Mike

This morning I thought of something that happened a long time ago, something that I need to remember and remind myself about from time to time. Remind myself to not lose that inner voice, listening to it and most importantly, reacting to it. I’m not sure whether it’s that I’ve reached a point in my life that I’m reflecting more on my younger years or on the past and the lessons learned along the way, but it seems to happen more frequently now. I have come to the decision that all of these memories are a good thing. Good or bad, things that are pleasant or things I’d just as soon forget. All of them, they’re a good thing.

When I was a sophomore in High School, which back then meant the first year of High School, it was a time that you carried girl’s books as you walked home. It was a time of letter jackets, class rings, going steady and drive-in movies. There were jocks, gear heads, ‘sosh’s’ (social elites) and brains. The group names have changed somewhat these days, but I don’t think that the basic culture of groups has really changed much. As it is today, there were the constant battles for supremacy, acceptance, popularity and maintaining a certain recognized status quo, all of which you find in any High School in this country.

I had one of the most important and defining points in my young life in that 10^th grade year. I was not a follower and I liked it that way. That trait was directly related to my Father, who he was and how he thought someone should conduct themselves. More accurately, how he thought I should conduct myself. Feelings and thoughts I didn’t always agree with, nor was I always successful in performing. He always told me that most of the time, knowing right from wrong was not nearly as hard or as troubling as people like to make it out to be. He would say the trouble or hard part, was to actually do the right thing and trying to resist the always easier wrong way. Sounds real basic, but that’s the way he kept things. I think for the most part, I really did try to do things right but this year I would be tested in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.

I was athletically minded and team sports were okay, but I liked the test that individual sports tended to offer. I was a wrestler and had many friends on the wrestling team as well as other friends, including upperclassmen, on the other school athletic teams. I did better than average academically and had other friends that basically met each of the ‘general population’ category names I mentioned. I’d had girlfriends, although not many, and had one then. I was as close to being an average ‘balanced’ kid, or as close as you can get to balanced when you’re that age.

At the beginning of the year there were the usual recognized faces with some new ones sprinkled in that you didn’t really notice. They seemed, either by great effort or gifted ease on their part, to melt right in. This did not apply to Mike though, it was virtually impossible for him to melt right into the student population. Mike was a new kid and he Chinese, from Taiwan to be exact, but that wasn’t really what made him stand out. No, it was definitely not race that made him stand out, it was instead his size. He was huge, towering over almost everybody, teacher and student alike, except our starting center on the basketball team. He had enormous feet that required shoes that were unbelievable in size and he was heavy, but not fat…..as I said, just a huge kid. He was awkward too, actually, to be honest he was a complete oaf – absolutely no athletic skills whatsoever. He wore thick black frames and coke bottle thick glasses. His hair stood out at weird angles – thick as cable and so black it almost looked midnight blue sometimes. All of this was counterbalanced by his personality though. He was a sweet guy, no other way to describe it. Now, sweet is a term or description that I certainly don’t use often because so few people meet my criteria for that and back then you just didn’t say that kind of thing at all. In fact, I would have never used that word back then, being the shallow pool I was. Mike was friendly, open, forgiving and anxious to help. He was loyal and honest to the point of being ridiculous.

“Mike Fung?” I remember the homeroom teacher asking.

“I’m He-ah.” Mike answered that first day.

He was sitting next to me in unassigned seating and he was about as uncomfortable and self conscious as it is humanly possible for someone to be. Several looks he got thanks to his accent, size and appearance probably tripled that anxiety. After roll and all the boring first of the year homeroom stuff, the bell rang and we all headed bravely out into mind-boggling world of high school. Mike Fung, the new Chinese Giant, whom I had ignored in homeroom, not out of anything really but sheer apathy, loomed over and behind me coming out into the hallway.

“Hi, Jeem” he said from high above.

I turned around and stared almost directly into his chest. Looking up at him, from way too close for my druthers, I remember saying a not so pleasant “What?”

Mike was smiling broadly, ear to ear, and said again, “I say, Hi Jeem….how you doing?”

He was one of the first oriental people I had ever come across up close and personal, so to speak and I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that I had grown up in some racially exclusive town or area and it wasn’t that I had never talked to, or was ignorant of Orientals – it was just, well, different. It was different because Mike was so anxious, so willing and so desperate for me. Yes, he had decided on me to be his new friend. You could see it behind the smile and in his eyes. He was terrified. He was scared of being in this big old school, scared of having maybe only three or four other kids that looked like him around that school and scared because all kids in the 10^th grade – including me, were scared of something. They might fear being a social outcast, might fear failing academically, maybe it was a fear of not being a starter on the football team like dad dreamed of, or a thousand other concerns. At least there was one fear Mike would never have and that would be failing academically. Simply put, he was a brilliant student and it would not take long for everybody to figure that out, students and teachers alike.

As we walked into the hallway of that old coliseum of a high school, even at that time nearly a hundred years old, with its three floors of confusing room numbers and all new teachers it was a daunting experience for all of us sophomores. For him though, for Mike, it had to be his worst nightmare. Of course at the time, I knew or appreciated none of that. My bored and distracted “hey” in reply, or whatever short one word mumbled greeting I said back to him that day, was certainly not a welcoming type comment. It was all he needed though. My nightmare, or what I considered one, had just begun and his was looking better. We continued down the hall and I veered off to my first class. As I finally found that class, and started to slowly file in with the other kids who had the same familiar deer in the headlight look, I had to slow down for the bottle neck at the door. As I did I was bumped in the back, a heavy bump, and I turned around knowing before I saw him, that it was Mike Fung.

Whether it was fate or design or both, it turned out that Mike and I had almost identical schedules. In the week that followed we even walked a good part of the way home on identical routes, finally forking off our separate ways. We talked some, but not much. Mike was painfully shy and not sure what to say. I was purposely not saying much, not because I disliked him or was trying to be hurtful but basically because I had no interest in him. What I failed to appreciate and realize, was that Mike didn’t have the luxury to selectively choose his friends. He would walk slightly to the side of me or even slightly behind me on the way to class, depending on whether I was walking with my girlfriend, other guys or alone. Walk isn’t the right word really. Mike lumbered, yes that’s the word, he lumbered and he was smiling all the way. I started to get very self conscious about my lumbering shadow and it got worse when I started noticing that after school he would wait outside for me at the bottom of those massive stone steps. Patiently waiting for me, just so he could have somebody to walk home with. As I said it wasn’t because of any hatred or dislike, I just didn’t care about him. I just didn’t like it. Not something I’m proud of, that’s for sure, but that’s what and who I was at the time.

Finally one day it boiled over, instead of veering off on his way home, he followed me and my girlfriend at the time, as I went my way home. About a block or two later, I simply stopped, turned around and glared at him. I even took an uncalled for and totally ridiculous, aggressive stance.

“What do you WANT Mike?” I asked with dramatized impatience.

I’ll never forget his look as he hesitated, stopped, grinned uncertainly, waved and slowly turned back towards his house. He was grinning sure, but it had crushed him. It embarrassed him badly. Even being as insensitive as I was then, I was sure of that and the sad part was, I still didn’t care. I’ll never forget that look and it haunts me to this day. My girlfriend didn’t let me forget it either, she was furious with me. When I got home my mother told me that someone named Mike had called and apologized. Apologized and was coming over. Now I was really mad. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone, find somebody else to attach himself to? And what the hell was he apologizing for? I had no answers to my hollow questions.

When he got to our house, I was conveniently out back attending to some pretended chore. My Mom walked through the back screen door holding onto something, with a very quizzical look on her face. She then presented me with a small oriental box which I opened, and inside sitting on the velvet lining, was a sort of miniature warrior figure. She told me that Mike had politely greeted her, left his apology for me, nodded his head and then given her my gift. I went in my bedroom, sat it on my dresser, and stared at it thoroughly confused and somewhat embarrassed.

As the weeks and months followed, he eased up on the shadowing, at least that’s what I called somebody simply needing a friend. I had finally thanked him for the present and told him I didn’t really mean anything that day, but had stopped far short of saying anything that might continue or grow the acquaintance. As time went by, he was virtually ignored by others at the school, sometimes openly ridiculed and occasionally teased by others. He was a constant and faithful fan at my wrestling meets though. Grinning and cheering. He was always smiling, always. He would wave at me from down the hall, from down the sidewalk, from the stands and I’m willing to bet when I wasn’t even looking. He forever had an opened book, head bent and reading. He was always pleasant, polite and well meaning. That’s how I remember him.

And I didn’t care. Just flat, didn’t care. Occasionally, I did start to watch him though, but just as a curiosity I thought to myself. In reality though, it was something that I wouldn’t admit to myself – not right away anyway. It was out of shame. Pure and simple, I was ashamed of the way I had treated a guy who wanted nothing more than to have a friend. He had chosen me, to be that friend. He asked for very, very little and was willing to offer anything just to have a friend. I had in return, given nothing.

The day it all changed for me and Mike was not spectacular in any way, except that it was the day I got suspended from school for a week. This happened to a ‘good kid’, a solid Dudley Do Right kind of jock. A kid that said yes ma’am and yes sir, did his homework, got good grades, had a part-time job already and helped older neighbors. I followed the rules. Of course I was not always the knight in shining armor when it came to doing the right thing. I had certainly proved that to Mike Fung, and myself, for the last few months.

As I came out of school that day I was again walking with my girlfriend. Off to my right, down below in a little alcove beside the steps I heard somebody yelling loudly. Looking over the edge of the railing I saw that it was three guys and some onlookers. One of the guys was Mike Fung without his glasses, the other two were football players. I knew them and even hung around with them occasionally. Mike was bigger than them of course, but he was cornered and for one of the few times I ever remember he was not smiling, sensing the inevitable trouble. I knew damn well he had not done anything wrong and that these two were taking on his size more than anything. I was also sure that Mike did not want, or even knew how, to fight. I looked away quickly, trying to ignore it, trying to be as uncaring as I had been all year. Reaching the bottom of the steps and heading down the sidewalk, I was successful in ignoring it, because I quickly thought how many times I had been in a scrap and nobody had chipped in to help? It basically never happened to me anymore anyway, because I would fight and I was pretty good at it. So hey, what the hell did it matter to me?

As it turned out, Mike was lucky he didn’t get a serious beating, but I was even luckier because the one football player’s voice finally did turn me around. It was a voice of pure ridicule, taunting, belligerence and false anger. A voice that was full of some fictional wrongdoing, a supposedly besmirched honor. I never really liked the guy that was picking the fight anyway and he was hell bent on fighting a gentle, easygoing, non aggressive guy who didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I put my girlfriend’s books and my gym bag on the ground without a word and walked toward the three.

At the beginning of it, I was just mad at having to get involved. A great inconvenience to me or something – again shameful, but that’s what it was. As I remember, I didn’t make some valiant statement, or say anything really as I got in there between them, just walked in and started punching.

In the middle of it, I got to the little loudmouth pretty quickly, he was just along for the ride anyway. One solid punch to the nose and he was all wide eyed and bleeding. He was out of the game before it really started. The main guy, well, that was another story. He was a fighter, a big and very good fighter. It was a draw at best, we were both on the ground which is where I had to be with this particular guy. We were both just kind of wore out when it finally got broke up, by my wrestling coach of all people.

In the end, it was probably the best I had ever felt about myself, at least at that point in my short life. I had finally done the right thing with Mike. I hadn’t done it for the right reasons initially, but it had at least made me realize what those right reasons were. Mike’s only problem was a pair of glasses that needed the all too familiar piece of white tape in the middle over the nose. His parents who were well off, could have bought him ten new pairs but he continued to wear the old ones, possibly to remember or possibly as a badge of sorts. I think for him, they meant something very special. Although we did not become the best of friends, like a true Hollywood ending, we did become good friends. We shared some good times through high school. I remember telling him at graduation that I was lucky to have him as a friend, instead of the other way around, like he maintained. I’ll say it again; he was the best natured, truly nice guy I think I’ve ever met. I’m positive he still is. It would be impossible for him to be any different. I’m also positive that I have still have that small ornate box somewhere. Wherever it is, I’m going to find it. I need to look at that again. I need to remember how that felt.