The obnoxious sound of the alarm clock jarred Sam out of an awesome dream. He groaned and rolled over in his bed, hitting the OFF button and enjoying the sweet silence that settled around him. He stretched and felt his muscles lengthen. His nerves were getting to him. As he began getting dressed, Sam could hear glasses and plates clinking downstairs. The dense aroma of coffee teased his senses, and he knew both his parents would be awake having breakfast downstairs. There were boxes and crates stacked in piles around his room, and he grimaced as he stubbed his toe on one while rummaging around for a matching pair of sneakers.
“Hey kiddo! Ready for your first day?” his father greeted him with a big smile as he sat down at the kitchen table. His father always seemed cheery, even first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning, Sam felt anything but cheery, and he wondered how his father managed not to let life get to him. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he said:
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” as he shifted his weight in the wooden chair.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” as he shifted his weight in the wooden chair.
“Aww sugar, are you nervous?” his mom, ever intuitive, broke in as she sat down with a cup of coffee.
“It’s OK to be nervous, it’s healthy!” his dad added quickly from behind a mouthful of eggs.
“I’ll be fine,” Sam replied, grabbing a couple of toast his mom had placed on the table.
“Just remember what we talked about, son” his dad said as he swallowed, and raised an eyebrow. Still the smile. Always with the smile. Before moving to the city, his parents had sat him down and discussed what he should expect of his new school. Sam’s family was from a small Georgia Atlanta
Both of Sam’s parents had expressed their concerns about the new city
“Especially the Black folks. Steer clear of them, if you know what’s good for you” his father warned. Sam’s mother and father weren’t part of the Klu Klux Klan, but they definitely had their prejudices. Apparently, when Sam was just a baby, his mother had been mugged by an African American man. His parents had never been particularly fond of any minority class, but after that incident their racism had become more solidified than ever before. With a deeply rooted family tree hailing from the South, Sam’s parents still had misgivings about the South’s defeat in the Civil War. Sam glanced at his mother, noticing her forehead had concerns racing in lines across it.
“I’ll be fine guys!” he assured his parents, scraping his chair back and getting up from the table. “Don’t worry about me, alright? Y’all sound like I’m going to war or something.” Sam grabbed his backpack and stepped out of his family’s new home and into the balmy Georgia
His new school was terrifying in its own right, never mind what his folks had to say about it. The thing was huge, filled with tons of students and faculty – none of which Sam knew. He kept to himself for most of the day and tried his best to blend in. The day seemed to drag on forever and when the last bell rang, Sam made a fevered dash for the busses in fear of getting on the wrong one and winding up dropped off in one of Atlanta
“Ow! Hey, watch it!” Sam started at the very deep voice and very black face of the kid he ran over.
“I’m sorry, man. I wasn’t looking where I was going” he said, picking his backpack up off the ground.
“Well, maybe you should pay more attention next time” the kid replied, collecting his own books that had toppled to the ground during the collision. Sam noticed the kid’s hair was in some kind of twists, something his hair would never be able to do. To his own surprise, he found himself thinking that the boy’s hair looked cool and unique. He shook his head to clear it as he noticed the boy had already turned away and was walking toward a bus.
“Excuse me, Ma’am?” Sam pulled a piece of paper from the front pocket of his Jansport book bag. He had gotten the bag his freshman year, and it had held up through some rough times. He hoped the bag would last until the end of his senior year as well.
“Yes, how can I help you?” the teacher was staring at him expectantly, waiting for a reply. The woman’s glasses were smudged, her hair a mess, and her stockings were falling down her chubby legs. He wondered if she knew how she looked to other people, or if she even cared. It certainly didn’t appear to him that she put much thought into her appearance. Blinking, Sam unfolded the paper.
“I’m supposed to find bus 19, the one that goes into the Buckhead area?”
“Oh, of course, it’s right over there” the teacher pointed at the second bus in the line of yellow and black busses parked in front of the school. Sam thanked her and tucked the note in his pocket as he made his way over to the bus. Stepping on to a high school bus is incredibly depressing, Chris thought. For one, if you are a senior, you are definitely old enough to drive and should probably already be doing so - or at the very least catching a ride with friends. For another, school busses always smell weird. They smell like a mixture of faux leather, sweat, and desperation. Not a great combination. Sam hated riding the bus, but because he was trying desperately to not be noticed by anyone at the school until he felt comfortable, he hopped on and found a seat near the back. It was then he noticed the boy – the one with the twists in his hair – was sitting a few seats in front of him on the same bus.
Sam had not encountered many minorities in his life, aside from on the television or Internet. He took the opportunity to get a really good look at the boy. His skin wasn’t as dark as Sam had originally perceived, but instead had a caramel color. His hair was definitely like other African American hair, black in color and somewhat coarse in texture – yet it looked so different and interesting in the twists. The boy wore normal clothes: white shirt, leather bomber jacket, and some light brown Timberlands. His style was not at all what Sam had expected. He thought all African Americans wanted to be thugs or actually were thugs (and, according to Sam’s mom, this was all true), but this kid seemed normal, judging from appearance alone. Sam then realized the boy was looking back at him, and he turned away, embarrassed that he’d be caught staring. But in the split second that he had met the boy’s gaze, he had noticed something else unique about him – he had blue eyes. Sam had never seen an African American with blue eyes before. It was disarming, intriguing, and looked altogether intense.
He was thinking about the boy with the blue eyes for the rest of the evening. He wondered what kind of music the boy liked, what kind of sports. He thought about the boy’s eyes and if he often startled people because of their color. When Sam went to bed that night, he prayed to God for the courage to ask the boy about his eyes. After all, what was the harm of holding a conversation with a peer from a minority group? It’s not like they had to be best friends. His parents wouldn’t even have to know.
The next day after school, Sam sat in the same spot on the bus. He waited for the boy to get on, and when he did and found himself a seat, Sam moved closer.
“Hey,” Sam said, sitting behind the boy.
“Hi” the boy replied, turning to see who it was. When he noticed it was Sam, the boy squinted.
“Oh, its you. Did you find out that you need glasses?”
“No…” Sam trailed off. Obviously the boy had not forgotten about Sam running him over yesterday afternoon. He had no idea it would be this hard. Sam cleared his throat and tried again.
“I’m Sam. What’s your name?” he asked the boy.
“I’m Bryan,” the boy answered, his twisted hair bouncing as the bus rolled over a bump in the road.
“Hi Bryan, it’s nice to meet you. Speaking of eyes, yours are really wicked! I was wondering if you get asked often about their color,” Sam kept his tone light, in the hopes that his context would not be misconstrued.
“Oh yeah, happens all the time” Bryan said, smiling. It was the first time Sam caught him smiling, and it didn’t seem scary or weird at all. Bryan seemed open and friendly. They talked the entire bus ride back to the Buckhead neighborhood. Sam learned that Bryan had a 3.79 average, played a running back position on the high school football team, and listened to funk and jazz a lot.
“Have you ever heard the band Soulive?” he asked Sam as they pulled into his neighborhood.
“Nah, I listen to a lot of country and rock,” Sam replied. Bryan pulled a CD out of his backpack and gave it to Sam.
“Bring it back by Friday, but give it a listen OK? It’s really worth your time”
“OK. It was nice talking with you Bryan. And thanks!” Sam said, indicating the borrowed CD. Sam watched as Bryan walked up his well-manicured lawn to his home that looked as inviting as his smile, and wondered how possibly his mother could dislike a boy who had as much going for him as his new potential friend did. He listened to the CD while he did his homework that night. It was amazing, as cool as Bryan had said it was. As he tried to work the Pythagorean Theorem, he found himself drifting off and thinking about his parents and how they had shaped his views of reality, of people. Sam couldn’t believe he had discredited entire groups of people because of his parent’s prejudices. He couldn’t understand why one isolated incident had caused them so much pain and hatred toward minorities. People were people, after all. His mother could have just as easily been mugged by a young White male. Her perception was skewed, and he felt betrayed because her perception as well as his father’s had impacted his ability to relax and adapt in a new environment. Bryan knew what kinds of people he wanted to be friends with, and who he shouldn’t hang around. And though he might occasionally choose the wrong person, the person’s color or ethnic background never had anything to do with why they were the wrong person. It was usually about their attitude, morality, ambitions.
There are certain types of people who drag everyone down. And then there are those kinds of people who always bring a smile, uplift everyone, and make tomorrow a day to look forward to. Sam, through taking the time to get to know one person from a minority group that shattered every misconception his mother had force fed him for years, had broken his own prejudices and found himself a new friend (and a new band he liked a lot) in the process. He looked forward to the next day of school, no longer feeling the trepidation he had felt before his first day. He made sure to return Bryan’s CD to him the very next day, after ripping it to his Macintosh computer first. He also made sure to talk to Bryan on a regular basis, so that his thoughts about this person being a friend would actually come true. And they did become friends. The two were friends through their senior year of high school and became so close by the end of the year that they decided to room together when they went off to college in the fall. Sam knew his parents were good people with good ideas. But he also knew that they weren’t him – and he never made the mistake of judging a person based on their appearance again.
No comments:
Post a Comment