Courage

Photo by Bilal Ayadi on Unsplash.

All the boys were jumping.

At the end of the schoolyard there was a tall chainlink fence. You climbed it and leaped from the top to a fire escape on the other side of the alley. It looked scary. It looked fatal. Everyone was doing it.

Except me.

Climbing up up up to the tippy-top — then jettisoning yourself across, to safety, to glory.

My shoes were very wide — many E’s — and the toes didn’t fit into the spaces in the fence. Plus my six-year-old arms were weak, and it seemed impossible to pull myself up that way, especially without a foothold.

Everyone was climbing, and jumping. Others rushed past me.

And now Willy was coming.

I imagined myself having somehow gotten to the other side — having climbed up to the top of the fence and thrown myself across the scary gap to the fire escape. Pictured myself with the boys who were there already, cheering and shouting in joy and triumph and waving their arms.

“Yeahhhhhhh!!!!”

But whenever I tried digging the toe of my sneaker into one of the diamond-shaped gaps in the fence, it was just too wide. It didn’t fit. I didn’t fit.

All the boys were running away from Willy. There was something off about him — a scarily big and strong kid who always seemed confused. In the schoolyard boys liked to taunt Willy, then run away. Like a game of tag in which only Willy was It. Tap him on the head, on the back or shoulder, then run like hell.

And on this day Willy had had it with being picked on. He was roaring, and running after his tormentors — everyone — as they scampered away, laughing. And now all were jumping across the alley to safety. Still yelling at Willy, still making fun of him.

Except me.

I was stuck on the same side of the fence as Willy. As if in a bad dream, I could not get myself to go up at all.

And Willy was getting closer.

Till it was just Willy and me at the base of the fence, everyone else on the other side, laughing and chanting and jeering.

Willy put his big hand on my shoulder. There was no escape for me.

I said, “I tried to catch them for you, Willy. I tried! But they all got away.”

His hold on my shoulder softened. For the first time in my life, he looked me in the eyes. And smiled.

“You’re my friend,” he said.

“Yes, I’m your friend.”

From that day forward, no one in the schoolyard — or the whole neighborhood, for that matter — ever messed with me again.