Walking Away
There’s been a number of key moments in my life where, whatever I was doing or was in the middle of, I got a message from my gut telling me to stop whatever it was that I was doing, and just walk away from it. I haven’t always heeded that message. When I haven’t, I have regretted it. But, when I have, I’ve almost always been glad that I did. I’ve found that it’s good to listen to my gut. It’s usually a lot smarter than my logical brain, and knows better what is good for me.
The first walk-away that I remember was when I walked away from the jock crowd I had been a part of for about five years, from 6th grade to 11th. My best friend Chuck was a part of this crowd, but I’d long since stopped feeling like he was any kind of a friend. He’d become more like the ringleader in the group in their systematic belittling and torturing of me, both physically and mentally. They treated me like a freak loser, and constantly made fun of me. I usually just took it, very stoically, as I had learned it was nobler to resist lashing out — I prided myself on how much abuse I could take without complaining. I took a ton of it. I felt like it made me stronger, and a better person. I didn’t realize what it did to my self-image, though.
Not having much positive reinforcement at home, from my family, left me to believe them when they said I was worthless. What started to change this low self-image began when my Mom pushed me to go out and get a job. I was 15 years old, and had given up my morning newspaper delivery route the year before, thinking it was no longer cool to do. Actually, I had let Chuck convince me that it wasn’t cool, and I was always trying to be cool in his eyes. What a stupid thing it had been to do.
I’d grown accustomed to having my own spending money, and now I was poor. When I’d asked Mom for $20 for something, she’d said, “Why don’t you go find yourself a job?” When I’d responded, “Who would hire me, Mom?” she shot right back, “I don’t know, but you have seven years’ experience delivering newspapers, five years of which you managed your own route, plus you’ve worked in a bakery for a couple years. That’s a heck of a lot more experience than most 15 year-olds can claim! I would think you have a pretty good chance of landing a job. You just need to get out there and look.”
That was my Mom — while she wasn’t great at the touchy-feely stuff, she was brilliant at cultivating a can-do attitude. She had reinvented herself at age 40, and felt that anyone could do anything they set their mind to — she certainly had! She was always encouraging us to go get what we wanted in life.
So, I went out pounding the pavement looking for a job. I started at one end of the three block segment of Brookline Boulevard that had nothing but stores, restaurants, grocery stores and bakeries lined up, one right after the other, and went door to door, filling out a job application at each one.
I only skipped Kribel Bakery, in the first block, because I had already worked there when I was 10 and 11 years old. They fired me when I got sick from eating too many broken chocolate bunnies at Easter time. I never did forgive Jake Kribel for that one. I also still felt very ashamed about getting fired.
I had worked hard at that job, and it didn’t seem fair that I should get fired just because I got sick. They had told us we could either eat the broken bunnies, or throw them away. I had a hard time watching perfectly good chocolate go to waste, so I usually ate them when they broke, coming out of the molds. Of course I got sick! I was 11 years old, for God’s sake! I couldn’t really complain to anyone, as I was technically too young to be working in a bakery in the first place.
After hitting all of the stores, restaurants and the other bakeries along Brookline Boulevard that first day, I made my way down the hill to West Liberty Avenue on the second day. I really wanted a job. I hated being poor. I applied at the A & P supermarket, then at a fine Italian Restaurant, Locante’s. I lied and told them I was 16, and they hired me on the spot, to wash dishes.
I had a job! I showed up every night, and washed the hell out of those dishes, and the pots and pans, it was a hot, sweaty job, but it came with a paycheck at the end of the week, so I didn’t mind. From my vantage point at the dishwasher and sink, which was just inside the doors that went from the dining room to the kitchen where the chefs cooked up the food, I got to witness all the waitresses and busboys going in and out, and saw the repartee that went on between them. They looked like they were having fun!
A couple of the busboys and waitresses chatted me up, while they were waiting for their food to be ready, and they all seemed really nice. On my first Friday night, when it got noticeably busier, I caught wind of the fact that they were way short on busboys for the dinner rush. The waitresses were in a panic, as their tables weren’t getting cleared when diners left; it was taking too long to get new patrons seated, and the situation was quickly spinning out of control.
I pulled the head busboy aside and told him, “I’ll do it. You need a busboy? I’m your guy. I’ll help you guys out now, and maybe you guys can help me later with the dishes.” He checked with the manager, and they found me a busboy jacket, shirt and slacks.
I became a busboy that night. That’s when I learned how to seize opportunity in the middle of chaos. It was a crazy night. I learned the job as fast as I could, and got really fast at clearing off tables and setting them up for the next guests. I’d saved the day in the dining room.
A couple of the guys helped me plow through the pile of dishes at the end of the dinner rush, then the head busboy told me I had a new job. They scheduled me to work the floor five nights the next week, and my new career took off.
The pay wasn’t great, but the tips were. The waitresses would share a percentage of their tips with the busboys, and the better we did our job, the more tips they got, so it was a good system. They all treated me nicely. I wasn’t used to that. I was used to being abused and belittled. I felt like I’d been given a new lease on life.
I still hung out with my jock friends up at the school yard’s basketball court and football field. But, slowly that spring and summer, I began to realize they were wrong about me. I wasn’t a bumbling idiot, I wasn’t a freak. So, maybe I wasn’t quite as talented as some of them when it came to the sports, but I put in every bit of effort at it that they did, and I had actually turned myself into a passable athlete, after all those years.
I kind of led a double-life that year. On Friday and Saturday nights, some of the guys would go out after work to shoot pool, go bowling, or play poker at one of their houses, and I started joining them. They were an older crowd, but they accepted me as one of them.
There would always be beer, and I discovered I had a real taste for it. As the evenings progressed into the wee hours of the morning, I was usually feeling really good. I also began to smoke that year, as well. Everyone smoked in the back dining room on the dinner break, and it just seemed like the thing to do, so I started smoking, too. It wasn’t about being cool — it was just something to do while your break passed, and you talked about all kinds of things.
The more I hung around with my new friends from the restaurant, the more I realized I didn’t need those supposed friends from school. Finally, with an upcoming football game that I had said I couldn’t make because of work, when they threatened to hurt me or worse if I didn’t show, I just blew them off, didn’t show up, and began avoiding them altogether. I didn’t need friends like that, anymore.
I began to cut the classes at school that I had with them, and eventually got the school to switch me to other classes where they weren’t. I began hanging out with a different crowd at lunch and during breaks in classes, and had nothing to do with my old crowd, there. Months later, my former best friend, Chuck, confronted me one night as I was walking home from the restaurant where I worked, along with a couple of the old jock gang.
He was bruising for a fight, but I wanted no parts of one. I didn’t believe in violence, and never fought. My sister had convinced me that fighting and violence were unnecessary, and never served a good purpose. I believed her. He kicked my ass as good as it has ever been kicked. I just took it, then looked at him and said something like, “Some friend you turned out to be. I hope you feel better now.” The other two had to restrain him from coming at me with more.
I walked away, my face all bloody, my glasses broken, but my pride and self-image fully intact, and I never looked back.
Later on, when I was in the Navy, and once when I got into a tangle with an older brother, I forgot about the lesson I’d learned from my sister. Then, I learned for sure that she was right. Fighting solved nothing, and violence never led to anything good. When I kicked my brother’s ass, for the first time ever, I felt worse than I ever felt on the losing end of a fight. I felt like a complete ogre.
I never fought again, after that. I walked away from violence, and never looked back.
