I
I got stabbed in the lip with a stick when I was five years old. I was climbing an old pin oak behind the trailer my family lived in. I only know it was a pin oak because my grandpa would always walk out the door of our trailer after a visit, look at the tree, and say, “That pin oak is getting huge.”
Jeffrey and Jason, twins who lived in a nearby trailer, had noticed the tree’s size as well. I was playing with my toy castle and knights when they knocked on my door.
“We’re going to climb the Big Tree,” Jason said through an excited grin. They asked me to come with them. I told my mom that I was going to go climb the Big Tree and ran out the door with the twins.
Jeffrey and Jason scrambled up the tree like a couple of acrobats. They were talented in that way. Often I would see them scaling trees, tool sheds, and even the trailers we all lived in. The twins were probably a couple years older than I was. I felt that familiar pressure to impress that one always feels around bigger kids. I walked up to the Big Tree and jabbed the toe of one of my light-up Jurassic Park gym shoes into a sunken knot on the surface of its trunk. Once anchored, I hoisted myself upward and grabbed on to a low-hanging branch. I could tell that Jeffrey and Jason were getting situated a few branches up, but I was so focused on what I was doing that everything else became muted periphery. I clutched another branch between my ribs and armpit and pulled myself upward using the next branch. As I raised myself higher, I came face to face with Jason. He had a broken stick drawn back like a spear and jabbed it forward and speared me in the face.
I fell out of the tree and landed on my back. The wind was thrown from my body with a hollow thump. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. It was like a rag had been stuffed down my throat. My mouth suddenly tasted like pennies. I brought my hand to my face and touched my fingers to my lip, which was searing with pain. Blood was all over my hand and running down my mouth and chin. I looked up and saw Jeffrey and Jason running away, leaving the Big Tree and me in the dust. Crying, I got to my feet and scampered back into our trailer. I never played with the twins again, but my older brother and I did steal some toys off their porch a few months later to get our payback. We snatched a broken pterodactyl and some kind of electronic toy that spelled the names of animals on its buttons when it worked. Revenge needed to be taken in the wilds of the trailer park—or else the hyenas might come back for the rest of you later.
Then there was Pedro, who wandered the neighbourhood smoking discarded cigarette butts he had picked up off the sidewalk. He was probably around forty years old. He had incredibly deep laugh lines and forehead wrinkles. It was as if time had carved canyons into his face. He was always wearing a linen button-down shirt and blue jeans. His armpit stains were so glaring and saturated that it looked like he had popped a water balloon under each arm. He wore cheap black sandals. Always. Even if it was raining or snowing. His feet were repulsively dirty, and his toenails were unclipped and jagged. These are the only memories I have of Pedro. Aside from our one, strange interaction.
I was out playing in our front yard. My parents had been outside with me just moments before, but they had gone inside for something. Pedro scooted up in his sandals. I stood up and stepped back. He pulled a cigarette with about a half inch of life left in it from between his lips and flicked it into the street and muttered something to me in Spanish, smoke pouring out between syllables. He didn’t speak English, as far as I know. “I don’t understand you,” I said. I felt nervous. He always made me a little uneasy. He muttered again in Spanish, then made a puckering face and pointed at his lips. I told him I had to go inside. But before I could, he bent down, grabbed one of my shoulders, and kissed me on the lips with some force. He pulled back and smiled, chuckling, and muttered something in Spanish. Terrified, I ran inside and hid in my room.
Not all our neighbours in the trailer park were villainous, though. Betty was a sweet old lady who lived on the opposite side of the street. Many people probably have only one picture in their mind of a trailer, but within the world of the trailer park there are many varying levels of quality. Betty’s trailer looked very old. It was a crappy trailer. Which is saying something because I thought our entire trailer park, as far as trailer parks go, looked especially old and dumpy, even as a kid. Her trailer was covered in algae, like it had been plucked from an abandoned aquarium and dropped on her lot. Her lawn, however, was perfectly maintained. It looked exactly like our lawn, because my dad took care of both. She was the oldest lady on our street—maybe the whole trailer park—and my dad said it was up to us to take care of these things for her. He told me that if she were to ever ask me for help, I was to say yes. He also told me that if I ever accepted money from her, he would “whoop my ass.” This meant getting a spanking with the paddle that had I LOVE YOU engraved on it. I always refused payment from Betty.
However, I always accepted her invitation to stop in her trailer to get some candy or a treat. She had a cookie jar in the shape of a bear wearing a Santa hat where she kept the goods. One kid from my street that I played with, Aaron, commented how weird it was that she had a Christmas cookie jar year round. I really liked it, though. It made sense for Betty. Like Christmastime, she was warm and filled with joy. One day she invited me into her house to get a treat after I had retrieved something from her shed for her. I was excited because she mentioned that she had Reese’s Cups. The big ones. Not the stupid, small ones that get handed out at Halloween. As I climbed up onto the chair in her kitchen to reach the jar, she chuckled through a smile and said, “It’s a wonderful thing, you know?”
“What is?” I said, as I crammed a couple Reese’s Cups into my pocket.
“Getting help. It means more to me than anything in the world. I thank the Lord that there always seems to be help around when I need it,” she said, positioning herself in the chair opposite me. At the time I didn’t know who this “Lord” was that she was talking about. I hadn’t heard a thing about God yet. But I remember her crying when she said it. It’s the earliest recollection I have of someone crying because they were happy. Happy over something that seemed so menial to my childish mind.
The next trailer down from us was Red Dog’s. I have no idea what his real name was. I hope for his sake it wasn’t actually Red Dog. Even in a trailer park that would be ridiculous. He was the quintessential trailer-park man: mullet, handlebar mustache, a can of beer perpetually in hand, always working on a car or motorcycle. For a long time I was afraid of Red Dog. My chalk had once strayed from the chunk of cracked, dirty sidewalk I was drawing on to the door panel of his gawdy, flame-decaled muscle car. I was leaving the scene of the crime and heading back toward my house when he yelled, “Get your ass back over there and clean this up!” My mom and dad had been working in the backyard and came around front when they heard Red Dog yelling. When they saw what I did, they echoed Red Dog’s command. With tears in my eyes, overwhelmed with embarrassment and shame, I filled a bucket with soapy water and scrubbed the door panel with a sponge. Afterward, Red Dog slapped me on the back, told me I did “one hell of a clean-up job,” and said to quit sniffling like a little girl.
I laugh about this event anytime I recollect it now, but my relationship with Red Dog was laced with caution and shame. One day, though, he saw me watching him break loose the lug nuts on the wheel of his muscle car while I played with my die-cast trains on our front porch.
“Hey, Crybaby! C’mere!” he said with a smile on his face, waving me over with his hand. He had called me “Crybaby” since the day of the chalk incident. I stood up, stepped over my trains, and made my way over to his car. He was on his knee next to one of the tires. He flicked his hair from his face, raised his eyebrows, and pushed out his lower lip a bit. “I always see you playing with those damn little trains. Wanna learn how to work on somethin’ kind of like a train?”
“A car is not like a train,” I said.
“A train moves, a car moves. A train carries people, a car carries people,” he said, standing up and taking a swig of beer. “Do you want to learn something or not?”
“Okay,” I said.
He slapped the tire iron on a lug nut and pointed to one of the arms of the tire iron. “Now, you’re gonna wanna stomp on that side of the tire iron to bust that sucker loose. There’s no use in you trying to use your arms to do it. You’re too damn small—and weak. So, give that sucker a stomp.”
I stomped on it several times and had no luck busting it loose. Red Dog snickered a bit. Not a mean-spirited snicker, necessarily. It was the kind of laughter I heard from my parents sometimes while they watched me try something new. After a couple minutes of stomping, I pressed both of my hands against the car to brace myself, and then jumped onto the tire iron. The tire iron fell off the lug nut and bounced around on the pavement before sitting still. Red Dog laughed and walked over to me.
“All right, bub, let’s try this together before you hurt yourself.” He positioned the tire iron back onto the lug nut. He had a lit cigarette in his mouth now. Pedro probably would end up smoking the last of it later that day. The smoke hovered in front of both of our faces. “Now stomp,” he said through the corner of his mouth, careful not to release the cigarette between his lips. He had his foot on the arm of tire iron I was about to stomp on. When I stomped, he pushed his body weight down on the tire iron and the lug nut broke loose. I felt the rush of accomplishment.
“There you go, kid. How do you feel?” he asked with a grin.
“It feels good!” I said, smiling. I felt like I had redeemed my image.
“Always take care of your own shit. You can learn how to do all the things that everyone else pays people to do. Then you can save your money . . . and be like me someday.” He roared with laughter as he walked into his trailer. Probably to go get another beer.
I didn’t know any of these people beyond my brief interactions with them. But I remember them all better than some of the conversations I had yesterday. They are icons of the mind—avatars of human experience that hold residency on the carousel of my memories. As little as they meant to me as individuals, I think about them often, regularly even.
My interactions with each of them, though they didn’t seem to carry much weight at the time, were formative in a colossal way. I think there is a clear reason why this band of seemingly arbitrary people haven’t been filtered into the void of forgetfulness in my mind: each of them was a witness to a way of being in the world that helped shape aspects of my character and intuition that are still a part of me.
Each of them was a witness to a way of being in the world that helped shape aspects of my character and intuition that are still a part of me.
The twins’ assault on my face was a baptism of sorts. It brought to light the fact that people are capable of random nastiness and cruelty inspired by boredom and, sometimes, just plain old malevolence. I’ve seen this quality in others even in adulthood, and I recognize it because I got stabbed in the lip for no reason as a kid. Because of this I am desperately determined to ensure that I am never the one holding the stick. I take great pains to make people feel welcome whenever I can, to the point that I am willing to wield merciless, self-deprecating humour in order to give people something to laugh at. The temptation of betrayal, whether social or physical, has never outweighed the good that has come from sacrificing my pride on the altar of community. The scar I carry in the centre of my top lip serves as constant accountability to obey this conviction.
Likewise, my understanding of boundaries and the importance of trust has always been informed by my brief interactions with Pedro. Most people have a baseline, restful trust of those who live in their neighbourhood. Pedro wrung that trust out from me like water from a wet towel. It was because of his actions that I came to understand the horrible reality that a man can make a serpent of himself, becoming willing to strike at the heels of the vulnerable and abuse the freely given trust of the innocent. There is rarely a time that I am walking down the street and pass someone walking alone that Pedro doesn’t come to mind. I always try to make sure that I introduce myself to neighbours, or at least present a friendly hello to those I pass on those walks, because of the weight I feel to make others feel at ease. I’ve also never been one to greet others with a hug or any kind of touch—other than the typical, safe handshake. Part of this is my personality. But part of this is also a social anxiety that has been fuelled by the memory of my bizarre violation at the hand of Pedro. How strange it is to know that the man who used to walk around the trailer park in my childhood, smoking trashed cigarettes and, apparently, kissing children, played a formative role in instilling these qualities in me.
But goodness also lurked in these brief encounters with others. Betty’s tears were the result of a holy, simple gratitude—a joy that is able to be drawn out only by obedience to charity. The purity and concentration of her gratitude almost brings me to tears myself when I recall this lonely, poor woman and her authentically gigantic thankfulness. I fail to serve others more often than I’d like to admit. But serving is essential. Our Lord commands it. And this wonderfully good, candy-bearing old lady at the trailer park taught me in one of my earliest moments of serving, perhaps indirectly, that service to others is a form of worshipping our Lord.
My interactions with Red Dog were my first brushes with triumph and redemption. This tough but good-hearted hillbilly injected me with my first dose of shame after I vandalized his car. He called me out publicly and demanded that I rectify my mistake. I hated him for it at the time. But then he opened the door to redemption and encouragement. A gesture of goodwill to teach me something and then let me prove myself. He laid the groundwork for my belief in the possibility, and importance, of redemption. Something I would come to understand much more intimately, and on a more cosmic scale, when I would become a Christian many years later.
These simple, mundane experiences remain in my mind as little lighthouses steering my conscience and disposition. In ways they never would have realized or even intended, these people have directed much of my social and moral development.
I can only hope that I have had enough self-awareness to allow my witness to be a force of wisdom born of goodness and not a force of wisdom born of cruelty or malice.
I often wonder if there are people out there who recollect a particularly significant but brief experience with me, as I do with the twins and Pedro and Red Dog and Betty. Most of us assume those we pass are little more than drifting husks. To remain asleep to the reality of the infinitely glorious soul within each person, and that person’s tendency to interpret and react to us, is to take a terrible risk. Do you think that any of the people I’ve described from my childhood trailer-park experiences would ever have assumed I’d write about them someday? Their brief but formative witnesses are seared into my being. I can only hope that I have had enough self-awareness to allow my witness to be a force of wisdom born of goodness and not a force of wisdom born of cruelty or malice.
My prayer is that, in a world full of fear and paranoia, I can resist the temptation to recoil into an attitude of mere self-preservation. Despite my flaws and selfishness, I beg God to help me bear witness to others in a way that attests to the fact that I understand the weight of my witness to acquaintances and strangers. It is under the yoke of this understanding that I hope to make my way through the world. It is the people we’ll never know—but will still encounter—who bear the particularly heavy burden of having their actions alone play a part in informing our general sense of trust, community, and safety. In most cases, our interactions with others will be momentary affairs. But a witness will occur. Often the witness will be benign, as memorable as a blade of grass in a field of green. Or it’s possible their experience of us will become a behemoth of cautionary wisdom that lurks along the horizon of their minds. Or we could be a monument of goodness erected within their memory, calling them home to goodness and beauty and holiness. Our Lord calls us to be keenly aware and sensitive to the power of our witness in this life. Every moment of every day we are playing into the hand of something.
For those of us who are aware of the underlying reality—that we are engaged in a battle of spiritual and cosmic proportions—a vital fact we must understand is this: little souls, little pieces of eternity, dwell within those around us. They are watching, learning, and being ever informed by our interactions. We must tread carefully, but confidently, to help light the way for those souls that are seeking what is good and true. While the villains in my memory informed me of evil, the characters who offered glimpses of love and gratitude and redemption lifted a candle to reveal the force of good in this world—or, to be more specific, the power of God. Maintaining a proper witness in an angry and unforgiving world is the most salient conviction I feel throughout my days. We are both blessed and burdened to be aware of what Christ has revealed to us about our place and purpose in our reality. Blessed because, by both his blood and his teachings, we are being pulled toward a proper understanding of people and the world. Burdened because once we know and accept the calling of Christ, he then places us under a direct command to pursue it throughout our lives. Attempting to love and see people the way our Lord does is an extraordinarily difficult task, one that would be impossible without his leading us and forgiving us when necessary.
My hope is that when you look into the eyes of your neighbour—a person you may not like, understand, or even view as important—you choose to look at them with the eyes of Christ: to see both a physical and eternal being. A being who may remember you, and be shaped by the memory of you, for the rest of their life. Long after you have forgotten them.