Burden

1 of 5 The middle-aged couple was talking to a young boy. He must have been adopted because he called the woman “mom”. He was clearly upset by a boy at school who was going around hitting other kids for no reason. He was contemplating what he would do in the event this kid hit him. He suggested that he would break the kid’s leg. The couple proceeded in trying to dissuade him from taking such action. The mom in subdued tones, the man in a lawyerly manner pontificating. He was telling the boy that he would wind up in the hospital or jail if he did anything of the sort. They suggested just talking to the kid at school. The boy was dumbfounded at such a ludicrous suggestion and sarcastically asked if he should befriend this kid. The couple was not in favor of that. The man quickly pointing out no one liked this kid, that he was skinny as a chair and had no identity. He went on to characterize the kid as sad, just a totally sad case. There was no sincerity in his comments. It did not convey any emotion. It was just declarative. It was the correct thing to say, by a person who sees himself as sensitive to the plight of lesser human beings. In all likelihood he was a lawyer, minister, or schoolteacher who himself was already regretting that he had adopted a “sad” little boy to whom he was explaining the sad life situation of another. He had plucked this boy out of the clutches of the court system with no premonition of the daily consequences such an action would involve. The boy knew he had the “parents” number. He knew how to play the situation. He was clearly relishing his position of power over these adults. Interestingly, the “parents” were relishing their position as benefactors. They were caught up in the euphoria of doing the right thing and the knowledge that others saw them as exemplary. They were, after all, intelligent, rational, and logical creatures, who were able to see the bigger picture in all situations. They were able to step back and analyze even highly charged situations. In short, they were quite full of themselves. The boy felt obligated to solve the situation at school. He was good looking and had an outgoing personality. Kids at school looked up to him, he was popular and seen as a leader. He did not seem happy with the unspoken burden on him to deal with this annoying kid bothering everybody. The skinny kid was standing on the playground as other kids played all around him. It was as if he wasn’t there. It looked as if he was looking at something beyond the playground, but his eyes were blank, his face frozen without expression of any kind. This happened frequently to him. His body suddenly became immobilized, remaining in a fixed posture. His mind went blank without thought. His gaze would become fixed on whatever was in the visual field directly in front of him. Actually, it felt good, like taking a break from the world around him. The kids playing around him were a peripheral blur. At times the kid would place a small object somewhere in his immediate vicinity. It was put there as an anchor to lock in the real world, so he could return to it from the world he created within himself. It was his way back and if it was touched or moved by someone, it was as if the kid’s life and existence was threatened. He would strike out in response to his perceived aggressor’s threat to him. His hitting was slapping with a closed fist presenting no real danger to anyone. His face would contort into anger and he presented an incensed demeanor, but that was the extent of his assault. If he couldn’t place an object he relied on his routine as a safety net. He relied on certain things happening at certain times, at the same time every day. He could then be on automatic pilot, put himself on cruise control and make it through the day irrespective of being aware or not of the world around him. He had no control over his routine and held those around him responsible for it. If those around him altered his expectations, knowingly or unknowingly, it was as if they were throwing him into the abyss

2 of 5 The boy approached the skinny kid with mixed feelings. He was drawn to the kid. There was something familiar about how he acted. The boy couldn’t put his finger on it. The kid exuded a kind of aloofness that said that he didn’t care what others thought about him. The boy was envious, since he himself was very concerned about what others thought about him. “Hey, how ya’ doin’?” The kid turned to him, but his gaze went right by the boy. An uneasy silence followed. Both the boy and the kid were equally at a loss as to what to do next. They both just stood there. The boy had a quizzical look on his face, the kid a blank stare. “I have all the forbidden cards and they’re strong The boy was now really at a loss. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what the kid had just said and what he was talking about. It totally disarmed his intention to confront this kid with being weird and his being prepared to hit the kid. He just turned and walked away The boy’s real father had told him that there was no such thing as a fair fight. What you do is take the other guy by surprise and hurt him anyway you can to take him out and to knock him down. You walk up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with a two by four, or hit him in the knee, or jam the end of the two by four into his gut. Now what? He had just walked away having done nothing. How pathetic was that? The kid hadn’t really done anything to the boy. He just really acted weird and had slapped at a few kids. He was just really annoying to the boy, and the boy couldn’t figure it out. The boy scared himself because the kid’s mannerisms triggered a sudden welling up of anger and he pictured himself just pummeling him with his fists. The frightening thing was that acting on it was just an instant from happening before he bottled it up “What’s the matter with you? Stop hitting people! Knock off saying stupid things! You’re really pissing me off! You look weird; you act weird; you are weird! If you don’t stop, I’m going to punch you, so stop!” The boy was standing over the kid with his face inches from the kid’s face. The kid didn’t flinch, he didn’t blink, and he just had a blank stare. The kid sensed that this was the second time this boy had approached him. It was very rarely that anybody came out of his peripheral blur. His mother was a person that was in focus on a daily basis. She was domineering, but this didn’t bother him. It was just part of his routine, and she was much like one of his objects that he had in place for a reference point. She did not elicit any reaction in him. She was inanimate, or at most a robot to him. In turn, he was no more than an object to her. She had pushed his father out of the picture when he was an infant. The catalyst that provided the opportunity for her to do was when she accidentally found him puling at the baby’s drying umbilical cord. From then on her little boy became the excuse for her to voice her opinions to the world, especially about the impact on the mandatory vaccines for infants. The kid had a buzz cut. He was always wearing a collard, short sleeve shirt tucked into short shorts that were hiked up way above his waist. They definitely would have been considered high waters, if they were long legged pants. He had a belt, but also for some reason elastic suspenders. To top it off he wore sandals with socks on. He didn’t look like the other kids, but he was not aware of that and didn’t feel self-conscious or embarrassed. Later in life it dawned on him that he wanted to fit in, but was never able to. There was a big tree in the corner of the front yard. The kid knew that it was a big tree because of its wide trunk. All he could visualize was this wide trunk. The tree was just the trunk because he never looked up to see the rest of it. His world was small, and he never looked beyond the yard. He was not allowed to go beyond the perimeter of the front yard when allowed to go out

3 of 5 and play. The neighborhood did not exist; it might as well have been outer space. He could also be on the large front porch, which wrapped around the front of the house, but there were no toys. He essentially did nothing during these outdoor periods, but for some reason didn’t want to go back upstairs to the apartment his mother and he lived in. The tree was significant because on one occasion he stood between the tree and the wire fence that separated his yard from the neighbor’s. There was little space between the tree and fence, so he leaned close to the tree and directed his pee directly on the ground available in front of him. It never entered his mind that anyone would see him, and he never heard anything about it from anyone, so no one must have. The boy couldn’t keep the kid out of his mind. His real father hadn’t been part of his life either. He had been a factory worker, a “shop rat”, and the boy just remembers him slumped forward in his chair at the kitchen table night after night. The boy just thought that he was tired and didn’t realize that everyone else that knew his father considered him an alcoholic and considered the boy a sad case. His mother had trouble dealing with reality and had been hospitalized numerous times, until she was found dead in the hospital’s bathtub. The autopsy said that she had a seizure and drowned. He was put in foster care. He wore his anger on his sleeve, open for interpretation to those around him, despite his effort to conceal it. Feelings of anger would well up in him in response to thinking that he was trapped in his situation as the result of the people around him, and especially his parents. He began to strike out blindly at the slightest annoyance. He was in altercations with other boys frequently and developed a reputation as a tough guy. On one occasion, in response to the prodding of other kids, he walked up to a kid waiting for the doors to the school to open in the morning, and slugged him in the jaw. The kid’s head snapped sideways because of the power of the punch, but he remained standing, turned to just blankly stare at the perpetrator. He then just walked into the school building. In the meantime, like two dogs go after each other when they are thwarted in getting to a squirrel, the boy and one out of the crowd went after each other. The victim in the incident was long gone. Consequences of doing this never entered his mind, and there were none. The victim must not have reported it to anyone. This was how the boy needed to approach the weird kid. He had to decide first, before he did anything, that he was going to hit him. He had to decide when, how, and under what circumstances he was going to do it. He had already walked away once without taking any action and that certainly hadn’t looked good. It all had to be set in his mind as a done deal so that he wouldn’t wimp out again. He couldn’t do it in front of anybody and he couldn’t leave any marks. He had to walk up to the kid when the kid was alone and punch him as hard as he could in the stomach. The kid was definitely going to fall down and he was going to say that he didn’t know what happened, to anybody that may walk by. He would say that the kid must have fainted. The weird kid’s world was in his thoughts, and his thoughts revolved around the dueling card game cards that he was collecting. He had quite a stack of them and had them with him no matter where he went. He didn’t actually play the game with anybody, but interacted with the card characters as if they existed and carried on conversations with them in his thoughts. He had accumulated many of the cards that were forbidden to play with in any of the dueling games. They were apparently forbidden because they were too all powerful when used and gave unfair advantage to the holder ending games abruptly. The kid was oblivious to gaming, but had a sense of being safe from the world around him because of his card character associations. His aloofness to clear physical threat was because no physical assault could harm him. He really didn’t recognize what physical danger was. The aloofness was not courage but ignorance to the fact that

4 of 5 the card characters were not real, and just because he lived in his own world, he was not impervious to physical harm. His life consisted of thoughts and once he thought them they became real in the outside world. The boy felt nothing. He had made up his mind. He was going to get this burden off of his mind. Nobody had told him to do this. His anger had been building for some time. It was this weird kid’s fault that he was in this position. People had been messing with him his whole life while being totally clueless as to his presence in the world. He was absolutely convinced that this kid was messing with him by disrespecting his presence. This was so real to him that he could taste it. The kid wandered around the corner of the school building. He didn’t know where he was. He was holding the tin box with a cover that had all his cards in it. His peripheral blur was in place. The boy came up behind the kid. He took a side step and his fist made contact with the kid’s left temple. He didn’t feel the punch’s contact. There was no pain, just a sense of numbness all over, all of a sudden, and all encompassing. It was a feeling of weightlessness. He was at a loss as to what had happened, but it wasn’t bad. Then all these sensations were gone. He turned his head and saw a boy standing there. The kid felt a sense of familiarity. “I have all the forbidden cards, and they’re strong.,” said the kid. “I know.” said the boy and walked away. The boy still had no idea what the kid was talking about, but it wasn’t upsetting. The boy felt nothing. There was no elation about what he had done. Actually, he was impressed at how the kid had taken the assault. He had acknowledged the kid’s comment because it gave him a sense of control as opposed to being at a loss, as before when he had walked away from him confused. He had to admit that he no longer felt a burden to do something because he thought the other kids wanted him to. After not feeling anything right after he hit the kid, he sure was now. This was new to him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he and the kid had a connection. Neither of them knew it yet. The thought that these cards that he had collected were banned from the dueling games because they were to powerful, thereby defeating the purpose of playing, gave the kid a sense of superiority. What he saw around him was not important since he began collecting. Before that what was around him was confusing and bewildering. Now it no longer mattered. It wasn’t really clear to him where the boundary of himself and that outside himself was. He was never sure if things he saw were going to be there again or not, or if they would look the same ever again. The colorful creatures depicted on his cards were in constant animation to him, but the cards themselves remained constant to his touch. Touching inanimate objects was comforting to him, as opposed to coming into physical contact with others, which was for some unexplainable reason to be avoided at all costs. Many of the card creatures had magical weapons, which the kid would see them brandish while he created battle scenarios with their unseen enemies. The boy was up to bat in the playground pick-up game, when he saw the group approaching the kid. They were laughing and whispering amongst each other. When they reached the kid they stood in front of him saying things to him and to each other and laughing louder and louder. They seemed to keep their distance from him being cautious despite their bravado. Now and then one of them would give another one a shove, which would be reciprocated. “Hey stupid!” one said to the kid.

5 of 5 The kid saw the group, but it was more like watching a movie. They were all two dimensional to him, and saying things that to anyone else would incite anger, but to him it had no emotional meaning. “Hey stupid, what’s in the box?” the same one ventured again. The kid said nothing, but hid the box behind him. The forbidden creatures were appearing in the same movie the group standing before him were. He saw them standing in anticipation, the same as he was. The boy had now reached the group and the kid, and was still holding the bat in his hand. “What’s going on?” “Nothing.” the spokesman of the group replied. “So what are you doing over here?” the boy challenged. “We’re seeing what the weirdo is doing.” “Don’t worry, I’m taking care of it” the boy followed up. The group just looked at him not sure what to make of the boy’s stance. They had thought that, he of all people would have cheered them on in their teasing the weird kid. Now he seemed to be protecting him. None of them were going to challenge the boy, but did feel cheated out of their fun. They retreated with disappointment and looking askance at the boy who had intervened. It began dawning on them that this boy was also different from them. As opposed to the weird kid, who was an easy target, the boy was not to be messed with. The boy remained standing in front of the kid, neither saying anything. In other similar circumstances on the playground the kid might have bolted or started flailing at the tormentors, but the presence of this boy had maintained continuity for him. He was much like the objects he placed to keep in touch with the world around him. The boy was clearly an animated object, but an object that could anchor him to the world around him. The kid could not move him around at will, but there had to be a way to control the boy by other means. The boy was safe to the kid. The boy was an object to him after all. There had not been any confusing conversation with him.