The Group – Donald

I don’t know how other folks feel, or what they remember, but… I’m not fond of what I recall about myself from elementary school. A fat little kid. Poor. Some friends, but hardly the most popular. Smart, but not a part of the “GT” class. G. T. Gifted and Talented.

People picked on me every day. Every day. I was the poster child for kids who got bullied long before it became a hot topic in today’s social media circus.

I was invited to one birthday party. Roller skating. I didn’t know how to roller skate, so I watched from the side.

I was invited to one person’s house to play video games after school. It was Atari, the only video game anybody knew about at the time. (Pong had fallen out of popularity by then.) Three boys. Me and them. They played. I watched. I went home.

I played one season of little league baseball. We were terrible, but we were good. Amy Hauser, the coach’s daughter, saved us almost every Saturday morning at the Northwest Little League complex. She would hit home runs and I would stand in left field and watch. I held down the bottom of the batting order.

When my father left, I got sick every day at school. It continued for weeks. My teacher was mean. M. E. A. N. I’ll never forget sitting in the office and hearing her tell my mother on the phone, “You’re a terrible parent. You’re trying to replace his father with food and that’s why he’s so fat.”

Life at Old Town Elementary was brutal.

My mother was eventually assigned to teach a half-day at North Forsyth and a half-day at Old Richmond Elementary. (Mercifully, I had to switch schools, too.) We moved to Pfafftown. She rented a house on Seven Hills Road. Gigantic yard. Enormous. The biggest yard I’d ever seen.

Donald Marler lived on the other side of the vast expanse that sat before our house. I looked out the window the first morning and saw Donald trudging across the field carrying a bat and a glove. His younger cousin, Win, was not far behind.

“Hey. Can you come out and play?”

“Play what?”

“Baseball.”

“We don’t have enough people.”

“We’ll play rolly-bat.”

Now, it’s damn-near impossible to play rolly-bat in a field with chopped-off corn stalks dotting the territory, but play we did. The greatest game of rolly-bat ever.

So began our friendship.

My first confidant, comrade and codefendant.

My mama would beg me each morning as she left for school at North, “Jeffrey, you have to stay awake for the bus. You cannot miss school, son.”

I would be sound asleep as the bus passed our house and headed for Old Richmond. I would wake up in a panic, grab my book bag and run across the field to Donald’s house.

“Mr. Marler, Mr. Marler, I missed the bus. Will you please take me to school?”

“Don’t worry. Get in the car.”

Five minutes later he would drop me off at Old Richmond, the best elementary school in the history of the universe, so I could wrestle with the long-division monster in Mrs. Nance’s classroom.

Our friendship kicked into high gear when we were reunited at North Forsyth. Donald is almost entirely and solely responsible for the joy I discovered on the campus hidden on Shattalon Drive.

Donald completely disrupted Eloise Brown’s Spanish class when he started hollering while listening to the ACC tournament on a transistor radio hidden in the collar of his Member’s Only jacket. That was a beautiful day.

He fell out of his desk and rolled around on the floor when Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Moultry started to trade blows during an argument over dictionaries during a 5^th period English class. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Geometry with Sylvia Chadwick. Donald was one of her favorite victims.

“Donald, please stand and recite theorem 4.3 for the class.”

Donald always obliged.

“Theorem 4.3. For the Lord saith, ‘the most reverant pointeth shall disecteth the plain’ and it shall be so, forever and ever with the power invested in me by the city of Pfafftown, with liberty and justice for all. Amen. Member F.D.I.C.”

Germaine Lane would snicker. Mrs. Chadwick’s eyes would turn dark. I would hold myself to keep from belly-laughing, because I knew my mother would shoot me with a bazooka if she found out.

“Thank you, Donald. You may have a seat. That is all.”

“Are you sure? I can recite more, if you would like.”

“Sit down.”

Mrs. Chadwick would subsequently give up and regale us with tales about her husband’s liquid diet for the remainder of the class.

To this day, it is the only class (elementary, junior high, high school and college) during which I learned nothing beyond the value of laughter and friendship. Which is to say, of course, it was one of the greatest classes of which I have been privileged to attend. And it had nothing to do with geometry.

We performed in all the shows together. North Forsyth and Summer Enrichment. I’ve been in a lot of shows. I’ve worked on a lot of shows. I’ve seen a lot of shows. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, and it is way, way, way overdue. Donald’s role as Jacob Marley in SCROOGE may be the finest performance I’ve ever seen in a high school theatre production. It was phenomenal. A tour de force. Bravo.

Donald’s daddy passed away. I cried more for the loss of that man than I did for the loss of my own.

When my mother made the decision that was so rightfully hers and moved into Hospice, I was a bit discombobulated. Lots of people reached out. There was a seemingly endless line of visitors, telephone calls, text messages and voice mail messages. I got lost in the swell.

I picked up Sophia and Miles from school and we made the drive across town to the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home. We walked into Margaret’s room.

A man was standing there. Tall. Beard. I glanced at him since he was lingering near my mother’s bed.

I offered the customary John Deere-inspired-downward-head-bob greeting, “Hey.”

He smiled.

My mother looked at him and said, “He has no idea who you are.”

Well, that caught my attention. It was true. I had no idea. I looked again.

“Donald?”

The twinkling eyes gave him away. It was the only time I cried in the days before my mother’s departure.

Donald has always appeared when I needed someone most. Kinda like an angel. A ridiculously funny angel with an under-appreciated gift for sarcasm. An angel, nonetheless.

I wanted to pull him into the front yard at Hospice and make him play rolly-bat with my children.

We’ve seen each other since. Our children think of Donald as “the man with the motorcycle.”

I think of him as my oldest friend. I’m eternally grateful he made the long walk across that field on Seven Hills Road.

L’Chiam.