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Here's how it went down. The year was
1981. Gil Gerard ruled the airwaves as BUCK ROGERS. The Atari 2600
was in its heyday, having yet to disappoint the gaming public with
its anemic version of PAC MAN. Dudley Moore was winning America's heart with his whimsical onscreen alcoholism and wacky drunk-driving antics in ARTHUR. MAD MAGAZINE was
having a grand ol' time parodying Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese, leaving
me, in third grade, My dad had, in a surprising twist of career-fate, been offered a job on a 300-cow dairy farm. (Long story, please don't ask. My dad led a weird charmed life.) Part of the perk of this position was that it came with not only free lodging for the family, but free lodging in a beautiful, 250 year old Colonial house, with a crazy amount of rooms. Being used to living in apartments and small places, this sprawling manse with its hardwood floors and honest craftsmanship offered my folks a chance to save money, while living in spacious and bucolic accommodations. A deal too good to be true. And, like any such deal, it turned out to be just that. But at least AT FIRST, it was a joy for my folks. For me, however, it was not so much wine and roses. Moving, when you are going into third grade, is playing what may be called a kind of emotional Russian Roulette. It's altogether possible that the barrel will spin onto an empty chamber, and the trigger-pull of uprooting your established friendships and replacing your familiar school hallways with new ones will, in the hollow click of disaster averted, give you a second lease on life, and a new, better perspective. Or, as in my case, the thing can end up blowing your mind, and leaving chunks of your soul on the walls and carpet. Now, gentle Internet Friend, I don't know about you, but it has been my experience that up to a certain age, the inter-relations of groups of children and the concept of "friendships" have the dynamic of an amorphous, free forming blob. Any kid in third grade, entering into any group of third graders, should be like Type O blood. You can squirt that happy juice it into just about anything, with little fear of rejection by the host. Once you hit sixth grade, or so, the clique divisions begin to form, and budding teen rituals exert themselves into the dread concept of popularity and the exclusion it brings about by the division--but usually, up until fourth grade, kids are pretty much interchangeable. At least, they should be. Everybody's a drippy nosed, fly-down, shoelace untied mess with a bad haircut, and embarrassing shoes. But there's equality to it. You'll play with just about anyone with two legs. And if a kid does not have two legs, you'll end up using him at least as "base" for a game of tag. The important part is, everybody's included, because you aren't familiar yet with the concept of exclusion. Not so in Southbury, as I learned. Apparently, in that sleepy dale, the kids were well ensconced into the more mature practice of odd-man-out-ism, at an early age. They were all prodigies at it, in fact. And me being a new kid was enough to peg me as that oddest of little men. No one talked to me. No one. I was convinced it would just take time, and soon enough SOMETHING would happen, somebody would befriend me, and let me in to a group. I was sure of it. Just last another week, and it'll happen, I reasoned. Swallow the fear, hold your head up, go on in another day. This was the gist of my mantra, waiting for the bus each morning. As the weeks dragged on, my resolve faltered. No one asked me to join in to any recess game. Soon I grew inured to the daily mental beat down, and stopped expecting a miracle. Lunch was an excursion into hell, each and every day. I'd circle nervously, and try to sit, and get told that the seat my Sears ToughSkin Jeans were touching was saved for someone, and told to go away. Being in a new place, and wanting desperately to not rock the boat, and create enemies before I did friends, I sheepishly obeyed these pint-sized meanies. I'd end up sitting at the corner of a table, where I'd speak to no one, and look down at my EMPIRE STRIKES BACK lunchbox, tracing the upraised metal of the embossed AT-AT, until the bell let me get out of that awful room. Recess was even worse. In my old school, I was awash
in friends, and as such, usually one of the first picked in teams
for kickball. I was an excellent kickball player. Which is not saying
too much, since you have to be an utter spaz not to play kickball at least
passingly well. But still, I was pretty good. The one time I tried
to play in Southbury, The shame and turmoil of being last picked saw me avoiding kickball. At recess, I'd wander around, alone, moving from group to group, or hiding behind a tree, playing a handheld electronic game that I had smuggled into my backpack. I loathed recess like the plague.
So, by design of the Pomperaug Elementary school method, I was stuck with these kids, now actively mocking me, ALL DAY LONG. The plan, I guess, if there was a plan at all, was that lunch and recess acted as the only pressure-valves to allow some release. But for me, without a single friend, lunch and recess were the most dreaded part of the day. It was like the square planet that Superman's enemy Bizarro comes from, where men bite dogs, good is bad, and bad is good. How terminally fucked is it that the things which caused me the most turmoil were LUNCH and friggin' RECESS? During this block of cruel time, I'd pray for the clock to hurry up, and get me back to my assigned seat for Social Studies. It is a bad world that sees a child wanting to read about Mesopotamia and cuneiform tablets more than playing kickball. So how did I cope? Two ways, Internet friend, two ways. Both of them sad. Coupled together, they multiplied exponentially and became outright pathetic. How to get past each day, and how to give myself something to look forward to? Well, there was a little girl in my class. Her name was Shelly C---, and I fell in "love" with her with all the fierce and fiery intensity, and the brand of earnestness that is the special providence of third grade boys. We toss about the words " schoolboy crush" as adults, to describe such things, and dismiss them as trifles. But in doing so, we forget the very real implications of the word "crush." As in: heavy stone, pushing inexorably on you, immobilizing and pressing the life out of you. That's a crush. That was my crush. The thing is, because of my out and out misery in my day-to-day school existence, the "crush" on little Shelly C--- grew that much more pressurized. Like the weight of the world, compressing coal into diamonds, so too was my time spent stealing glances at her made that much more valuable and precious, as the contrast that the floating feeling of schoolboy-love provided to the misery was that much more acute. Now, with time and distance, I can see that what I was doing was a defense mechanism, in and of a sort. I had created a mental oasis in a very unforgiving desert, and cast Shelly C--- as that respite from the unrelenting heat. Or, in a reversal of metaphor, the image of her was like a life buoy, keeping me afloat in a choppy, cold and dark sea of exclusion. I needed SOMETHING to cling to, to keep me hopeful. I invented a "love," and a beautiful fiction in my head to believe in, to get me through the day. It actually had very little to do with just who that little girl was. I mean, I didn't know her, I hardly said eight words to her the whole school year. But (in my squirrelly little mind) I conjured dream scenarios wherein she was equally as struck with me, and saw all my silent suffering, and secretly loved, and respected me for it. But, y'know, was too scared to say anything, for fear that I might reject her. If only she knew, we could both end this tragic suffering…. Shut up! It was my fantasy, and my way of making up a "bubble" universe to exist in that allowed me to get on the bus in the morning without crying. I'd read volumes of meaning into chance eye contact, wherein I'd confirm these mad thoughts. She looked at me! She MUST know. I'd close my eyes during film-strips, and try to mentally "beam" messages into her head.
Such is the way of the third grade crush. Each night, as I went to sleep, I'd silently hope that she would not be absent the next day, for if she was, the whole point of going to school was lost. I'd summon up intricate fantasies of impressing her, saying something funny, doing something spectacular, saving the school from terrorists, all so that she'd end up running into my arms, and telling me that she thought about me as much as I did her. When I got home and the bus dropped me off, I'd wait until it was a safe distance away, then write her name in the dirt with a stick, and draw a clumsy heart around it. I'd stare at it for as long as I dared, convinced that at any moment, teams of people would rush out and point fingers at me, laughing and delighting in discovering my secret, and then, when it was too much to bear, I'd quickly obscure the little sand-drawing with a nervous KED clad foot. Our big, colonial house was on the edge of a beautiful pond, and I'd sit on a rock, and imagine so hard that she was there with me that I swear to you, I almost SAW her there, even with my eyes open. Shimmering, half-transparent. If I were sure that no one was watching me, I'd extend my hand to this ghost image, and wordlessly sit there, in tortured bliss, imagining her there, holding my hand. That's as far as I could imagine, without imploding. The notion of an actual kiss, at that age, is so beyond the realm of the possible that even the hint of it, just as a thought, was too much. See, at that age, the crush is doubly horrific, since it exists everywhere and nowhere, and has no possibility of release. It exists solely in the mind, where it is allowed to be that much purer, not having the chance to be sullied by physical reality or become banal. But it is a near physical ache, with phantom pains half in the head, half in the gut, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at all, that leaves you part queasy, part dizzy, and part elated. I was also quite aware that this returned, but unspoken love from Ms. C--- that I dreamed of was indeed, a fiction. I suffered no illusions on that score. But it was one that I could allow myself, in silent moments, to believe in enough, just a sort of cosmic "maybe" that allowed me to do like Jesse says- "Keep hope alive." I was perfectly content to keep everything at this level of homeostasis…So long as she did not profess some school girl crush on one of the popular boys, I could keep my psyche-saving life-raft afloat. I understood that this mental mind-play was not meant to work itself out in the real world. The pleasant lie of the possibility of it was what sustained me, and kept me. But oh, how it ached. The second coping strategy was worse. See, when you are that age, there is a certain life-affirming quality to candy bars that is just plain wrong. A full-sized Milky Way bar offers, to the 9 year old boy, six minutes of uncomplicated joy. He is not yet concerned with bills to pay, nor is he burdened by thoughts of the world or politics or injustice., Even the hell of school, if it is a hell for him, manages to wink out and disappear when the bus dropping him off home pulls away. It is a simple time, after a fashion, suited to simple pleasures. And whatever is in front of you can be your whole universe, if only for a short time. So candy takes on an importance that is never quite found again, in later years. Finding a box of candy bars that has fallen off a truck is the third grader's equivalent to the adult fantasy of finding a suitcase full of money. If shown the film, and asked what was in the PULP FICTION briefcase, a 9 year old might reply "Twinkies. Generally, though, I would not advise it as a wise course of action to show a 9 year old PULP FICTION to test this hypothesis. While it is true that your world is whatever is in front of you, when you don't have fun in your day at school, you try to cram pleasure into your day AFTER school. I did this by cramming my face. In my daydreams, Shelly C--- may have been my "girlfriend," but in a very real sense, the girl I was romancing was, in fact, Little Debbie; she of the chocolaty snack-cakes, and the fudge rounds, and the caramel cookie bars. I was quite the cupboard Casanova, I soon went from average 3rd grade boy-sized to a frequenter of the "HUSKY" section of Sears, when mom took me pants-shopping. In the department store parlance, "HUSKY" is a code word for "fat kid." And hoo boy, was I getting to be a chub. A little back story, though, that you'll need to know. I was always fascinated by the martial arts. When I was six, I asked my dad if I could learn karate. He explained to me that if I did, it would not be in the kiddie classes, as it was a serious endeavor, and I'd have to show enough maturity to go to the adult classes, but that he'd take it with me. I attacked those classes with the intensity of a marine, and was always mindful to be disciplined in class, to make my dad proud. There was a fierce, mustached Albanian guy who was one of the black belts, who, in a thick accent, called me "The Little Warrior." I trained like a demon. I'd practice stretching for hours. I taught myself weapons forms with a foam three sectional staff. In 3 years, I had gotten astonishingly good, and was capable of delivering crisp side and round kicks far above my head, with perfect form. When we moved to Southbury, part of the reason I packed on the pounds was that we were no longer able to attend the 3 night a week classes. Mostly, though, it was that I was eating enough snack-cakes to stuff a horse. But, chub though I was, I was still a formidable fighter for my age. This will get important to the story at hand, soon. Back to Southbury. I had one other bright spot in my life. I was still a member of the Cub Scout troop that I had belonged to in Oxford, which, while only being one town away, was as good as being a light-year off for all other intents and purposes. But my Cub Scout troop was packed with my old friends. When we had den meetings, I was my old self again. People liked me. I said funny jokes, and kids laughed. One such meeting was planned for a Saturday, and it was to be at my house. A meeting of the two worlds- Oxford friends in Southbury turf. The pack of
kids, all dressed in the silly uniforms and kerchiefs, came to my
house, and for the first time in a long time, I felt confidence,
even in this strange place. When they left that day, they left me with a renewed sense of purpose, and a feeling of hope. It was nothing wrong with ME, it was this stupid TOWN, this stupid SCHOOL, and I was allowing myself to be defeated by it. No more! I vowed. Was I not "The Little Warrior?" Come that Monday, the kids of Southbury would see a new, and reinvigorated Josh Dobbin, and be forced, by dint of sheer willpower, to accept me. My plan was simple. During the Cub Scout get-together, I had kicked several "home runs in Kickball. What I would do was screw up my courage and fortitude, and stage a triumphant return to the Kickball field in recess. I'd suffer through being the last picked, but I'd play like a boy possessed. I'd catch pop-ups, I'd steal bases, I'd kick home runs, I'd win their acceptance, and finally break the evil spell of nastiness that had settled upon me there, like a cold gray fog. Getting on the bus that morning, my leg was shaking with the adrenaline rush of the intense mental planning.Yet I had an eerie calm, leading up to recess. It WOULD happen. It must happen. It is only fair that it happen, and the world MUST be fair. Recess came. I approached the kickball field. As I knew would happen, I was picked last. This was fine, for tomorrow, after the stellar performance I was about to stage, I'd be Captain of the team, and get to do the picking myself. I eventually ended up on the team helmed by this kid named Kevin Something-or-Other, who was the leader of the derision toward me. Even better! With him swayed, I'd have achieved total victory. Well, Internet Friend, I am here to tell you that despite the sitcom conventions to the contrary, when the heat is on, and in the WKRP world, Les Nessman gets to catch that fly ball, the real world is not so poetic. My psyching myself up led to too much mental pressure, and at my "at bat" (which, in kickball, is really at "at foot"), I tensed and choked, and kicked a series of fouls, and an easy pop up that was caught by the opposing pitcher. All to the groans and catcalls of my teammates, of course. I was flushed and near tears. But not yet defeated. It was a setback, that was all. But onto the outfield!! There, I would shine, and recoup my losses. It must be so. Kevin Something-or-Other assigned me to the far outfield, where he was sure that I'd do the least damage. I accepted this, knowing that Fate would see me through. I'd catch a ball, and make a stunning play. The inning dragged on, and I was alone out there with the caterpillars. Then it happened. The fickle finger
of Fate morphed from a finger into a foot, and became the foot of a kid on
the opposing team, who booted the ball high, high, high up into
the air… Toward me. It was an astonishing kick. And as it floated to me, the world slowed down. I saw myself catching it, and then running full speed toward the kid who had tried to steal 2nd base, and unleashing the ball with wicked speed and unerring accuracy, pegging him for the double play. This was it!! I watched the ball come down, and grabbed for it. Everything was riding on this catch. It bounced off my chest, and onto the field. I stumbled after it, and, so flummoxed by the miss, and so in a shambles, fell as I tried to scoop it up. It was like a movie, all right, but not the "Good Guy males the Play" scene. It was the "Camera pulls up as the hero looks skyward and screams 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' scene." My plan was turning wrong in every possible direction. I had to fight back the tears of too much hoping, suddenly gone all awry. The day could not get worse, I thought. I was wrong. Kevin Something-or-Other, the pitcher and captain, cupped his hands over his mouth in a makeshift megaphone, and cried out "You SUCK!!!" He had a rough voice and dark, sunken eyes and a mop of thick black hair. "You suck." It was the last straw. All of the pain and anguish of the school year, up to that point, all of the lunchroom time wandering around, looking for a seat, all of the queasy dread of going into class each and every day, all of it. It crystallized into pure, focused, furious and liberating anger. My vision was red. Bellowing like a war-mad Viking, I rushed the pitcher's mound. I was quite literally not in control of my faculties. With the inertia of my ample frame, and sinister intent of my anger, I body checked the unsuspecting little Kevin with all my might. He honestly flew off his feet. My eyes were stinging with tears. I had focused all of swirling hurricane of emotion onto this boy. He became, in that moment, the single symbol of every bit of my suffering. Then the cloud passed, and I realized what I had done. He was getting up, and the kickball teams suddenly surged forward, and formed the tribal ritual of the "fight circle." I didn't want to fight him! I wanted him to be my friend, to accept me, and it had all gone wrong. As he stood up, I shook my head, and said, "No, please, let's stop this." This was interpreted as me being afraid to fight. I was not. I knew what would happen in a fight. And it did.
I was crying not out of fear, but because my plan had not just crumbled around me, it had exploded. Still, here was a fist coming toward my face. I blocked it, and threw him to the ground. I didn't want to punch him, or hurt him; I only wanted to stop him. I may have even been babbling, "please stop, please stop." It's a bit fuzzy. I know this: He got up, embarrassed, and now furious, and tried again. I blocked everything he threw, and then knocked him down with a straight side kick to the chest. Tears were pouring from my eyes, but I was accomplished enough as a fighter, and trained enough to easily stop his totally unschooled attack. This could not possibly be worse, this could not possibly be a more miserable day. Fate had tricked me; I was supposed to emerge victorious, and win the day. How could this be? Then, like some movie, I see that coming from the swings, running full speed is none other than Shelly C--. For honest and true.
My mind raced, trying to fill in the possibilities. All was NOT lost, it was Fate, and Kevin was getting up again, and swinging, and I blocked him, and swung his arm around his back, immobilized him, it was a textbook execution, and Shelly C---, beautiful, pretty Shelly C--- was closer, and running toward me, and she had seen it all, and saw what I went through and every fantasy in my head of her secretly loving me was coming true, and she would hold my hand and walk off with me, and wipe my tears away, and tell me that I was so brave and she ran through the fight circle, just like in a movie, and it was more than I could even hope for, and she yelled "Leave him alone! Leave him alone!" And the world was good and just and fair and I was right to believe in fairy tale endings to stories and she was closer still and she kicked me in the shins as I held Kevin's arm behind his back and said, "Leave him alone, you big FATSO." "Leave him alone, you FATSO." It was like
a sledgehammer hit me in the gut. No, it was like being eviscerated.
No, it was just I actually gasped for air. I remember that; the sound. Sharp intake of wind over and through teeth and the sensation of trauma. They say these things are pains of the heart, but it was not in the chest, but rather lower and more vital. It was an everywhere-shock to my core. I did, indeed, leave him alone. I let go, and he did not continue the fight. No teachers came to break it up either, it was over. The circle dispersed, and I staggered away. Shelly C--- was standing next top Kevin Whoever-his-Last-Name-Was, and she was yelling at me, calling me a bully, and a fatso. I was mute with shock. Not knowing anything else to do, I ran from the kickball field, and stood silent by the red metal door to the school. Alone. Waiting for the bell to ring, and let me back into the school. It was all
gone. I could no longer even indulge in the silly post-school daydreams
of sitting and holding her hand. The thought of summoning up an
image of her face, that which I had done on the bus ride home (where
no one talked to me) every day, now was more painful than anything
I could imagine. It was no longer the calm, half smiling face of
my imaginary girlfriend, but an angry mask, mouth upturned, repeating
over and over "Fatso." Epilogue:
It all seemed an extended, unreal and unpleasant dream. But it stayed with me, every year of my life. So do me a favor. When next you pass by a mother and child in a supermarket, or a department store, and the little boy is a chunky, round cheeked kid with oversized pants and a baggy shirt, try to smile at him. Don't be overt and pitying, but still, try to be sincere. The kid lives on those moments, and they sustain him until the next one. Hopefully, he'll grow up and learn the lessons that the exclusion of being a fat kid can bring- he may even grow more noble for the experience. But for now, just smile at the kid, won't you? He needs it. Epilogue 2, 2012: I'm fascinated with magic. Not hocus-pocus magic or levitation or card tricks, or walking on water. I mean magic. A magic spell isn't words whispered over a candle to cause this or that to happen, I don't think. That's a dim and unambitious view of it. But it can be, I think, a series of words that makes things happen. Ideas given shape and allowed into the world to do something. Magic. . Social media and connections are also, I think, a kind of magic. At least, they could be, if one allows for it. The technology is one thing, but what happens with it is another. It is not wild or extraordinary that now, in 2012 (especially since we ended up going to the same high school for a year) to note that the little girl in this story grew up into a person with a Facebook account and a series of overlapping friends, by way of a short distance of degrees of separation. That's not extraordinary. However: A few years back, through the collective miracle of technology and expression, she read this and sent me a short little note acknowledging that she had seen it. Very shortly thereafter, in someone else's facebook photo album, this showed up:
A mutual "friend" (in the facebook sense) who I had befriended by way of having other mutual friends, who knew me only from the computer, *recognized third grade me* and tagged me in the picture, commenting " is that josh dobbin in the background????" What is extraordinary, at least to my way of thinking, in any case, is the persistence of a story, once told, to find its arc and become complete. This whole thing was just a thing that happened, like many other things that happen. Nothing special, honestly, but for the framing and the telling. Then it stopped being just a thing that happened and also became a story-- first in my head, then spoken out loud, finding a shape and a narrative.Then, this thing, this story found its way to another media, the internet, and took on a life of its own and found a resolution I could never have predicted, there at the metal doors on the blacktop of Pomperaug Elementary, gasping like a spilled goldfish. It is, in the grand scheme of things, just a little story. A playground drama of very little import. I'm aware of that. There are an infinite amount of larger and more important things. All the text above could be accurately summed up with a twitter-friendly character count: "A chubby kid liked a girl and she called him a name. #sowhat?" There was a communication of sorts, backwards and forwards through and across time. I feel it that way. I am no longer that boy, but once I was. He is not yet me, there in space-time, at that playground, in that year. Although he doesn't know it, he will be. He began a story to tell a story, first to himself, later to others, but it finished itself later. We're all of us, I think, different entities and different "wholes" at any given instance on our continuums; constantly, from one instant to the next, connected of course along the line, but wholly different at any given point. The greater the difference along the line, the greater the difference between those "two people," sorta-kinda. And the one law seems to be that there's only one direction it all goes in. Except for the pesky neutrino, all of physics tells us this is so. Still, a story and a story telling can connect years together and send messages through time. Forwards and, perhaps, backwards too. Third-Grade-Josh-Dobbin was, in the pantheon of Josh Dobbins-in-Time (as I view them) the sad and defeated one. He's not anymore. The story stopped being in his head, in my head, and went out to live in the world, where it fulfilled the secret wish he, that long-ago-me, made. And if that isn't magic, I don't know what is. |
trying to memorize Al Jaffee's "Snappy
Comebacks to Stupid Questions" baffled. Who the hell was Ed
Meese? And my family was moving from a small town called Oxford
to a small town called Southbury. 
being an unknown commodity and generally ignored, I was picked
dead last, and never even got an "up" at kicking, to prove
my worth. 
however,
and I was known to two-time Debbie with the
alluring Ms. Sara Lee, and sometimes even engaged in a scandalous
threesome with the older, more experienced temptress, Betty Crocker.
We
played all day, and I was the day's celebrity, showing all my friends
my toys, my secret hiding spots, and having group-fun in the places
I would normally be alone. 
Kevin
rushed me, swinging. He was a spry, athletic kid, but I had fought
in tournaments. Lump or no, I still was a practiced and disciplined
fighter, and was still flexible and unafraid of exchanging blows. Like any sport, fighting is something you need to practice to be good at doing. I was more practiced and knew how to throw straight, economical punches and was unafraid to block or avoid wild ones. 
indescribable,
and no matter how many words or images I may attempt to sling at
you to capture the feeling, none of them can do justice to just
how my world had broken and shattered into a million pieces. 