The Redemption of Donald Ganz
Donald Ganz was a kiss-ass, the worst kind of wimp. Anyone who’s ever experienced flashes of wimpiness in their own life would surely be sympathetic towards a momentary lack of nerve or softening of the backbone. Who hasn’t experienced dry mouth in the face of an ugly situation populated by people who have reasons to punch you in the face? It’s damn hard to be macho sometimes. But a kiss-ass is something different. A kiss-ass is a wimp who sticks it in your face. It’s someone who has absolutely no business telling the bus driver that you threw rocks at cars or accidentally tipped over a mailbox, but he does it anyway. Suddenly, at the age of eleven, I’ve got an elementary school principal explaining to me the implication of tampering with the U.S. mail. He didn’t go so far as to describe the intricacies of man-on-man love, but he mentioned prison and the fact that my box tipping constituted a federal offense. Even at eleven I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was headed for the big house, but he did get my folks involved and that was serious enough. And all because Donald Ganz was a kiss-ass.
He never missed an opportunity. Donald watched everything, taking down names, ferreting away any information that might endear himself to any authority figure and then blurting it all out with a self-righteousness that was worse than the snitch itself. When you’re older you learn to look through a person and envision the people that made them. You can imagine the overpowering Mother, the distant Father and the anal-retentive babysitter who forged the asshole you’re negotiating at present. As I grew older I learned of these people in Donald’s past. The woman who watched him most afternoons was the same woman who, years earlier, slapped my sister across the face for spilling her juice. Immediately thereafter our Mother threatened the woman extensively, and physically, and refused to let my sister or I go near her again. Donald never got out and everyday after school he trudged up the street to the house where this bitter, frightened, old woman lived and worked teaching children the proper ways to behave.
But I didn’t see any of these things at eleven. I only knew that I had been called down to the principal’s office three times in the past month and each visit was work of one Donald Ganz. Now, I could understand it if I had actually been up to something that affected Donald. Perhaps if I had chucked a water balloon at his crotch moments before getting on the bus, I’d take my punishment. But in each case I had been engaged in something which, though clearly wrong, in no way imposed upon the life of Donald Ganz. So on a crisp Autumn day, moments after the bus pulled away from the curb after dropping us off, I punched Donald in the stomach two times.
I had to do it. It wasn’t just about me. Donald had rolled over on several people and we were all pretty sick of it. Basically, it was a mob hit. Someone gave me the bullet and I knew exactly where and when it would all go down. At first, he didn’t know what was happening, only that I had grabbed him at the back of the collar. I swooped up from behind and, as I came around his right side, I hooked two quick punches into his gut. I couldn’t have hit him very hard, I’m too much of a wimp myself, and the way he instantly folded took everything out of my second blow. But the point had been made and like all good hitmen my posse and I turned quickly away and strode up the street with a “you ain’t seen nothin’” swagger. I had beaten up a wimp.
In the years that passed, I have often thought of the worthlessness of that moment. I mean, it was perfect schoolyard justice, and I can respect that. If you don’t want trouble, you don’t cause trouble. If a kiss-ass cramps your style, you punch them in the stomach (twice) — real law of the jungle stuff. But knowing full well that I couldn’t have actually physically hurt Donald, it was the realization of what I had done to another persons’ dignity that began to sting. The sight of Donald crumpled on the ground sobbing and trying to collect his books in front of the kids he rides with everyday, that’s where the shame of the whole thing lies. It wasn’t worth doing it, and I only did it because I knew I could, and that reasoning hasn’t stood the test of time very well.
So, I picked up a few important things to think about that day, and apparently Donald did too. It is to his credit that he returned to the bus stop the next day and carried on much as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t angry, or hurt, or vengeful. He wasn’t afraid or bitter. He was the very same person we had always known but it was as if, suddenly, Donald had an interest in being one of us, one of the regular guys hanging out at the bus stop. He wasn’t waiting to sit up front by the bus driver. He stopped laughing at every watered-down gag the teachers threw out and I managed to go months without a single visit from the principal. Now I wouldn’t want to run the risk of associating my ridiculous and unwarranted actions (punching Donald in the stomach, twice) with Donald’s change in demeanor, but it does bring up the possibility that dramatic conversion is most often precipitated by cruel fate. Things happen to make us change. But while I would love suggest that I was simply a cog in the great engine of justice, I still should not have punched Donald in the stomach, twice.
Donald began to fit in and autumn became winter. I mention this because snow falls in the winter and restless kids at a bus stop will often occupy themselves by throwing snow at cars, houses, pets and each other. This is universal, but what was unique about our situation was that the school district, in a valiant effort to save our lives, split our bus stop into two halves on opposite sides of a busy street. The idea was that this would eliminate the need for kids to cross the street. What it accomplished was a natural polarization which instantly pitted one side of the street against the other and snow on the ground meant war was eminent.
In most cases, the battle was slow and clumsy. Each side would take turns lobbing a volley of snowballs at the other with very limited success. There were really only two basic strategies: attempt to hurl your snowball as high as possible and hope someone on the other side failed to pay attention, or have someone else fire a line drive while you attempt to deliver death from above. The latter tactic forced your opposition to make a choice as where to look and when to dodge. On rare occasion someone really got smacked and the opposing force cheered like warring Zulus.
Historically, in times of conflict, rare men have stepped up in the face of mortal danger to put the well being of their tribe ahead of their own safety. On a frigid January morning, with six inches of snow on the ground, Donald Ganz was one of these men.
He was sick of it. Since joining the rest of us, he had known nothing but stalemate. Each morning since the first snow fell we gathered and chucked and dodged and chucked again. The war was going nowhere and Donald was determined to turn the tide. He would do it: the maneuver that would forever enshrine him in our hearts and ensure that never again would he face a double punching, at our hands at least. As we scanned the skies for incoming lobs, Donald slipped away down the street.
He moved like a cartoon, diving behind bushes, hopping behind trees and parked cars. Despite a world of ambition in his heart, he couldn’t shake the awkwardness born out of a kiss-ass life. One might want to fit in, want to be one of the guys, but it doesn’t all come together overnight. Still, he had the vision.
In all, he must have scampered four hundred yards down the road. We had largely failed to notice, as did our opponents on the east side of the street. Donald dashed across the road and began to make his way back, packing snow as he moved. Now he was on their turf. There was no road to clear, no cars buzzing by, nothing to impede two or three good throws. Suddenly someone on our side caught sight of him. Word spread and it was instantly realized that we would need to provide cover. All of us hurled snow into the air in an effort to keep the focus on us while Donald slid up along the house fronts, and it all worked.
Even from across the street I could see the eyes of our foes swell in horror like deer facing a pack of dogs. Donald lurched up from behind a snow-covered shrub and caught the entire east side of the street unarmed. In a panic, some went for snow while others fled. At first, he was almost overwhelmed by the choices, but he regained his composure and fired three good shots into the crowd. People scattered, dogs barked, babies cried and, faster than he could have imagined, he was out of snowballs and far behind enemy lines. Suddenly the hunter became the hunted and, as frightened deer often do, Donald turned and headed back across the road.
We cheered as he approached and if I close my eyes I can still see the look on his face. He had done what none of us dared and he pulled it off. In slow motion he ran, careful to keep his head down in anticipation of the counter-attack. Donald was laughing and we laughed and paused to receive him. Donald had joined us.
The road was only two lanes wide, and it’s impossible for me to imagine now why it seemed to take Donald so long to reach our side, which he never did. The fearful expression he had inspired in our foes was horrifically magnified upon his own face as he turned his head to see, in the same moment as the rest of us, the late-model Monte Carlo at the crest of the hill. The maroon car was doing nearly 40 miles an hour when the driver caught sight of Donald and slammed on his brakes, but the snow was everywhere and there would be no stopping. Donald knew it and he jumped into the air and twisted sideways, catching the grill just below his hip. As the car continued to slide, he slammed on to the hood with such force that his head bounced and he whipped forward like a palm tree in the wind. When the driver succeeded in stopping, Donald was thrown forward. He flopped like Icarus on the frozen street and rolled to a stop.
None of us said a word. We couldn’t believe our eyes. The driver, a man in his mid-thirties with a shaggy beard, exploded out of the car convinced that he had committed manslaughter. He barely remembered to put the car in park, jumped out and ran into the street where Donald was holding his stomach and rolling back and forth.
Donald wasn’t dead. He was crying as he had when I punched him, twice. But much to everyone’s surprise, he wasn’t crying about being struck by two tons of hurtling steel. Donald was afraid that someone would tell his mother.
“Don’t tell my Mom! I’m O.K.! Don’t tell my Mom!” he repeated as he rocked forward and struggled to his feet. “I’m O.K.!”
The driver wasn’t buying it and he insisted on taking him to a hospital, which frightened Donald even more. “No!” he pleaded. “I’m O.K.!” But Donald would not win this fight and he was eventually coaxed up the street with his arms wrapped around his ribs, sobbing as he walked. The driver quickly learned of the babysitter from one of the other boys and he escorted Donald to her home. What happened then, no one knows.
What I do know is that Donald didn’t want to go. I don’t really believe that he faced any serious consequence for playing in the street, and the days that followed would confirm that he had, in fact, suffered little more than a few bumps and scrapes. But Donald cried that day in the same way he had cried when I struck him and, in many ways, for the same reason. His moment had been taken away. As he was dashing across the street that morning, he regained everything he lost months earlier and much more. He saw the looks on our faces and knew that it was worth it and he had finally done something to bridge the gap between us. He wasn’t the pathetic snitch anymore, and then the car appeared and everything about that moment was at risk of being washed away. His daring maneuver, the vanquishing of our opposition, the simple fact that he was doing it at all — he didn’t want that to be forgotten. So, he cried that morning as he got himself upright and tried desperately to keep things as they were.
But Donald’s moment wasn’t forgotten. He didn’t win an Olympic medal or save a person’s life, but he had managed to drastically change the way nearly all of us saw him, and that shouldn’t be dismissed. He and I would never be close friends, but I came to respect Donald, and like him. I respected him not because he had been hit by a car, but because Donald took chances, and each time he came back the next day. He came back after he knew we hated him and he came back after I hit him and, in the end, he proved to all of us that a person can change, and grow, in ways you’d never see coming.
