I have two different
memories of Tom Black.
In early high school
some days it seemed to rain like the apocalypse was upon us. And in the grey skied aftermath we'd have to
scuttle past gaping puddles in the pavement, clutching our folders with eager
fingers. On just such a day a friend and
I were making for the canteen. A group
of older boys were loitering by a brick wall the way some boys do, with a
gentle bantering "toughness".
One of them I faintly recognised, I thought, to be Tom Black.
His reputation
preceded him; his younger sister, a quasi-friend of mine from primary school,
had tattled about his brawls, bad attitude and tertiary suspensions.
In a moment that
hung in my memory on puppeteers strings, three of the boys leapt. They hung there, halfway to us, a little
boisterous and a little menacing. And
then they fell. Water sprayed in dirty
cold arcs, up my legs and across cardboard shield of the folder that I
hugged. I was not certain what I'd
expected from the boys.
I can't recall
whether my first reaction was accusation or embarrassment. I'd like to think I glared in a
holier-than-thou accusatory fashion and cowed the trouble makers into
submission. But I have to admit it was
more likely that I merely ducked my head and felt needlessly embarrassed. If I didn't do the latter immediately I
certainly did after they started chortling at our expense.
It was a number of
months before I remember seeing the notorious Tom Black again. Like many of his buddies he'd dropped out of
school, tried to join the army I'm told.
He came skulking back to the school again with a crew cut and a pile of
textbooks under his arm. He had a pair
of reading glasses and frowned as he deciphered exam papers. In the library I sat with him for all manner
of tests, carefully reading aloud the material and the questions and then
watching him so seriously move his pen across the paper in response. He was one of the ones who tried.
I read aloud test
papers or wrote down dictated answers for countless students in my junior
years. Some were despondent and spent
most of the allotted time drawing pictures or staring defiantly out the
windows. I remember one such girl
telling me curtly that Celtic was
pronounced with a hard "c" not a soft one. Or maybe it’s the other way around. My dictionary (which happens to be six inches
thick not that that makes any difference) tells me both are correct but people do have their foibles. One boy I read for was the happiest I've ever
seen though even at fourteen I was literally double his height. He truly was a marvel with all the things he
could do with just one stunted arm. We
chatted most of our time away but so long as he was okay with that. The hardest I think were the students for
whom English was far from a first language.
It didn't matter that I was a clear and careful speaker, the questions
still skirted their understanding.
But Tom, I don't
know what the doctors and optometrists called it, probably that ambiguous title
"dyslexia". He read slowly
because his brain had trouble rearranging the words on the page. The glasses helped later but I think at first
he just was frustrated with himself.
Teachers and the other kids might have looked at him and called him
slow. So why wouldn't he build up
vicious defence mechanisms? Get sent out
of class so he didn't have to read aloud?
