Can I Sit With You?

By Michael Procopio
Age 6 to the present

The men in my family loved show tunes. My grandfather, being of Italian stock, listened to opera. My father preferred Broadway musicals. Original cast albums like Cinderella, Camelot, A Chorus Line, and Annie followed us wherever we traveled in his car. My older brother loved big movie musicals, specifically those produced by Arthur Freed and his friends at Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios. Most directly influenced by him, I learned to converse in a language liberally peppered with musical references. We compared the events of our own lives to those which occurred in the movies, usually unfavorably, since it is often difficult to make homework and cleaning up after dogs more interesting than dancing around pirate ships or singing with Munchkins.

In my family, a boy singing songs from The Sound of Music was nothing extraordinary-- in fact, it was encouraged. The subtle changing of lyrics to suit any occasion was applauded by my elder brother. Sadly, singing "I Am Six, Going on Seven" in a voice approximating that of the eldest Von Trapp girl did not translate well to the playground of my elementary school. Worse, my impression of Ann-Margret's frenzied "Smash the Mirror" number from Tommy was not received with applause but with baffled silence, then derisive laughter, which I found confusing since my brother and sister had both loved the impression as I performed it the day before. Upon review some thirty years later, it seems reasonable that a six-year-old boy writhing on the on the grass and pulling at his hair while singing in an exaggerated vibrato might make other little boys uncomfortable. It was clear to them that I was different. It was clear to me that they simply did not speak my language.

By the second grade, my performances were much more subtle; intended for more intimate audiences. To offset the boredom of a long bus ride to Olvera Street in Los Angeles, I decided to entertain my field trip seat mate with what I thought was a subdued interpretation of Esther Williams' playful version of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." The boy sitting next to me had always been kind and therefore, I thought, deserving of my talents. Far from being entertained, he squirmed and moved as far away as he could from me without physically hurling himself from the bus. I thought he'd get it. I thought he'd understand. In a way, I think he did. I don't think he spoke to me again until the third grade. I rode the rest of the way to Los Angeles in silence; my status as a resident alien confirmed.

There were few opportunities to further humiliate myself since I did not sit with other boys at lunch or get invited to their houses after school or even play with them unless compelled to in group sports like dodgeball wherein they sharpened their throwing skills and I perfected my dodging abilities.

If a boy admits to liking show tunes, he invites trouble. If a boy who likes show tunes also admits to dreaming about taking bubble baths with Michael Landon, he invites danger. To my mind, liking musicals seemed a perfectly normal, masculine thing. Blowing kisses to the shadow I saw in the shape of Mr. Landon cast by my night light every evening did not. I'd never heard of another boy doing that, so I kept my mouth shut, which felt unnecessary, since everyone seemed to know anyway.

Names like "girl" and "sissy" were first muttered and then shouted at me. As we got a little older, the words "fag" and "homo" entered the vocabulary. I objected to "girl" since I had no desire to be one, Ann-Margret impression aside. "Sissy" I wasn't so sure about-- I was bigger and faster than most of my taunters, but I was mildly obsessed with people like Charo and activities such as watching Days of Our Lives. By the time fifth grade came and the abandoned fantasies of Michael Landon were replaced by thoughts of holding hands with a tall Brazilian-Swedish boy, I knew my taunters were speaking the truth when they called me a homo; I don't think they meant as a compliment.

The name-calling eventually lead to physical threats. The occasional sock in the arm or leg stuck out to trip graduated to stomach-punching and being shoved against walls. Once cornered in the library by one of the meanest boys I knew, I pleaded with him to leave me alone and warned him of the nearby presence of our school librarian. He laughed and suggested I cry to her as he punched me in the stomach. I weighed my options and decided the best course of action
was to bury my fist in his eye. I was surprised by how much my hand hurt. That never seemed to happen to people in the movies. The following year, the boy was placed in a classroom for children with learning disabilities. I briefly worried that I had caused his brain damage. At least, I thought, he wouldn't be bothering me again. For the most part, no one else did either.

The rest of my elementary school career was spent rather quietly. When forced to play soccer with my classmates, my attention turned to the nearby boundary fence covered in honeysuckle vines. Whenever the vines were in bloom, the class broke from play to swarm the flowers. I'd hum Lena Horne's version of "Honeysuckle Rose" from Thousands Cheer quietly and to myself, since I didn't think anyone would appreciate the fact that I had a song for nearly every occasion. Or understand. Except my brother. I'd tell him, since he was the only person I knew who spoke 'Musical' better than I did. As long as I had him to talk to when I got home from school, I remained relatively untroubled by my scholastic isolation.

When I was 12, three major events occurred that altered the course of my social life: I started middle school, entered into an aggressive attack of puberty and my brother moved to France, where he could watch musicals in French, thus combining two of his greatest passions. Though the news he sent of Gene Kelly dancing and singing with Catherine Deneuve made me nearly faint from excitement, our conversations were few, given the physical distance between us. The combination of being in a new school environment with a rapidly changing body and no brother to confide in made the issue of my own social awkwardness more acute. Since my body and voice had decided change without first consulting me, I decided I might as well go for broke, and change my personality too. Twelve-year-olds are famous for that.

I watched the other puberty-stricken people around me, noting what they wore and what they listened to and eventually learned how to be more like them, to blend in. Never entirely, but enough to be accepted, be invited to parties, and allowed to sit with others at lunch. Instead of humming Cole Porter tunes in public, I started tapping my feet to Adam and the Ants, the Go-Go's, and other musicians favored by 'tweens in 1982. I learned to speak the language of the people around me, to enter their world and shed some of my former reputation as an alien. I succeeded to some degree-- gaining friends and higher social status, but I never felt that I could be completely myself around anyone. On the outside, I could appear as normal-- whatever that was-- as I wanted to be. Inwardly, I felt like an alien passing for human. The names Judy Garland and Fred Astaire never passed my lips in public, no matter how much I wanted them to.

As I got older and entered college, I found what I had secretly given up hope of ever finding-- people my age who spoke openly of Leslie Caron, Alice Faye and Donald O'Conner. People who spoke my language. People like me. And they didn't look like aliens, but rather attractive human beings who were proud of being different from 90% of the general population. Eventually, I learned to look upon my show tune-loving tendencies as a source of pride. Now, I sometimes sing them out loud specifically to annoy people. In fact, if you happen to walk through my neighborhood today and you listen very carefully, you might hear a bit of Mary Poppins, Meet Me in St. Louis, or the sound of other musicals coming from the open window of my home and me singing right along with them. I don't really care who hears it. Unless it's playing too loudly during my downstairs neighbor's nap time. It's one thing to have fun annoying people from time to time, but it's an entirely other thing to be rude to one's neighbors.

by Jason Kovacs
Age 10 and 11 at the time

When I was 9 years old me and my dad moved to Ballard because Dad didn't like Black people and Ballard was the only white neighborhood in Seattle where we could afford the rent. The elementary school in Ballard, Benjamin Franklin Day Elementary, was just like the other five elementary schools I'd been to up to that point except that the building was kind of old. It had cloak rooms with banks of hooks at kid-level and a lot of dark wood trim. It had hardwood floors and big windows. The building was a hold-over from the Roosevelt era and so were most of its teachers: old white guys in short sleeve shirts and polyester slacks who sported thick glasses and bad tempers.

The most popular kid in my 4th Grade class, my first class at B.F. Day, was John Hoffman. John was one of those kids who was just good at everything: good at sports, liked all the right music, always knew the answer, perfect handwriting, perfect grades, perfect hair. I didn't really have an opinion bout John per se. There'd been one like him at every school I'd attended and he was as expected, in his way, as the drinking fountain next to the bathrooms. I was busy being the new kid for the sixth time in three years and John was just another kid who didn't want to talk to me. His indifference was more welcome than the taunting of the bullies, but he never said two words to me and what I realized, at some instinctive level, was that whatever else John might have going for him, compassion wasn't on the list.

When the school year ended all us single-parent kids headed for our "off season" parents' places in far away lands and, when I came back the next year, I ended up getting moved to a mixed 5th and 6th grade class that was created three weeks into the school year. Kids were pulled from overcrowded classrooms to make the roster: two kids from each 5th grade class, two kids from each 6th grade class. And three weeks was long enough for teachers to decide who they didn't like, so I ended up in a class full of kids teachers hated.

It was kind of like The Breakfast Club meets The Dirty Dozen. We drove two teachers to quit in less than two weeks. We set one fire that resulted in the entire school being evacuated. And then we got Mr. Cash, a doctrinaire Jim Henson disciple and all around cool guy. We made a tacit decision to keep Mr. Cash, and so my year progressed.

And while I hung out in my class full of reprobates and morons, John Hoffman was in some other class being perfect. Sometimes I'd see the light of his perfection bursting down the hall, like explosions from an Advanced Placement chemistry class. He'd win the spelling bee, or publish an article in the Seattle Times Junior Journalist Program. The teachers talked about him in the hall. He was the superstar.

And me? I learned to make a bomb out of match heads that year.

The only place John and I had anything to do with each other was on the dodgeball court. B.F. Day had a dodgeball tradition that was unique in my public school experience: on the dodgeball court, kids tried to hurt each other. It wasn't just that we threw the balls as hard as we could, or aimed for each other's heads. I think all kids do that. But at B.F. Day we didn't use the standard red rubber dodge ball. At B.F. Day we used soccer balls, basketballs, and what I can only describe as pain balls: a kind of hard plastic ball that stayed spherical through rigidity rather than air pressure. B.F. Day dodgeball was all about the pain, and I was better at it than almost anyone, even John. However, in spite of my aptitude and my love of the game, I was away from the court the day someone broke John's leg with a soccer ball.

Of course I heard about it after the fact, but there wasn't much to the story: someone threw a soccer ball and it hit John in the knee. The whole joint went at once; the knee bent completely backwards and John went down screaming. We talked about it in hushed tones for the rest of the day and the principal said we couldn't play dodgeball with anything harder than a kickball from now. There was some grousing about that but otherwise we were all just amazed that it was possible: how could you break someone's leg with a ball?

The kid who'd done it, Adam Mitchell, was the temporary superstar and undisputed badass of the court for five whole days. Even with kickballs, kids scattered out of the way of his throws like they were dodging freight trains.

John he was out of school for a week before we heard that dodgeball had apparently saved his life. John had cancer and the tumor had weakened the bone in his knee. If it hadn't been for a fast-moving soccer ball the doctors might not have found it in time and he could have died. He was going to lose his leg above the knee, but he would live, and it was dodgeball that had saved him. And this was another kind of notoriety for Adam Mitchell, but he still wasn't too happy about going back to getting picked last for team-ups.

When Mr. Cash related the story of John's knee to us, Gordy raised his hand.

"Yes, Gordy?"

"Does this mean we can play dodgeball with soccer balls again?" Gordy wanted to know.

And Mr. Cash said, "No."

* * *

After the initial cancer revelation, Mr. Cash gave us a little tutorial about what cancer is and why we never had to worry about catching anything from John. And while he was telling us this he also told us about chemotherapy and radiation therapy and said that John would lose his hair and get sick and lose weight. And the thing Mr. Cash kept emphasizing was that we all needed to support John. That he might feel weird and that we needed to let him know that he still had friends. And Mr. Cash didn't ever come out and say, "John's going to feel like a freak because he's gonna be bald and one-legged in a class full of healthy kids," but that was the message we took away from it. He gave us a phone number at the hospital where we could call and an address we could send cards.

And I thought about that for the rest of the day.

And when I got home that night, I called John.

A kid picked up in the oncology ward -- which I think might actually still have been called a cancer ward back then. I asked if John was there and the kid said yeah, hold on. There was some talking in the background. Then he came back and asked who is it?

"Jason," I said. "Jason Kovacs. From B.F. Day."

"Okay, hold on," said the kid.

More talking in the background. The kid came back.

"He's in the bathroom," the kid said.

"Oh," I said. "Okay. Should I hold?"

"If you want." I could hear the shrug through the phone.

"Um," I said. "Okay."

So he put the phone down and I spent a little while listening to kids talking and laughing in the background. Then the kid came back.

"You still here?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"He's still in the bathroom. Chemo, you know."

"Yeah, okay," I said.

And he put the phone down. More talking and laughing in the background. Much longer wait. The kid picked up the phone again.

"You still there?" he asked.

"Yup," I said.

And I heard the distinctive sound of someone putting their hand over the receiver.

"Oh my god," said the kid. "He's still there!"

And then there was a lot of laughing.

The kid came on again a minute later and he almost had it together, but not quite.

"He's still in the bathroom," the kid said through a grin that distorted his words, even through the phone.

"Mm-hm," I said. "Okay. Thanks. Just. Uh. Tell him I called I guess."

"Sure thing," said the kid, and I could hear more laughter in the background; full on belly-laughing this time, and the kid was barely keeping his voice even.

And that was that.

I hung up the phone and stared at it for a while, thinking things over.

I tried it three more times later in the week, just to make sure I understood what was happening, and it was the same routine every time.

* * *

A few weeks later we heard that John had his surgery and everything went well. We heard he was doing wheelchair races in the halls and that the doctors were amazed at his progress. A month or two later he came back to school on crutches, with a fake aluminum leg.

The leg was on a catch, so John could make it fall off by pushing a button on his thigh. This was a big hit with the other kids and John was a superstar again in no time. As it happened, this was right about the same time Terry Fox, the famous one-legged cancer amputee, was making his epic run across Canada and so, of course, John started training for that right away and everyone knew he was going to make it.

As far as I know, he did.

He was still improving like a superhero two months into the next year, our sixth grade year, when a custody dispute took me out of town for four months. And by the time I got back to Seattle the school year was mostly over with.

I dropped out for my seventh grade year and my dad took me with him to Los Angeles.

I still think about John a lot.

I guess it's a good thing that he didn't ... I don't know -- lower his standards to talk to a guy like me just because of a little cancer?

I don't know.

But that's the story of John Hoffman. Or at least it's my story of it.

We'll publish a longer essay tomorrow, but as this short piece is too cute we thought we'd offer it up as an amuse bouche.

Catching On
By Victoria A. Laraneta
Age 9 at the time

I went to a small grade school in the Midwest. Kick-ball was the favorite recess sport back in the 1950's...sort of like baseball, only no bats and big heavy red rubber balls. I was always the kid who fell down on the way to school or the clumsy girl who tripped on the stairs. So at recess the team captains took turns picking the kids they wanted on their teams. I was always the last one standing. "You take her!'' "No, you take her!"--that's what I always heard.

It went on like that for me all through junior high and high school too.

When I was 40 I was trying to learn to play tennis...and I realized I didn't have any eye hand coordination. My tennis instructor taught me and it became a whole new world for me.

I think it is pretty cool now when my husband throws me the car keys and I can catch them.