asked, “What happened, Angelo?”
I saw a fourth grader beating up one of the kindergarten kids. So I went over and hit him.”
She sighed and said, “You really shouldn’t do that, Angelo,” she said. The strange thing was that the day before, she told me that she was pregnant with my sister Carla and that one day I would have to look out for her. I remember that she said, “Angelo, it’s a tough world and people have to look out for each other.”
It was an idea that I liked ever since.
“But I couldn’t just walk away,” I said. “I’d feel bad.”
“I know, honey,” said my mother, kissing me on the forehead. “But I don’t want you getting hurt or getting into trouble.”
“Why would I get into trouble for protecting somebody? He made him fall and his knee was bleeding.”
I just could not understand that, and I was a little resentful that I had gotten suspended.
“Who?” asked my mother.
“William,” I said. “The fourth grader. He punched the kindergartener in the stomach a bunch of times and made him fall down.”
My mother looked me in the eye with a strange expression on her face. It looked like she did not know what to feel.
“And then what happened?” she said.
“I punched him in the back,” I said. “He turned around and I kicked him in the balls.”
My mother frowned and her mouth dropped open. “You could have really hurt him,” she said.
Good, I thought.
“He only started crying as soon as he saw Mrs. Anderson, though,” I said. “That’s weird.”
My mother sighed and twisted her lips. I hoped that she would get the point that I was trying to make.
“You’re a brave kid, Angelo,” she said. “You’ve got a lot of heart. But you have to be careful.”
“Am I going to be punished?” I asked.
She gave me a kiss on the forehead. “We’ll talk about it more when your father gets home,” she said. “In the meantime, you should go play with your toys or something. You probably need to relax a little, huh?”
“O.K.,” I said. I ran up to my room and headed straight for my Lego set.
Dad came home just before it got dark. I tiptoed outside my room and snuck into the hallway to hear what he was going to say, taking pains to avoid being seen.
“Jules,” said my father, “these things happen at his age. Besides, he was protecting somebody, and I have a hunch that that kid could have hurt that other kid.”
“I know, Patrick,” said my mother. “But I don’t want to encourage that kind of behavior in him. Besides, what if one day he gets hurt or God forbid, killed trying to be a hero?”
“That’s what happens to heroes sometimes,” said my father.
My mother sighed and said, “Patrick…”
I remember wishing that my mother would give me a little more credit than that. In my six-year-old mind, there was never any idea that I would have died doing what I had just done.
The telephone rang and my mother answered it. “Hello, Julia Doyle speaking,” she said. “Oh, O.K., I sure will, Mrs. Hall. Thanks. Goodbye.”
I could hear her voice try to stay bright, but right after she said “Oh, O.K.” it began to fall a little.
“Who was it,” said my father.
“That was the mother of the boy that Angelo defended,” said my mother with a sigh of fear, confusion and disappointment. Between my father and Evan’s mother, she was being bombarded by case after case against what she had been trying to impart to me.
“Jules,” said my father, “if it makes you feel any better, I’m just as torn as you are. On the one hand, I’m no fan of physical violence in general. But on the other hand -- and I really hate to say it, but I’m proud of Angelo for his courage.”
“I know,” said my mother. “I’m worried though.”
“Jules, Angelo’s a sensible kid if there ever was one. If you want, I’ll talk to him after dinner. Man to man.”
“I would definitely appreciate it, Patrick,” said my mother, her voice beginning to grow peaceful for once.
“Anyway, you’re looking a little worn out today,” said my father. “Should I order us some pizza?”
My mother paused, took a deep breath and said, “Thanks. That would be nice.” Looking back, I think she wanted to be absolutely sure that my father wasn’t rewarding me for what I had done.
We all sat around the dinner table and ate. I was relieved to hear what my father had said, but I did not tell him. From what I can remember, none of us really wanted to talk about it, so the conversation topics were mostly about how much of an idiot the President was and how the Mets were “really something else.”
After dinner, Dad led me to his car and drove me to an ice cream parlor. He ordered me a butter pecan sundae with chopped almonds and toffee pieces and an Oreo cone with chocolate sprinkles for himself.
“Angelo,” he said as he sat down across the table from me, “I really do think that in a lot of ways you did the right thing.
I looked him in the eye. “So you’re proud of me?” I asked. I wasn’t all that surprised, but I needed to hear it from him.
“Yes,” he said. “Truth be told, I don’t like physical violence very much, but all the same, I’m glad you stuck up for somebody.”
I nodded.
“However, since you got suspended, I am docking your allowance for this week…”
I sighed and said, “Aw, man.”
“But otherwise, I’m not disappointed in you at all. Far from it.”
I sighed. “I guess everything works out,” I said.
“That’s right. Angelo, what you did was very brave.”
“I guess so,” I said. “I just didn’t… You know, I would have felt bad if I didn’t do anything."
“I hear you,” said my father. “Just remember that sometimes it’s dangerous to try to be a hero. By the same token, indifference is often a very bad thing.”
“What’s indifference?”
My father took a deep breath and looked down for a moment. “It’s when people just don’t care about something,” he said with a little sadness in his eyes.
“At all?” I said.
“Not at all.”
My father worked as a prosecutor in Bridgeport. He handled cases of robbery, theft, rape and murder. It’s not hard to realize why all the apathy in the world pained him.
“And the worst kind, Angelo,” he said, “is when good people don’t care.”
Hearing my father say that made me feel vindicated for what I had done.
“But if they don’t care, how does that make them good people?”
My father frowned and sighed as he tried to figure out how to answer my question.
“It’s complicated, he said. “Some people would say that everybody’s good at heart. Me, I would like to think that sometimes people do good things and sometimes people do bad things. Some people do more good things than bad, and some people do more bad things than good.”
I nodded. What my father said made a lot of sense to me.
“You’re the smartest man in the whole world,” I said, smiling.
My father laughed. “Well, I think that there’s probably someone out there smarter than me,” he said. “But thanks. I appreciate it.”
The next day at three o’clock, the doorbell rang. I was upstairs in my bedroom reading a book and I heard my mother greeting somebody and letting them into the house. I heard her call me downstairs, so I went to see what she wanted.
I saw Evan Hall and his mother sitting in the living room. My mother gestured to them and said, “There are some people who would like to talk to you, Angelo.”
Evan walked up to me and gave me a high five as I smiled at him.
“I’ve heard about you, Angelo,” said Mrs. Hall, smiling. “Thank you for standing up for my son. I really appreciate that.”
“No problem,” I said, smiling with a little embarrassment.
“My mom wants to know if you wanted to go swimming,” said Evan.
I looked up at his mother who just smiled at me and nodded her head. I turned to my mother and asked, “Is it all right?”
“Absolutely, Angelo,” she said.
It seemed weird. Apart from cutting my allowance off, it appeared as though my parents weren’t very interested in punishing me.
I went upstairs, put on a pair of swim trunks and grabbed a towel. Just before I left, my mother put some sunscreen on me. She handed the tube to Mrs. Hall and said, “Take this, just in case they need more.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Doyle,” said Mrs. Hall.
I wound up feeling even happier that I defended Evan. He turned out to be one of the nicest and most fun people I ever met, and afterward, he invited me back to his house to play video games. At one point he told me, “Thanks for saving my life. I’d save yours if you were in trouble, you know.”
“Cool,” I said, even though I did not want him to feel as though he owed me anything.
If there was one thing I learned from this whole experience, it’s that sometimes, in order to make a friend, you have to be a friend.
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