Cruelties Received: Ben Pearson

Ben Pearson's mom (I think that her name was Becky) remembered me walking up to their house on Modena Drive when I was maybe nine, dressed in a cowboy outfit, asking for Ben. I don't remember that. I remember getting off the bus one day with Ben at the foot of Modena's steep hill in front of my house. Ben's house sat at the top of the hill, a beautiful two story brown brick with a high front porch and Greek pillars. As we walked I said something absently honest about some girl Ben liked named Alexia Hendrix. I had innocently forgotten, as a new fifth grader, that candor and candid speech were not highly prized in middle school, that awkward, angry sea of insecurities. Ben, as rail-thin as I was but a year my senior, grabbed me and threw me down in our neighbor's ditch. He straddled my terrified torso, his hands clasped around my wrists, shaking them emphatically as he ordered me to promise never to repeat what I had said to anyone ever again. I promised. He was serious in that way only preteens can be, when absurd banalities become matters of life and death. He was spitting angry, the spittle that collected on my scrunched up face no doubt due in part to the salivary impediments of his braces. He got off of me and stomped off up the street to his two-story house, which amazed me. To lie in bed and listen to music while internally cursing his step-dad, Paul, the captain of a paddlewheel riverboat, the General Jackson, which amazed me. To anticipate his weekend at Opryland Themepark, riding the Hangman twelve times in a row, which amazed me. To be the person and have all the things which stupidly, completely amazed me.