I’ve been called a nerd. When I rattle off the social security numbers of my family and all our bank accounts and insurance policy numbers without fault, the phone numbers of the entire department and the journal, volume, and page number of just about every reference I have cited in the last ten years, people think I have an autistic streak. Could be true. To me it’s a very useful, but unfortunately not ubiquitous ability – I’m certainly not blessed with complete eidetic memory. In fact, just as frequently I have been likened to the archetypical distractible professor, and that could be true too. I mean I am a professor and sometimes I can hardly remember in the afternoon what happened in the morning, or what it was my darling wife asked me to buy on the way home, or where I put the little note I wrote it down on. (Mercifully, my wife knows me very well and usually sends a text message too!)

All up I guess my memory is pretty selective and that I am indeed a true science nerd. But there are also personal things that stand indelibly etched in my memory. Scenes I can recall in HD 3D vision and surround sound – even touch, taste, and scent. To this day I can remember exactly how I met Mindy. When I close my eyes, and think about it, I am transported back many years to a fall morning some weeks into my sophomore year of high school.

I shouldn’t even have been there; a trivial mechanical mishap ended up having a profound and lasting influence on my life. But life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans, as John Lennon put it, and suddenly I was in the middle of a situation that I couldn’t walk away from. This is the story. It starts with a loud yell.

“Pick on someone your own size!” I bellowed.

The two 13-year-olds spun round in shock. They had been too busy tormenting a small black-haired waif of a girl to notice my approach. Despite being over 6-foot-tall and heavily built, I could move quietly on my trainers.

“What’s the chink to you?” one of the boys taunted. A second later he was lying on the ground screaming – my large open hand had hit him over the ear with such force that he toppled.

“Don’t you EVER use that word again,” I said making my voice as menacing as I could, poking his stomach with the tip of my shoe.

His friend backed away in fright. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t apologize to me – apologize to the little girl,” I hissed.

Just then the school bus arrived, and the two boys scrambled in. “Up you hop,” I said to the girl. She had been looking at me with big, frightened eyes. Now she smiled a shy smile of relief, wiped the tears away from her small face with her sleeve and entered the bus. She sat down next to another girl of Asian descent up the front while I made my way down towards the end of the bus. Passing the two assholes, I stared angrily at them. The more passive friend looked down, but the punk I’d slapped still looked defiant.

I joined the other high school kids at the rear. “To what do we owe the honor of your presence on this lowly mode of transportation?” my friend Jeff intoned. Like me he was just shy of 16 but even more massively built and an up-and-coming star on the football team. The juniors and even seniors worried that he would soon supplant them as a starter. Fears that turned out to be well founded. But despite this he was so unlike the stereotypical football player. He is bright, witty, well-read with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare and Donne – and he has always been exceedingly well behaved. He was and is also completely monogamous. He and Michelle have been joined at the hip since they were all of eleven and already back then it was a foregone conclusion that they will be together ’till death do them part. Not that the cheerleaders didn’t try to catch Jeff. Oh, did they try. To them Michelle was plain and with Jeff sculptured like a Greek God, they tried everything to lure him away. But that never happened, and it never will.

But I digress. My presence on the bus in fair weather was unusual, so Jeff’s convoluted question was a valid one.

“A burst inner tube,” I replied darkly. “And not enough time to fix it.”

“Tough,” Michelle said. “And if the weatherman’s right we’ll have the pleasure of your company from next week onwards. This beautiful warm spell is about to end.”

I nodded gloomily. Fall had been interrupted by three weeks of unseasonably warm weather, but all good things come to an end and winter would be just around the corner. That meant an end to riding my bike to school. It’s just too much of a hassle to be soaked or frozen or both every morning.

The bus chugged along its endless serpentine route, but finally we arrived at the schools. I saw the little girl hasten towards the junior school buildings, looking back over her shoulder several times. She was clearly worried that her tormentors would try one more time. At one stage she was looking towards me. She caught my eye and I waved to her. She let up a stunningly beautiful smile, waved back and moments later she arrived in the safety of her own compound. The schools are well policed; I doubted the assholes would try anything there.

“Who’s your pretty little friend?” Michelle asked. She had noticed the waves and the smile.

“Oh, just some kid that got picked on by a couple of middle school punks,” I replied. “One of them used a racial slur, so I taught him a lesson. I guess it will be a couple of hours before he can hear in that ear again.”

“Saint George to the Rescue,” Jeff chuckled. “But good on you – that kind of thing is just too low.” Michelle’s mom is African American so the two of them know the ‘little racism’ all too well. I saw him squeeze Michelle’s hand and her face softened into the look of fathoms deep love that she’s felt for Jeff for years.

We entered the high school building and had no more time to talk.

Perhaps some introductions are in order. As you will now know, my name is George - George David Macintosh. I am the youngest of four children. Very much the youngest; my sisters were 14, 17 and 19 respectively when I arrived on the scene. Mom, Lilly, and Dad, David, never made any secret of the fact that I was a big surprise. Mom affectionately refers to me as ‘the loveliest accident that ever happened to her.’ With my sisters so much older, I was essentially an only child. Not that they disliked me – my sisters are great – but with the age span as big as it is, I relate to them in a different way than I guess ordinary siblings do. Fair enough; it is almost a generation. As I said, my oldest sister Elisa was 19 when I was born and already married. She had her first child shortly after, so my oldest niece Cathy is less than a year younger than me. Kelly was a junior in high school when I arrived, and she copped a lot of flak for suddenly getting a baby brother. She brushed it off with “Better Mom than me!” which was to the point since several of the girls in her class had gotten pregnant and that is not the greatest idea when you’re trying to finish school. Having to babysit me could have stifled her social life, but one of her classmates – a quiet lanky lad called Howard – was happy to keep her company. They’ve been together ever since. Betty, the youngest of my sisters, reacted the way many young teenagers do when confronted with their parents’ sexuality. She was in a constant state of embarrassment and opposition to my parents – until the day I was born. She instantly bonded with me, and Mom swears Betty changed my diapers more often than Mom did herself. Betty is now the mother of three boys who have always hero-worshipped their young uncle. So yeah, I had a swarm of nieces and nephews from close to my age and downwards, but no younger siblings. And so, I was effectively an only child from before I started school.

Mom was a stay-at-home-Mom when my sisters were small but had reentered the workforce several years before my unexpected arrival. Her boss did the dirty on her and sacked her the minute he knew of her pregnancy, using one of those blanket bullshit excuses of ‘downturn in business’. Having no education, Mom was working as a check-out lady at a supermarket. There was really no reason for her to stop working at least until shortly before I was due, and her dismissal was a financial blow. She has managed to get the odd temp jobs from when I was around 4, but she never made much money. Dad has no formal education beyond high school either. He has worked in manufacturing industries all his life – most recently for a company specializing in surface treatment of all kinds of materials – and received enough on-the-job training to be a very skilled technician. Unfortunately, many manufacturers have moved offshore, leaving very few jobs for people like my dad. So, while we were not exactly poor, we were very low middle class.

It was reflected in where we were living too. Yes, we had our own house. But it was right on the outskirts of the “nice” area of town. The house was always in good repair with the yard looking nice, but just a street or two away it was decidedly slum. And that’s where the little girl I had “rescued” lived.

I didn’t know that at the time, nor did I expect to find out, had I even thought about it that day. When I got home from school, I fixed my bike. It’s not that a blown-out inner tube would normally have stopped me; I can replace one of those in minutes, but one of the spokes had poked through the rubber band on the rim, ripping the inner tube – and it would do so again, of course. I replaced the spoke and the rubber band and had the bike in working order in about half an hour, so the next two days – Thursday and Friday – I rode it to school again. But that turned out to be the end of the season. It was raining massively all weekend and Monday morning the howling winds had turned northerly and there was sleet in the air.

The greatcoat I was wearing was a hand-me-down, but it was warm and waterproof, and I was comfortable while making my way over to where the school bus stops. My little friend was less fortunate. Her thin clothes were completely unsuitable for the weather – she was drenched and cold. Adding to her misery were the two morons from the week before who were engaging in some heavy-duty bullying – racially slurred taunts; pushing and shoving her out of the minuscule shelter to make her even wetter and colder. I snapped at this mindless display of evil bigotry and banged their heads together from behind. “I told you to lay off of that kid,” I bellowed. Dazed they tumbled away. Their physical injuries were limited, but one of them was crying – the blow to his self-esteem more severe than that to his head.

I ignored them and squatted down in front of the little girl. There were tears mixed into the raindrops running down her pretty little face too. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mindy,” she sniffled.

“What grade are you in Mindy?”

“Fourth,” she replied shyly.

Fourth? That would make her 10 years old. Frankly she looked even younger – barely 8, but I didn’t know all that many Asians, and I supposed that she was just small.

“I’m George. I’m in tenth grade and if those two morons annoy you again then let me know – and I’ll deal with them, OK?”

“OK,” she said. Still only a whisper, but she looked much happier.

When the bus arrived, I took her hand and helped her up onto the bus. I sat her down next to her usual friend, got a towel out of my sports bag and dried her hair and face the best I could. She and the friend giggled. I then made it down to the back of the bus and suffered a bit of good-natured banter about ‘liking them young’. When we reached the school Mindy almost ran off to her own building – partly to escape the rain, partly to avoid trouble, but when she reached the gate, she turned around and waved. Jeff, Michelle, and I all waved back. “Today’s good deed?” Jeff mused.

“Something like that,” I replied.

I had one more good deed in mind, though. Mindy was smaller (although not younger) than all of my nieces, so I rang Elisa after school and asked her if she had a winter coat suitable for a girl of around 8. She did.

“Sure I do, George – Stephanie has grown out of her coat from last year. Why?”

“Oh, I have this little friend who seems underdressed,” I replied. “She’s in fourth grade, but she is Asian and tiny. She looks more like 7 or 8.”

“Stephanie’s old coat would be fine then. It’s really pretty – she was upset she’d grown out of it,” Elisa said. “Who is the girl?”

“Mindy? Oh, she’s just some kid that got picked on at the bus stop. I stopped the bullying, but I couldn’t stop her shivering.”

“That’s just like you!” Elisa said. “Come over and get it any time. With Steph the youngest of the girl-cousins, we’d donate it to charity otherwise.”

I did my homework, had dinner, and then walked over to Elisa’s place. “Mom says you’ve found yourself a girlfriend,” Cathy – my oldest niece – joked. “About time too.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” I laughed back. “She’s ten but looks seven. Hardly girlfriend material.”

“I should hope not!” Eric, Elisa’s husband, said in a mock-worried tone. “Or we wouldn’t dare let you be alone with Steph!”

“Dad!” the sisters intoned in unison. “That’s gross!”

“Just joking,” their dad said. “I’m sure George will find someone his own size.”

We chatted for a little while, but it was a school night, so I left less than an hour later – armed with a very pretty, and very warm, winter coat.

I was strangely apprehensive the next morning. I arrived at the bus stop so early that I was there before anyone else. The two morons came next. They were scowling at me but held the peace – aware from painful experience that I could kick their butts at will. Next came Mindy. She spotted her tormentors and got a haunted look in her eyes, but then she saw me, and her face lit up in the sweetest smile I have ever seen. She bee-lined straight for me. She was dressed in the same thin jacket as yesterday; it wasn’t raining that morning, so she wasn’t wet, only cold. I squatted down in front of her. “Hi Mindy. I’ve got something for you,” I said and pulled the coat out of a plastic bag. “I reckon this will keep you warm.”

Her face was a mixture of confusion and tentative joy, like she didn’t really believe this was happening to her. “Come on,” I coaxed. “Take that jacket off and try this on instead.”

“But why...” she faltered. Though she did unzip her jacket.

“Because I could see you needed a warmer coat,” I replied.

“Where did you get it?” she asked. “Do you have a sister?”

“Almost. I have a niece who is little bigger than you,” I replied. “She’s grown out of it, but it is still good. I thought it would fit you fine.” I helped her into it, and my estimate was right. It was perfect for her.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It is the nicest coat I’ve ever had.”

“That’s lovely, sweetheart,” I replied. Moments later the bus pulled up. Her small hand reached out for mine and I helped her get on board again.

She sat down next to her friend. “George gave me this coat,” I heard her say excitedly while I made my way to the back of the bus and my friends. “And he was there when I got to the bus stop, so Tim and Paul didn’t hurt me today.”

I felt good. My family is not rich in a material sense, but there has always been plenty of love to go ‘round. My parents have instilled me with do-the-right-thing ethics, and I suppose that’s what motivated me to help Mindy.

“Your little friend is better dressed for the season today,” Jeff observed when we got off the bus.

“Eh, yes,” I agreed.

I must have blushed or something. “Is that your doing?” Michelle asked – she reads me like an open book.

“Um, yes,” I replied. “That’s Stephanie’s old coat.”

“You are just too sweet sometimes,” Michelle said. “Just too sweet.”

“Positively a softy,” Jeff said. They were both smiling broadly.

Next morning, I was early again, and, in another repeat, Mindy went straight over to me when she arrived. She didn’t say anything, but she looked warm and snug in the “new” coat and happy to be safe from Tim and Paul. When the bus arrived the hand-holding ritual was repeated. Today her friend wasn’t there and halfway through the route I noticed that Tim was once more picking on her. I made my way up to the front.

“Come down and sit with me,” I said.

Mindy nodded – her eyes were brimming with tears. I turned to Tim.

“I don’t want to risk a suspension. Otherwise I would wipe you out here and now, punk!” I snarled at him. “But watch your step once you’re off school district property.”

I took Mindy’s hand and walked her down to the rear of the bus. That was unheard of. According to the unwritten rules of the school buses only high school students can travel in the rear. And in fact, there were no vacant seats, so I sat down again next to my friend Joe and lifted Mindy up on my lap.

“Hi guys. This is Mindy. She sits with us until those pricks up there learn to leave her alone,” I said.

My statement was met with calls of “Sure thing!” and “Hi Mindy!” Michelle, who was sitting with Jeff right on the other side of the aisle, got out a Kleenex and wiped the tears from Mindy’s little face. She was initially sitting upright and tense, but after a little while she relaxed and snuggled into the hollow of my shoulder. When we reached the school most of my friends called “See ya’ Mindy”, “Have a nice day!” and similar friendly greetings. She was almost skipping over to junior school.

It became a pattern. Each morning we would meet up, board the bus hand in hand and Mindy would sit on my lap until we got to school. She never said anything except a shy little ‘hi’ when Michelle, Jeff or Joe greeted her. But it was obvious that she felt safe. And it was obvious that my friends more than merely tolerated her presence. After some initial modesty – undoubtedly feeling they had to be good on the principle that ‘little pitchers have big ears’ – the usual high school banter resumed. That this little pitcher did indeed have big ears was apparent only to me. On more than one occasion a bawdy remark made Mindy chuckle, but so quietly that only I felt it. I squeezed her arm lightly and she squeezed mine back.

In early December my grandmother died. It was hardly unexpected; she was old and had been ailing for years so I guess you can say death came as a release. Definitely for my aunt too; Gran had been living with my dad’s oldest sister for many years. Their house was some fifty miles away, so we all drove over for the funeral. It was a Wednesday which meant that I – and all my nieces and nephews – had to get a day off school. The service itself was pretty uninteresting but we had a great wake afterwards. All up it felt like a holiday. Mom had a couple of glasses of wine more than usual and was very outspoken on the way home. Her comments about her mother-in-law had Dad in stitches. Apparently, there had been little love lost between Mom and Gran. That didn’t really interest me much. But seeing Mom like that – ‘tipsy’ I guess is the polite description – was fun. Compared to many of my friends’, my parents might seem ancient. But that was just their chronological ages. There was nothing staid about them at all.

That evening Michelle and Jeff dropped in. “Your little friend missed you this morning,” Jeff observed. “Those two assholes seized the opportunity to torment her in your absence.”

“Was she hurt?” I asked – feeling unaccountably guilty for not being there for Mindy.

“I think they had pushed her around a bit,” Michelle replied. “But I went up to the front and got her. She sat next to Joe as usual. She wouldn’t sit on his lap, but she let him put an arm around her.”

“Good for Joe!” I said. “I didn’t know he was such a softy too.”

“Are you nuts?” Jeff exclaimed. “Joe adores her – he talks of her as our mascot!”

“That’s an idea,” I grinned. “When you and Joe take over the football team you should suggest to Coach that you adopt Mindy as the Team Mascot.”

“She would be just adorable in a mini football jersey,” Michelle laughed. “She is criminally cute.”

We were all laughing.

“Only, she will not stay that small, of course,” Michelle mused. She was looking at me with a teasing glint in her eyes.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She’s already beautiful,” Michelle said. “In a few years she’ll grow into being sexy as all get out. You’d better watch it!”

“Oh please,” I countered. “She’s six years younger than me, for crying out loud. I’ll find someone my own size.”

“Perhaps,” Michelle said. “But mark my words – you’ll end up with Mindy.”

I really didn’t think much of Michelle’s ‘prediction’. I was providing physical – and emotional – safety for a little girl and I felt really good about that, but there was no intention of getting further involved in Mindy’s life. In all honesty we didn’t really know each other, and our worlds were just so different. And had it not been for the escalating nastiness of Tim and Paul, I’m sure we would have remained just “morning bus friends” until Mindy was big enough to look after herself, or the two punks lost interest.

Alas, one day in January when I came out to catch the late school bus home with the other high school kids, Mindy was waiting at the shelter. That was unexpected since her day was much shorter than ours and she was a latch-key kid, having no access to the expensive after-school care.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” I asked. “Did you get detention or merely miss the earlier bus?”

I had expected a giggle – Mindy getting detention was as likely as the NRA campaigning to repeal the Second Amendment. Not this time; no giggle came. Mindy was blue with cold despite the coat, and she was looking scared, almost haunted. She started crying and I could barely understand her mumbled request to travel with me.

“I think something’s happened,” Michelle said. “You pick her up and I’ll get her bag.”

Jeff and Joe weren’t there – they were training with the football team (indoors since the weather was freezing), so Michelle and I sat together with Mindy on my lap. I opened both our coats, pulling her close to my chest and wrapped my big coat around her in a bear hug. She rested her little tear-stained face on my chest and held on to me fiercely. She was shivering both with cold and distress.

Slowly she warmed up; slowly the shivering ceased; slowly we coaxed the story out of her. It was sickening. On those days where Tim and Paul got off at the same time as Mindy, they would bully her mercilessly. Not on the bus, they were “smart” enough to avoid that, but all the way from the bus stop and home.

I’ve never been a violent person, but everyone has their limit of endurance. My anger was white-hot and Joe and Jeff, whom I talked to later that day, were in complete agreement. What we did was not pretty and it’s not something I’m proud of, but it was effective. Essentially, we set Tim and Paul up; we skipped out of study hall early a few days later, having told Mindy to go home as usual, and hid out in a narrow alleyway along her route home. As we expected, the assholes were after her – taunting, pushing, shoving, and slapping. We could hear their taunts and Mindy’s heart-breaking cries well in advance. It was all that I could stop myself from running out and stop it, but I gritted my teeth and waited. When they passed us, Joe and Jeff grabbed the punks and pulled them into the alley. They were silenced with cloth gags, blinded with hoods, and whisked out of sight. Mindy turned around wide-eyed when she felt rather than heard her tormentors disappear. She was about to yelp for joy when she saw me, but I put my finger in front of my mouth to silence her and she complied. I knelt down in front of her, put both my hands on her shoulders and said “Mindy – you have seen and heard nothing. Okay? Just go home!”

After a brief confused silence, she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”

I didn’t break any bones. I didn’t damage their eyes or teeth. And I largely left their balls intact. But there was hardly a square inch of their bodies I didn’t bitch-slap. They were bruised and sore all over and we had the somewhat disgusting satisfaction that both of them urinated from fear and Paul even voided his bowels.

Of course, they squealed like pigs but neither of them actually saw Joe and Jeff who in turn were adamant that they had been with me while we all worked studiously on our assignments, and our friend Hank – who stayed behind – had managed to hand in work written in advance by the three of us amongst his own to the doddering old teacher supervising study hall.

I was nonetheless called to the office the next day – and again two or three times the following week to be grilled by the principal and the SRO, but I claimed complete ignorance and innocence and when asked why Tim and Paul would blame me, I said I wasn’t really sure, except I’d had reason to call them out on racist behavior and perhaps they’d decided to get revenge. Tim and Paul naturally denied ever doing anything like that, but a sworn statement from Michelle – who was Class President – confirming their behavior towards a primary school kid, undermined their credibility. In the end it was a stalemate: I was admonished for the previous slapping at the bus stop (which I had to admit to) and told I should have reported it instead, but I was cleared of the more serious assault – after all, I’d been checked in at roll call and my assignment returned at the end of the hall. Tim’s and especially Paul’s parents wanted to pursue the matter, but there was absolutely no proof – and with their offspring’s’ racist behavior out in the open, they ended up having to back off.

And the persecution of Mindy stopped. Paul evidently believed the menacing “next time you touch her, you die” that I’d whispered in his ear. That is what caused him to shit his pants – a fact all of middle school seemed to know. It is not cool to be known as shitty-pants and pissy-pants respectively when you’re 13 and trying to be tough.

After this episode, any pretense that Mindy wasn’t important to me was just that: Pretense. And for pretense I have very little patience. Soon after the final chapter of the Tim and Paul punishment had been played out – resulting in the aforementioned stalemate, I moved my “pseudo sibling relationship” with Mindy to a new level: I had told Mom and Dad all about her (although I left out the details of the physical punishment of Tim and Paul, my parents were just told that that my friends and I had taken decisive action). Knowing that Mindy was a latch-key kid left home alone in an unpleasant neighborhood every afternoon, I asked Mom if perhaps Mindy could come home to us “sometimes” instead. Unsurprisingly, Mom agreed.

I asked Mindy who equally unsurprisingly agreed too, and so I brought her home – holding her little hand of course – to have her enveloped in Mom’s loving care.

“This is Mindy”, I said unnecessarily, moving her in front of me for Mom’s inspection.

Mindy inspected too. No actual words passed between them; Mom simply opened her arms and Mindy walked into them. And that was that. Milk, cookies, and homework were the order of the afternoon, and then I walked her home.

We started out with the one day a week where our school day ended at the same time, but before I knew it “sometimes” turned out to be much more. Mindy would come home to us just about every school day – she even got a key to our house, so she could let herself in if Mom was shopping, or – rarely – in a job. With stability and stimulation, Mindy’s already excellent grades exploded. She was soaking up knowledge like a sponge. She took a keen interest in anything I or my parents told her; she explored our modest “library” and we talked about everything.

Her wardrobe also improved: Elisa came over one afternoon; she met Mindy, and fell instantly in love with her, and after that Mindy received all the clothes that my girl cousins, mainly Stephanie, grew out of.

The wardrobe upgrade is what finally woke Mindy’s mother up to the fact that something was afoot in her daughter’s life. You can fault me for not involving Mindy’s mother earlier – although perhaps a 16-year-old boy cannot be expected to think of such social niceties. Or you can blame my parents or older sisters – the presumably responsible adults – that they didn’t either, but they were unaware that Mindy’s mother had been left in the dark.

Either way, when she finally discovered a lot of clothes she hadn’t seen before in the laundry, she was shocked, suspicious, and angry (and possibly a little ashamed). I don’t exactly know what happened in Mindy’s household that Saturday afternoon – Mindy was hesitant in telling, but the outcome was that Mindy’s mother showed up at our doorstep wanting an explanation. She had brought a crying Mindy to be able to find us. Mercifully Mom opened the door.

“Mindy, sweetheart, what is wrong?” Mom asked when she saw Mindy’s wet and puffy little face.

“Mrs. Macintosh, I...” Mindy started before she dissolved in tears.