The Fellow Sitting Next to Me Told the Truth

 

I remember a day on the bus on the way to school when I was in eighth grade, probably in the early spring of 1972.

A non-untypical event took place that day, in a long period of my life when I was constantly being bullied, most vociferously on the bus.

An asshat seated behind me poured perfume down my neck. I will refer to him hereafter simply as Asshat without article.

On this day, as it happens, I remained dry-eyed and rather Stoic about the perfume thing. I don't know why. Perhaps my mind was simply somewhere else. There would have been times when I would have reacted in a way that Asshat and friends would have found amusing. But this time I just sat there.

Asshat was annoyed by the non-response (which annoyance, I confess, delighted me). Since he couldn't see anything but the back of my head, he couldn't plausibly, even by his loose standards of plausibility, joyously proclaim that I was crying. So he asked the fellow sitting next to me -- whose name I have forgotten, but I'll just say The Fellow -- "is he crying?"

The Fellow could have lied. And it might have had its psychic rewards. Certainly none of my experience with this crowd suggests that there was any powerful disincentive.  But, to his karmic credit, The Fellow said simply, "no."

Asshat: "Then why isn't he doing anything?"

That question sat in the air, and then Asshat found some other subject to occupy himself with as the bus lumbered onward.

So here is my long-delayed anything. Thank you, The Fellow, for that monosyllabic truth.

I enjoyed it, Asshat didn't. All was good. To be more mature and articulate about the strain of Stoicism I seem to have for once exhibited that day than I could have been then: I was learning not to react when reaction could be of no value.