Chapter 15

The two-mile run was the midterm exam for gym class that we’d been training the last month and a half for. It was a really dumb choice to have gym class first hour. Mr. Tuglas would lead us down to the track in our running shorts at 7:30 in the morning and, as expected, we would run. The track was in the middle of a grove at the bottom of a hill so all the mist and morning dew would descend down there making the track colder than it really was in the middle of November. All the boys wailed and complained over how their nuts are shrinking and their balls are in their throats, making all the girls laugh because genitals are funny.

When we all got onto the track field and our balls shrunk enough, we started stretching out. Mr. Tuglas announced, “OK! Everyone shut up! Here’s the deal! This is your two-mile run! Gentlemen, you got twenty minutes to go around the track eight times! Ladies, you got twenty-two!”

A bunch of girls complained about this: ”That is so sexist, Mr. Tuglas! We should get just as equal amount of time to finish as the boys! I bet we could run it in fifteen minutes!”

“Shut up, and deal with it,” Mr. Tuglas said back.

“Oh, Mr. Tuglas! You hate me! I’m gonna cry!” a girl would say, gig­gling and slapping Mr. Tuglas on the wrist. Said girl was one of many who were not only fooling around after hours with our noble gym fac­ulty, but were also really happy for that extra two minutes at the end of the exam.

When the two-mile started, I was doing really well. I kept pace with everyone. I breathed deep. I didn’t hurry. I was just moving at a really good pace. It was discouraging when Slawomir had lapped me twice, but he was captain of the track team and lapped everyone else twice, too. We’d all call out, “Look at him go!” Then we’d try to block his path on his seventh lap. No dice though—he’d push right past us like we were the ribbon at the end of his victorious track meet.

The more people who finished and sat down on the grass, the more frustrated I was with myself. I started breathing harder and running faster on my sixth lap, and half the class (even some girls) would call out, “C’mon, Pete! You got this!”

“Hustle, Peter!” Mr. Tuglas shouted. “We wanna go inside!”

“Yeah, Pete! I’m freezing my nuts off!”

“Watch your mouth for the ladies, Paul!”

“Sorry, Mr. Tuglas.”

“Their called ‘balls,’ not ‘nuts.’”

“Balls, Mr. Tuglas. Yes sir.”

I ran so much that I might’ve been on my seventh lap, and it was only I and maybe three other people on the track. (We’re the same four people who always got picked last in basketball.) Everyone was waiting on me, but I had an idea. See, whenever I ran on a treadmill, I liked to close my eyes. I found it really relaxing. I could imagine I’m anywhere—on a beach, in the mountains, anywhere relaxing. I could always think about whatever I wanted to when I ran with my eyes closed. I didn’t have to worry about how much farther I had on the track or who’s looking at me and laughing. When my eyes were closed, I didn’t care about any­thing.

Until I crashed into a plastic garbage bin, of course. Then I had a problem. I fell down and the bin went rolling across the track. Garbage flew everywhere—banana peels, McDonald’s wrappers, failed tests. Meanwhile, on the other side of the track, my class was roaring with laughter. Frozen balls could never trump the not-so-athletic kid in gym tripping over a trashcan. Blood trickled down my kneecaps. “Yeah!” the class shouted. “Go Pete! You’re the fuckin’ man!” Mr. Tuglas just shook his head and wrote in his notebook.

After I picked myself up and started running again, someone shouted, “Good job, faggot!” I looked to my right. On the other side of the fence surrounding the track, where the juniors and seniors played football, soccer and baseball, Jeffrey Ginger was yelling at me. Jeffrey Ginger was a brute of a senior. He was about 6”2’, a rather big-boned individual with black sideburns and an unshaven face. “Stupid faggot,” he said. “Watch where you’re going.”

Jeffrey Ginger intimidated me. Not only was he a senior, but also he was a big senior. His choices of words were a little primitive, but that’s because he was stupid. I wish I could’ve ignored him, but he kept going on until I snapped right back. It was very unlike me.

“Fuck you, Jeffrey!” I shouted at him, and nearly fell over from shocking myself. I suddenly became weak in the knees and everything felt like a dream world. What did you do? I asked myself. Why would you say that to a senior with big black side burns?

“What did you say, you little shit?” he demanded my response from the other side of the fence. (Thank God for that fence.) He was running as fast as me now, circling the track.

“You heard me, asshole!” I wouldn’t let myself shut up.

“You fuckin’ shit! I oughta jump this fence and beat your ass!”

“Fuck you, pussy! I’d like to see you try!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll do it!”

“So get on with it!”

“Bitch!”

“Shit!”

“Cock sucker!”

“Mother fucker!”

My mouth was running a mile a minute, unlike my two-mile-an-hour legs. Jeffrey Ginger and I yelled at each other my entire last lap of the track and before I knew it, Mr. Tuglas was clocking me in for a per­sonal record of twenty-six minutes.

“You just failed your midterm, Peter,” Mr. Tuglas proclaimed to the entire laughing class of 2004 and me. I didn’t care.

Jeffrey Ginger and his class were on their way up the hill to the locker room. Their gym class was over, so they got to go inside for the last twenty minutes and play basketball. Our class was to stay on the track field so that Mr. Tuglas could announce my failure one more time, in case some kids didn’t hear about me running slower than most of the girls and into a trashcan.

On the way back up the hill and towards the gym, some of the guys congratulated me jokingly. “That was one hell of a run, Pete.” “Yeah man. How’re them knees?” They all knew I felt bad enough about making a complete ass of myself out there in front of two other classes, so they tried picking up my spirits. The only thing I could do was lift my head high and laugh it off.

Then I ran into big Jeffrey Ginger sitting on the steps leading into the gym. He was hunched on the stairs like a Neanderthal. His feet were resting on one step under his butt, and he was hanging his wrists over his knees, keeping his hands limp. His neck was arched so much that when he looked up at me, I got completely nervous and found myself extremely unsure of how to react.

Jeffrey was with his girlfriend, Cassandra. She was a tall blonde in my gym class with the finest ass I’ve ever seen in those pink shorts of hers. She was standing in front of Jeffrey Ginger with her back facing me. I would’ve liked to do nothing but stare at her assets, but that would’ve given Jeffrey Ginger something else to glare at me over, as if he already wasn’t going to beat the living hell out of me when I walked by.

All I had to do was look straight ahead when I walked up the stairs, as if to say, Yeah, I called you a mother fucker. So what? But he was glaring at me so much, and Cassandra’s butt was looking so good that I nearly tripped all over again. Just look ahead, walk up the stairs, I kept thinking. Don’t even think about taking another peek at Cassandra’s butt.

By this point, the Shaky Left Hand was going haywire and didn’t even know what to do with itself, I was so nervous. Should I keep it in my pocket? Should I let it swing awkwardly? What do I do? I ran out of time de­ciding what to do with Shaky and I found myself with a big chunk of Cassandra’s firm butt cheek in Shaky’s grip.

The moment was only for an instant, but it was enough kindling for the fire to crank up the heat. I was already tired of Shaky getting me in so much trouble and now this? It’ll be OK, I told myself as I tried to coolly walk up the stairs. Just explain to them your disability and how sometimes your left hand gets a little crazy. It’s never grabbed butts before, but there’s a first for everything, so please don’t cave my face in, asshole.

The look of malice Jeffrey Ginger gave was of such displeasure, I stuttered incoherently to them both. “Sorry, umm, my left hand, uhh, surgery… brain tumors.” When I turned around to apologize to Cassan­dra, she gave me a seductive eye. The whole thing just confused the hell out of me—beautiful pink shorts, Jeffrey Ginger’s hunching glare, Shaky’s acting out, and now Cassandra’s lusty gaze—so I just walked to the locker room hoping that Jeffrey Ginger’s fist won’t slam me too hard against the tile walls. My brain is too sensitive for a fistfight.

When we were all crowded in the locker room and guys were na­ked, running around whipping towels at each other, I tried as hard as I could to stay as invisible as possible. I did a really good job of it, too. I didn’t even go to the mir­ror with hair gel. It was impossible to get a spot on the mirror anyway; all the dudes crowded around the 4x5 sheet of glass like it was pornography, painstakingly waxing each spiky tip of their hair and delicately shaping each strand. After this, you’d see the whole group of them tilting their heads every which way, puckering their lips a little bit. Whatever gel any­one had left on the fingers was slid through the eyebrows. It was actually kind of comical to watch the arrogance, but I had more important mat­ters to attend to.

I was able to slip out of the locker room unnoticed. I scurried down the hallway as fast as I could without breaking into a noticeable stride, but stopped (or stumbled) when someone had kicked my back­pack forward. I looked back and saw Jeffrey Ginger fuming.

“Lay off my girlfriend, faggot!” he yelled dopily so everyone could hear him picking on the sophomore. I was actually a little thrilled at the idea of passers-by overhearing that I had the audacity to hit on the football star’s girlfriend.

“It was an accident!” I said.

“An accident, huh? How about I kick your ass?”

“Go for it, prick!”

“I will, little bitch!”

“So do it, dumb-dumb!”

“You’re asking for it, fuckshit!”

“Good!” I proclaimed.

I learned a sacred high school lesson that day. There I was, a ninety-pound sophomore talking back to and swearing at a senior three times my size. I don’t know why my mouth was rambling bad words, but I’m thankful for it because I learned that if you carry yourself strongly and confidently, no one will fuck with you. Ever.

Jeffrey Ginger never kicked my ass. In fact, I’d like to believe that he avoided me in the halls for the rest of the year to also avoid humilia­tion. This was my only confrontation with the fool, and all we did was shout profanities at each other. Since I didn’t show him I was scared, he didn’t have anyone to intimidate, and therefore, no one to feel empow­ered over. And since everyone has the rest of their lives to put their money where their mouth is, we might as well have fun making empty promises to one another while we’re young.

This doesn’t mean in any way that I was glad to have the Shaky Left Hand to show me these life lessons. I still hated it more than any­thing in the world. Why me? Why am I plagued with it? And why is Nick, the popular Italian kid, staring at me in biology class?

“Hey, Pete,” he whispered. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but… what’s up with your hand?”

What’s up with my hand? All I was doing was sitting at my desk lis­tening to the teacher go on about chromosomes or hydrogen or some­thing, and Shaky was still getting me in trouble!

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Well man, it was just sorta… waving at me slowly and like… wrig­gling its fingers. I dunno, it was kinda freaky. What’s up with that?”

I was agitated. It was extremely difficult to tell Nick what was “up with that.” I had no idea it was so automatic! I knew it did stupid things like wobble awkwardly at my side, spill tall glasses of milk at dinner and grab Cassandra’s supple buttock, but now it was commu­nicating with people without my knowing! I tried to explain to Nick about the brain tumors and the surgery—the best I could, given that we were in class—but he only shrugged it off and said, “Oh man. Wow. I thought something was kinda crazy about it.”

The Shaky Left Hand was always begging people to ask questions or make snide remarks behind my back. If I walked down an empty hall, except for a small group chatting by a locker, they’d stop what they were doing and stare at my walk. Whenever I passed by, it was not hard to hear the giggling and the footsteps of some idiot doing an impression of my swinging leg.

* * *

“I like your walk,” Mom said when I brought this to the dinner table. “It gives you character.” I was sitting on the other side of the kitchen table, pouring my eyes all over the cloth, and she still said, “It’s a nice little gate.”

“A gate?” I asked, sucking snot and wiping the excess on my sleeve.

“Yeah. You know, it just swings a little bit. That’s all.” Moms are sup­posed to make you feel better by saying, “I think it shows everyone of your past, and you should be proud to have survived such a tragedy!”

“Yeah, that’s fine and all,” I blubbered, “but I’d much rather not have had brain tumors than have to deal with the entire school laughing at my gate.”

“Actually, its spelled G-A-I-T.”

“Oh, OK.”

I never wanted or asked for a gait. The more upset I got, the more frustrated with me Mom became. “Listen,” she said in a tone that told me the subject was closed, “you’re not blind. You’re not mentally disabled. You can walk, you can eat, you can read, and—for Christ’s sake—you’re alive! You survived brain tumors! Do you realize how impressive that is? Just be thankful for that and stop feeling so sorry for yourself! You walk with a gait, and your left hand is a little wacky, but you have them! You look completely normal, and no one will ever notice these things about you unless you bring it up to them!”

I knew Mom was right. Feeling sorry for yourself gets you no­where, but it’s hard when you’re in high school—“the best years of your life,” Dad said—and they’re not the best years of your life.

“You should be thankful that all you have is a bad left side!”

Mom didn’t understand. She could never understand the Shaky Left Hand or my gait. She has never tripped over her own foot in the hallway or grabbed Cassandra’s ass by accident. How could she have?

I imagine that life with the Shaky Left Hand is like a dog’s life with a tail. His tail doesn’t really do anything useful, but if you see a dog without one, you’d be unsettled.

I’m the same case. It would be no dif­ferent if I didn’t have a left hand at all. The only thing it’s good for is so people don’t look at me funny at first. But not like that matters—as soon as I get up to walk away, people whisper, “Why’s that kid walking so silly?”

Sometimes, dogs get yelled at for knocking over vases or clocks or whatever priceless item. Their masters blame them and hit them with newspapers, but it’s not the dog’s fault! It has no control over its tail! He’s excited, his tail wags, he walks somewhere, and CRASH! No more vase, clock, or whatever priceless item.

Same case: I’m hungry, and my potato needs butter. But I get ex­cited for the butter as I’m reaching for it, almost there. I get excited, and my hand shakes. Shakes so much, so excited, and CRASH! Milk over the damn floor! No one hits me with a newspaper, but the feeling of apolo­getic embarrass­ment still sets in.

Since brain tumors are hereditary, marriage might be difficult for me. My girlfriend will have a hard time responding to: “I love you, baby. Will you marry me? By the way, there’s a twenty-five percent chance our children will walk strange. They’ll hate it, I know, but other people will sure get a kick out of it!”

PHRASES TO KNOW IF LEFT HAND DOESN’T WORK:

• “Mom, can you cut this up for me?”
• “No, we can’t park in the handicapped zone.”
• “Well, when I was younger, I had three brain tumors and two strokes…”
• “Damnit.” (used most often in the shower when soap is dropped for the thirteenth time while scrubbing right arm)
• Please don’t pick me.
• “Can you light this joint for me?”
• “Oops—I didn’t mean to grab your boob.”
• “It’s just the way I type.”
• “Sorry.”

PHRASES NOT NEEDED WHEN LEFT HAND DOESN’T WORK:

• “Does anyone want anything while I’m up?”
• “Can you show me how to play that on guitar?”
• “I’ll be Center!”
• “I’ll be Goalie!”
• “I’ll be Defense!”
• “I’ll be Offense!”
• “Yes, I wanted to see about getting a job here as a waiter?”
• “Oh, let me get that for you.”
• “May I have this dance?”
• “Sweet—I love Xbox!” (The controller is too big to play one-handed.)
• “Amen.”