February 3, 2010
-
Things in which to put into words
Cat Power does a song called “The Greatest” and she says “Once I wanted to be the Greatest”
I think she might have been talking about a boxer. But I think anybody who did really well in school as a child will feel these things too.
I read once that women tend to excel in school and fail in business because they expect that the world is a meritocracy. They expect the reward for their talent will be fair, timely, and automatic.
I saw my former next-door neighbor Phil at Target. He was bearded, over-clothed, and pushing a shopping cart that I think was not a Target shopping cart. He was also making a weird, repetitive noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner running over a penny. I’d heard he was homeless, but I’d never seen him in town before.
I don’t have any guilty stories about how I was never nice enough to him as a child. In fact, our other next-door neighbors had two kids as well, so Phil was always sought after as a tie-breaker vote for important disputes between them and my brother and me. We flattered him shamelessly, and often resorted to bribery.
Not that I can say there weren’t any signs. The way he used to pull apart lego men and stack the heads, the dirty comics that he had that he was really too young to be interested in. The weird, lingering hugs in adolescence.
I’ve heard that my pediatrician’s son is also homeless in Hollister. He grew up in one of those homes without sugar, without TV. I have seen a conspicuously shaved young man who asks people for money near Save-Mart, and wonder if it is him. He didn’t ask me and my husband for money. I wonder if he sensed that we have nothing to give.
When I saw Phil at Target, I smiled and half-waved at him. It really was the same him, the same big brown eyes, the same slouching posture. It was only when I remembered his childhood habit of following people around that I cut off my wave and hurried off.
