Life Along the Way----Remembering Kindness

I shuffled in late to homeroom that cold January morning. My penny loafers, so cool in 'The Wonder Years' of seventh grade (and now) made that scuffing sound against the creaky wood floors at 'Old Junior' High in Enterprise, AL. I wished the shoes would have shut up. I was crying. It was not what a 13 year old boy living in the Deep South wanted to portray at that age.

My dad was on his second deployment to Vietnam. His first tour was far more dangerous, but I was in fourth grade then and the idea that he would not return home was foreign to my mind. This was the second time around. Pop had already been deployed, but his dad had become ill and he was flown home over Christmas Holidays to tend my grandpa. Once he was well, Pop vanished as quick as he came, back to Vietnam as he was CO of a helicopter maintenance company. I spent most of that year worrying about him, thinking I would never see him again. The toxic chemicals brewing in 13 year olds cause the emotions and brain to function in unusual ways.

My homeroom teacher was a professional in every respect of the word. You earned your grades. You behaved in class. We loved her and respected her. She was not exceptional; she was typical of teachers in Enterprise in 1968. I melted into my desk, and buried my head, embarrassed that I was crying in the seventh grade. The eyes of Alabama were upon me, at least that is how it felt. My ears were burning like a couple of Ol Diz briquets.  I remember our teacher speaking very plainly to the homeroom class. “Mark’s dad had to return to Vietnam today”. That is all she had to say. I have always wondered how she knew.

What struck me then and what stays with me now is the silent respect my classmates gave me. All the homeroom chattering stopped. No word was said, none were needed. I wonder if 12 and 13 year old kids would have understood that moment today. I wonder.

This little story is not an attempt to garner sympathy for my seventh grade episode; actually the incident is just the impetus to reveal the intention of this tale. There was no doubt that this was a tough year in my life; hey, who didn't have a tough year in junior high?
 My memories are more about these kids I spent all but one of my 7-12 grade years. There was a sense of goodness in them.

A powerful word in my life is simply the word 'kind'. There is a warmth to it, an action to it. My friends were simply kind to me that day. I remember the kind people forever. I spend very little energy focusing on mean, petty, malcontents. They are  poison ivy to the soul. Don't touch them, these kvetchers will infect you with a churlish itch.

I was expecting, being the ‘new kid’ and an Army brat to boot,  it would be difficult making friends in a small southern town of children who had known each other all their lives. My expectations were simply wrong. A number of kids who befriended me in the seventh grade are Facebook friends to this day. I don’t ever recall being looked down on because I was an Army kid, in fact, the respect my classmates rendered that day left an indelible impression on me; they were raised with an innate ability to care, to respect, to love, to be kind. 

I saw something the other day from a European newspaper that asked people to give one word to describe certain states in the U.S. One, of course, was Alabama and the results were not pretty. In fact, some of the descriptions were so ridiculously ignorant  that I just had to laugh. Is the South perfect? Hardly, as we humans aren’t perfect and that applies to every region of our country.

But I deeply love my little state of Alabama and there is a kind spirit among her people that permeates their souls. There is STILL a sense of goodness in them. Enterprise, Alabama is simply a microcosm of small town decency that is the backbone of the Deep South.