ps- pic above is my child & dear friend, Mike Horam (RIP), not person in story
I fought traffic on the 101, hustling home from a job to get to my son’s spelling bee. Weeks before the competition, Finn was nervous and excited. He was prepared. Finn was a preternaturally bright child. I could tell before he turned two he had a deep emotional intelligence and a strong intellect. When we had “adult” conversations around him, I’d clock him fully registering what was being said. He also has a bit of “the shine” to him. I warned him he was a child and that while he had an adult’s head full of information, he hadn’t mastered the tact to know how to let it out.
When I was talking to other adults about whatever generic shit we talk about when we don’t talk about what’s really going on, Chekov-style, Finn would interject with an H-bomb of gossip he’d overheard that would bring the conversation to a screeching halt. It happened on more than a few occasions. One time we were talking about someone and he said, casually, over a bowl of spaghetti, “Didn’t you say that (X) guy was a swinger?”
Bam.
Finn looked handsome onstage, wearing khakis and a button-down shirt. His own personal style was a combination of gear from The Child’s Place and skater wear. The competition started and I immediately froze. The woman who was tasked with reading the words, apparently someone who was very active in the school community, had an incredibly lazy, southwestern accent and a definite lack of articulation.
She butchered word after word. “Meritorious,” became something like “Merry-toy-eye-ee-us.” I saw bewildered looks on the kids faces. I searched the faces of the parents around me to see if any of them were registering the same concern. They seemed non-plussed.
Adding to the problem, the kids had been well-coached by their teachers. If there were words they didn’t know by heart, they’d been taught tricks to figure out the spelling. They’d been taught about roots, gerunds, and infinitives.
I pursued a mildly passive-aggressive tact and mentioned off-hand to a parent sitting next to me they should have chosen someone who could pronounce the words to run the spelling bee. The man side-eyed me like I was a bent Suzuki parent.
Finn got lucky with a couple of words he knew and the field whittled down to five. His turn at the lectern was next.
The older lady adjusted her glasses and sighed. She read out “Upper-toonity,” and then incorporated it into a sentence. “James found that if he applied hisself well, he’d have the upper-toonity to go to a good college.”
Finn fidgeted on stage. He asked her to repeat the word.
“Upper-tooooonity.”
"Damn, u, not o's," I seethed to myself.
I just about jumped out of my chair. He took a breath and started… “O, p, p, e, r, t, u, n, i, t, y.”
“I’m sorry. That’s inkerrect.”
He looked deflated and took a seat at the back of the stage. There was a five-minute break before the finals. I was hot. I approached the principal of the school.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I don’t mean to be too much of a stickler, but these kids deserved to be read the words with proper annunciation.”
I felt the weight shift in her shoes. I’d had a run in with her before.
“What do you mean?”
“This,” I said. “This is absurd. It’s not just about my kid, but it breaks my heart to watch how disappointed they are. Give these kids a chance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The woman reading the words. This is a spelling bee. These are English words, their pronunciations matter. Opportunity.” I said it slowly. “There’s a reason it’s spelled a certain way, with an ‘o” for instance after o-p-p and requires to be pronounced a certain way. If we were kicking it in front of a convenience store, I could glean what she meant by giving her a break for whatever regional drawl she’s got, but in a spelling bee, you need someone who’s going to pronounce the words correctly.”
“You think you could do it better?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, Ms. X ran the parent-teacher association for fifteen years. She is aptly qualified to do the job.”
“Let me take over.”
“I suggest you go back to your seat.”
I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down steaming hotter than the liquid in the styrofoam cup. The principal gave me side-eye. It wasn’t just this. The year before we’d had a butting of heads when my youngest child had been involved in a troublesome incident. There was a child in my youngest’s class who was severely set on the far end of the autism spectrum. As a human being, my heart felt for the kid and his parents, but the situation presented a stickier moral quandary. The child felt violated anytime anyone invaded his personal space, and the definition of said space was arbitrary and changed, sometimes by the minute. I realized this wasn't his fault, he was struggling with a terrible affliction. An extra monitor was hired full-time in the class to help deal with him and his potential outbursts. I found out all of this later.
I found out about what happened weeks after I returned from a job out-of-town. I’d been back for about a fortnight, spring break started, when my kid’s mom told me about an incident where this child’s father physically picked up my youngest by her shirt and shook her, screaming and threatening her the whole time. Apparently, what had happened was the kids were playing tag after class and my kid had casually tagged this child and said, “You’re it,” and the kid went off and attacked my kid, feeling their space had been violated. While this kid was hitting my child, the kid’s dad picked up my kid up and screamed if they ever did that again they would kick their ass. Kasey waited to tell me weeks after the event because she didn’t want me to confront the father in question. And by confront, she meant knock his ass out.
I admit I carry my own deep satchel of childhood fights, nightmare scenarios, attacks when it was me versus five. I had gone to a place deep in my psyche when I was back on the streets on Nogales and I was deep in shit, with both older kids and adults. If I saw this guy, I was determined to give him the same treatment.
Knowing calmer minds had to prevail, I called the school principal and asked her about the incident. She gave me some generic response of how no violence was tolerated on the schoolyard. “And yet you tolerate an adult lifting a six-year-old off the ground and threatening them?”
“The circumstances in this case are special.”
I was stuck with my rage. There was no getting anywhere with this woman. How could she know? She’d never been in a position before where fighting wasn’t a choice. There are situations you get into where there is absolutely no choice. You aren't simply allowed to "walk away." She couldn’t even conceive of it. I called a mutual friend who told me he’d had playdates with the child in question but stopped after there had been some physical altercations.
“The father’s not a bad guy,” he said, “but he’s hell-bent on making sure his son, who clearly has special needs, goes to a normal school and has a normal childhood experience. The problem,” he said, “is that he read that forms of martial arts like tai-chi and karate help autistic children. But instead of that route, he enrolled his son in Krav Maga, which is completely different. It teaches delivering fast, first-strike. killer blows and has none of the spiritual element of the martial arts.”
That day, I had an appointment to meet a writing team who had a deal at ABC. They were pitching me a half-hour comedy pilot they wanted to get off the ground. It was about a middle-aged guy who lived next to some rougher teens who pulled stuff and fucked with his family and while he and his friends would talk about doing something about it, the writers said, “You know how it is, you mutter and talk about it, but ultimately do nothing.”
I was quiet. I sat in deep judgment. I thought they were from a different planet. I thought of my friends, most of whom who would have no problem getting down with someone if someone they loved were threatened. And let me make this clear, I’m not talking about people who start shit, I’m talking about people who do something when backed into a corner where there is no other choice. We grew up differently. I knew who these guys were, they seemed affable enough, slightly goofy, but they were wrong.
“Why wouldn’t the guy get into it with them?”
“He’d be scared.”
“What about “Straw Dogs” where you’re pushed to a place where there is no other response?
They looked at each other. “Then it wouldn’t be a comedy.”
I thanked them for their time, but was convinced we lived in different worlds. If we were going to work together, our weltanshauungs would merely widen, scene after scene, conversation after conversation. I thought they were goobers.
Coincidentally that night, I’d agreed to read a piece for a series of “Autism Speaks.” It was held somewhere in Beverly Hills. The producer behind it seemed like a good guy (although he’d pulled some weird Holly-wood shit with me in the past). I didn’t care. He had a kid with special needs, he put his time and money into raising awareness, and all of that superseded some bs over a casting two years prior.
Connie Britton took place, Ian Hart, John Doe. It was a cool line up. I was given an essay to read. It was an incredibly powerful piece written by a father about his fifteen-year-old-son. It was bold, honest, and raw. I can’t remember particular passages, but the one that struck me deeply was how he described staring at his son’s silhouette against a drape as the sun was setting and saying how “In a normal light, when the sun was setting, just right, for a moment, he almost looks normal. Then, in a moment, I realize he isn't.” My heart broke for this father, for the child caught in a nightmare. It fucked with me. It became an apologist for the father who shook my kid around. Well, mild apologist. He had his own satchel of pain and frustration he was carrying around.
When I finished the piece, which was beautifully written and stunningly cogent, I noticed the author’s name at the bottom of the page. It was one of the comedy writers I’d met earlier in the day. I’d been so wrong about him. My supposed radar had failed me miserably. He was being affable, but carrying deep pain. Never had I been so wrong about a human being. It taught me (and I have to re-learn it daily), never judge when you don’t know the story.
I understand the pain of a parent of a child with behavioral problems, OCD, addictions — I’ve been down those roads. I just still couldn’t contain my rage when it came to the guy who picked my child up and terrified her.
I went to my child’s class and spoke with the teacher. She was kind. She explained that the situational was not ideal and in fact, at one point broke down in tears and explained how hard it had been on her. “I have enormous respect for teachers who choose specifically not to go into special education. but I specifically went another direction. Because of this situation, I feel constantly like I am trying to serve two masters.”
I picked my kid up from class and we held hands. We’d spoken of the event and had come to a kind of agreement that some people are different and can’t control their hands or emotions. But I couldn't extend the same courtesy for this father. This father intent on making sure the uniquely formed peg of his child fit on a round hole that felt “normal.” And if if unsurprisingly it didn't work, he was going to find someone to punish.
It reminded me of a friend whose father was a gung-ho Great Santini military type. He had a son who was profoundly deaf and the father refused to send him to the American Sign Language School for the Deaf. I don’t know if the option exists anymore. He was forced to attend a lip reading school where the kids struggled to speak or he wasn’t worthy as a son.
Across the playground, I saw the father of the kid in question. He looked broken down in a pair of shorts and a polo shirt. Balding, slumped. The hurt/angry/asshole kid in me had my two punches worked out. It felt like a decisive moment in a Raymond Carver short story. My child didn't seem notice, or, maybe noticing so much, broke the ice. “Can we get frozen yogurt, dad?”