![]() ![]() Still, I hung out with Timothy, which was socially dangerous. I knew I wasn’t cool, but I was working my way toward being at least respectable: I was really good at a few select Nintendo games, even if I lost at others I was never the first picked for sports but I wasn’t the last, either–and at least I had name-brand Doritos and good pudding at lunch. The thing is, I managed my social hierarchy carefully, the way I built my Lego sets. He was Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club, always prodding, always mocking. I didn’t like his explosions, like the time he slammed the four-square ball into the cement so hard that it bounced to the other end of the blacktop, after which he simply gave up on the game, sitting with his back to the building and silently daring anyone to ask him to go get it. I didn’t like the way that a conversation with him always turned loud, making everyone turn and stare. ![]() I didn’t like his shaggy hair, his skinny arms, his stained clothes, his asymmetrical smile. You never knew with Dustin he could sit next to you at lunch and seem to be your friend and then smear boogers on your backpack the second you turned away. He could go a whole day silently sullen at his desk but then freak out after school, shoving a third-grader to the ground and laughing his mean, loud laugh, like a dented trumpet.īut on other days he wanted to play nice, using his fearlessness on the soccer field at recess to win praise even from the cool kids, praise that I could never seem to earn. ![]() And I can’t believe you keep saying that I did.”Īt school, Dustin was intense. But I was taller than everyone else in class, and in this moment a little bit of me was aware that I looked a couple years older than I was. I hated my skinny arms, my thin hair, my thick glasses. That you took his photo, which doesn’t belong to you, and destroyed it.” I want you to admit that you pushed that pin into Dustin’s face. It strikes me now that he might have known this, that he was aware that his body moved and lurked differently than his family’s, and that in this moment he wanted to make sure I subtly got the message that he was bigger than I was. He really was a big guy-not huggable and round in the way that Timothy, his sister, and his mom were, but tall, broad-shouldered, in an imposing way. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, no sir.” I made a sort of surprised movement with my eyebrows, moving my head back. Are you saying you had nothing to do with it?” “I know it wasn’t there yesterday, before you got here. Thumbtack, placed directly through your classmate Dustin’s face.” Timothy had told me about it in his awkwardly quiet way, embarrassed for his dad and probably worried I would tell someone else. He scratched his red beard, his neck, his ear, and I thought for a moment about his ear fungus. An unusual thing.” He talked like that, breaking his words into too many sentences. And do you know what I saw?” He paused to clear his throat, a ratchety sound that seemed out of place for this large man. Once Timothy had left, he said, “I just noticed the fourth-grade class photo upstairs in Timothy’s room. Timothy’s dad kept track of his kids’ exercise, tallying it on a chalkboard and rewarding them for it later. He had just told my friend Timothy to turn off the Nintendo game we had been playing and ride his bike around the block a couple of times so he could talk to me. We were sitting across from each other at his living room table, cluttered with old newspapers and magazines. All sounds and music heard are licensed by Creative Commons. “Pincushion” is a personal essay written, narrated, and produced in March 2018. ![]() *Featured Artwork “Spell” By Ann Calandro ![]()
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