Chapter 12: When I Was Little

My father decided about the time I could walk that I’d be a Major League Baseball player, providing a rich and comfortable retirement for him and Mom. I was a disappointment. But nonetheless, when I was five, and he still thought he could determine my life, he bought all the equipment for T-ball and set it up in the back yard: A tee, a sponge ball, a glove, a bat, a net so he wouldn’t need to chase down my home runs, and a batting helmet, just in case I hit myself in the head with the bat.

We actually had a team in first grade and I dutifully went to practices and games. Then one day, Dad had to be gone and didn’t come to practice or a game or some such. With no parent to stand up for me, I became Simon’s target. He was already six inches taller than me and was the class bully. It was going to be a long twelve years. He laughed at my bat because it was only twenty-two inches. He didn’t have his own bat, but the school bat he used was twenty-six inches. Mine looked puny.

Then he grabbed my bat away from me.

“Bet I can hit a home run with this,” he said. He swung. The ball wasn’t his target. He hit me right across the back. I fell down and started crying. Like most bullies, as soon as there was a fuss, he took off running, and he took my bat with him.

Dad wanted to know where my bat was when we went to the back yard to practice that weekend. I told him I didn’t know. I lost it. He was disappointed, but he was really a pretty good parent. We sat down and he told me that it was most important that I do what makes me happy and that he wasn’t going to make me play T-ball if I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to. Of course, I didn’t want to go to school either, but that was non-negotiable.

I didn’t see the bat again for several years. It must have been about eighth grade they started dividing us into academic and vocational groups. I didn’t have any more classes with Simon, though I saw him nearly every day on his way to shop class. Then, my senior year in high school, I was walking home and Simon with some of his fellow thugs saw me.

“Just what I need!” he said. “Recognize this, little Neil? I’ve made some improvements to it.” He held up the bat and waved it around. “It used to be only twelve ounces. I took it to woodshop and drilled the core in it. Then I inserted a steel rod. Now it weighs two pounds. Swings nice.”

He liked to talk to his victims, hoping to heighten the fear factor. I didn’t respond frightened enough. He quit talking and just swung it at me. I turned away and covered my head with my hands. The blow landed across my back. Right where he’d hit me eleven years earlier.

I left town and went to college. You know about the diabetic coma. When I woke up, I discovered Lindy Carter, my high school sweetheart, had married the school bully. I left town.

I don’t know how I managed to remember that. It was so long ago. I was more concerned with what happened next.

As Beef swung my old bat at me, Anya screamed and dove in front of me. She deflected the bat with her body and it hit my head with significantly less force than Beef intended. She collapsed into my arms and we fell back on the booth bench where we’d been sitting. We were both dazed, but we could hear Romy hovering over us with 9-1-1 on the line.

Like he’d done years ago, he and his crew quickly left the bar before the police and an ambulance arrived. Anya and I were both conscious when they got there, but they packed us off to the hospital anyway. We never actually saw the police. Romy followed the ambulance. Anya and I were both examined and released after x-rays revealed no broken bones or sign of significant concussion. I was given a concussion protocol to follow for the next five days.