 An Assault on Innocence
In a way, things came easily. Memories are talented things in ways of evasion, but sometimes they want to be found. In this case, mine waited from Gorbachev to George Bush Junior.
I was musing through a shoebox of recollections. An actual shoebox, mind you, not some cheep substitute. Memories deserve genuine shoeboxes - memories and receipts. Everything else is pretty well up to interpretation. Except for soapbox derby cars. To be a soapbox derby contestant, there should be at least one genuine soapbox involved somewhere in the construction of your car. It might not stand to reason, but it stands to something, and I think that it might be important.
I used to keep a journal when I was a kid. It actually said "My Diary" on the cover, but I put masking tape over the "Diary" part and wrote in "Journal" with thick black marker.
The Journal was in the shoebox. The shoebox came from home. The box now sits in my lap. I sit in my new home. Connections, connections, connections. Reasons and moments.
In that moment, I was set to recall hidden crushes, rainy days, and harmless pre-teen larceny.
But somewhere between those manila, fabric covered covers, on those light-gray speckled pages, between being hit by a car and a rather detailed description of feelings I had for a girl named Sheila , were the following words:
"Mr. Pegg beat me up today."
I went on to read the next 140 pages, but it was all dreams, infatuations, and perceptions of an eleven-year-olds bandwidth of reality.
It was a short sentence -six words with impact, like Hemmingway would write.
I sat there and remembered. Sorrow. Fury. Guilt.
I just can't seem to get it out of my head lately.
When I was in public school, decades ago, I had the crap beaten out of me by a teacher.
His name was Sid Pegg, a teacher at Stewart School in Perth Ontario Canada. He was my teacher at the time. He valued athleticism above academics and was also a first-class sexist. Those things didn't bother me at the time, except for the athleticism involved in slamming a child, at most one-quarter his size, into a sink and bashing his head against the taps.
Mr. Pegg had been a football player.
Think of that scene in "The Breakfast Club" when the Principal Vernon throws Judd Nelson into the equipment locker. Only with more violence.
It was a decade or so before I mentioned it to anyone. I just took it as "something that happened" like getting the flu or falling off my bike. You know, life stuff.
But now - today - it somehow feels like he's choking me again. Choking off my thoughts, choking off my mood. My pulse hurts in my neck.
Now I wonder how many other children Sid Pegg has hurt. If I had spoken up at the time, would he have been removed from teaching? Would there be a group of adults out there that didn't have to deal with the memory of being beaten by someone they were supposed to trust?
Maybe that's where I get my "problem with authority". Of course, that would be oversimplifying things.
Muddled with the sad quiet rage I feel for the kid who wrote those words in his diary is a sense of guilt. I feel guilty for doing nothing and letting Mr. Pegg go on to possibly abuse more children over the decades. Somewhere inside it makes me an accomplice to a brutal thief of innocence.
So, because I am no perfect person, I wish him dead. Almost every day since, I am hit by the hurtful memory of this man. Unbidden, unasked for, he still terrorizes me.
I wish him nothing but ill.
As yet, wishing hasn't worked. Sid is still alive and living in Perth, across the street from my brother's house.
I read the obituaries from my hometown paper looking for his name. On that day, when Mr. Pegg's light is finally snuffed out, I believe I will finally feel a little better.
But only a little.
May 15th
2006
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