Through stream of consciousness associations I cannot not presently reconstruct I remembered a dude in high school who, for reasons I never came to understand, utterly hated me. I would never have known this if a guy I was friends with had not told me, but once I was informed of this the loathing from him was palpable to me. We barely had any conversations that I can recall so I don’t know what about me teed him off so hard. I don’t remember attempting to remedy the situation, since my basic instincts about this person suggested that he was not worth the trouble. If anything I might have taken it as a badge of honor that I garnered such a strong reaction from a virtual stranger.
If I got any sense of his beef with me it might have been that he seemed to think I thought a little too highly of myself, or that I thought I was smarter than everybody. I was near the bottom of my class rank for much of high school, though in lieu of good grades I was what I think was called an achiever in terms of literary and musical pursuits. If grades were the barometer then I suspect other kids thought I did better than I really did, not that many people gave me much thought to begin with.
I only know what Chris told me about all this but from what he said it sounded like this other guy, Joe, would carry on for long periods of time lambasting me and saying what a horrible creature I was. If Chris provided any details for the fundamental source of Joe’s loathing it was lost on me. I chalked it up to the fact that Joe and I had never really had an extended conversation, or any conversation at all, so wherever it came from his animus and disdain were allowed to fester in their own juices.
That was my conclusion when, about a year after graduation, I bumped into Chris and Joe at the mall during the summer between freshman and sophomore years of college. Chris and I made chit-chat but I could tell from his body language the moment he saw me that Joe’s dislike of me had not faded. His head kind of jerked back and he raised his shoulders, looking at me in a way I have since associated with racism.
Joe was white, as am I, but I have come to think that racism or racial antipathy does not necessarily have to be about ethnicity or skin color.
Aware of Joe’s dislike of me, and sensing it in full bloom as I talked to Chris, I turned to him and asked “How’s it going, Joe?” With that simple question I sensed complete evaporation of his disdain for me. The body language and his countenance changed from something like that of an accuser and shrank to something perfectly friendly and calm. He realized, I think, that I was actually a nice guy after all, and that had we simply had one conversation during high school he might have discovered this on his own.
I also sensed his apparent shift of attitude toward me might have had something to do with simply being out of high school and in the real world, for as much as still being in college put us out there. In the way you can be friends with your teachers after school ends I think he found that being more of an adult encouraged a different level of engagement with people upon whom you might have projected adolescent anxieties as a teenager. But really, if I could find that guy today I wouldn’t mind asking what the hell set him off about me.
I just looked him up. He is still in the Tampa area, working in some capacity in the federal judiciary. Good for him, I guess. Not going to contact him. It has not exactly been bothering me all these years, and I do not remember how it came to mind, but I consider it one of the stranger anecdotes from my youthiness. My mother also found this situation to be exceedingly strange.
Joe is not his real name, by the way.
