Never Been Kissed

This post is going to be a sharing moment, something my friends have claimed I don't do enough of....It isn't to ilicit sympathy or thoughts of woe. I have a feeling however, my buddies won't let me live this confession down.

I recently donated blood to the American Red Cross. I give whenever I can, which is every three months. My church usually has a drive every three months, so I qualify, stick my arm out and let them drain me of this much needed human commodity.

The place they hold the drive is on the same grounds that I went to school. Yes, I'm the product of a Catholic school upbringing. Light blue oxford shirts with dark blue pants for boys and white oxford shirts with pleated plaid skirts for the girls. Boys walk on one side of the stairwell, girls walk on the other to the lunch room. Prayers were said before class started and at the end of the day. Whenever I pass the school yard on sunday services, the memories overwhelm me like the smell of disinfectant in a hospital hallway.

When it was my turn to lay my arm out--to be poked I heard the children from the school pour out into the yard for recess. The sound of their voices could not subdue my fear of needles. You would think as many times as I've donated, been practiced on by fellow medical students, and had shots that this would be nothing for me. Surprise, I always let out a yelp when I get stuck. And I feel a little lightheaded as I watch the blood drain from my arm into the bag below. Just my blood, makes me feel this way. Watching the other donors get stuck or watching their blood pour forth has no effect on me.

Anyway, when I tilted my head, I saw my nephew Elias pass by the window. He was holding one of those big red balls we use for dodgeball. I thought about a visit with him after they pulled this gi-normous needle from my vein. Then I heard several voices scream out "We're ignoring you, we're ignoring you!" in a taunting tone. My heart slowed, skipped a beat and I'm sure the blood flow stopped. I was thinking, why would someone be mean to Elias.

Like a B-movie flashback, I was once again in the sixth grade. Faces of former classmates circling around me in a kaleidoscope manner, each face blurring with the next. Instead of taunting however, their mouths didn't move. No one was exactly mean to me in grade school. They just didn't know I existed. Just an invisible little boy--with about two, maybe three friends at the most. I hated going to school, not because I didn't want to learn, but because being ignored is worse than being teased. This stayed with me throughout high school. I occasionally got ribbed for one thing or the other, but for the most part remained a faceless, nameless fly on the wall. I observed while everyone else lived what I can only imagine was a life like Brandon and Brenda Walsh. I didn't even know what a high school party was like, until I came home from college one weekend to visit my siblings. They were part of the "in-crowd". They had the parties which destroyed my parents home (thus causing migraines whenever my parents went out of town).

This all changed for me when I went to college. A fresh new start. No one really knew me, save the few people who came from my school. I went from oblivion to something more--had quite a few friends and a few parties which destroyed our apartments--thereby losing our deposits. I went from being introverted to extroverted, speaking up whenever I got the chance, unafraid to tell people what I thought. And my opinion actually mattered to more than just three people.

Flash forward..a woman's voice coming in muffled and then clearly....the nurse told me I was all done. I immediately went to the playground to find Elias. I was going to explain to him that today's shadows are tomorrow's light. However, what I did find was that he was one of the boys taunting someone else. Before I could cut in and save this other child from humiliation, another line of kids cut across me, severing me from the "mean" boys. By the time they disperesed onto the playground, Elias and his friends had gone their separate ways. And because everyone was dressed the same, I couldn't remember which little boy was the outcast.

I was going to pull Elias aside and explain to himthe rule of not being mean. But I know that being disciplined by one of your relatives on the school playground can also cause severe stress. I looked again for the tormented kid. Just a sea of blue and white shirts. I hope when he gets older, he'll realize that the playground is just that, a playground.