“You’re
ugly.”
Those
are the first words Dave Wojtowicz ever said to me.
“You’re
ugly.”
At
least that’s the way I remember it. That day back in 1965 when we were first
graders at St. Clare de Maltese Falcon (St. Clare de Montefalco, actually). His
class was lined up in the basement hallway of “The Old Building,” waiting for
Sister Charles Catherine to lead them back to their classroom after their
bathroom break. And my class, with Sister Margaret Matthew in charge, was lined
up to take our turn at the row of urinals that stretched from our noses to our toes.
“You’re
ugly.”
An
observation more likely borne from curiosity or boredom than aggression or
malice. Or perhaps a litmus test to see if I was made of the stuff Dave
expected from a potential friend.
“You’re
ugly.”
An
unconventional ice-breaker. Not a typical opening gambit, but one that managed
to propel a couple of bright, goofy, seven-year-olds into each other’s
gravitational pulls, launching a friendship forged primarily by a shared odd
sense of humor and a love of sports played in backyards, on playgrounds and in
the streets.
It
would be the following school year before our friendship would take hold, the year we shared
a homeroom for the first of seven consecutive years.
Had
Dave and I not wound up directly across from each other in the hall that morning long
enough for him to lay down his "you're ugly" gauntlet, my life might
have been very different. But we did and our friendship burned brightly for
seven years, coming to an end as all good things must. But that particular fire
was so powerful, the embers still glow 40-some years later.
The
seemingly indestructible bond between us would begin to break during our first
year of high school. Not because of some inexplicable, adolescent explosion,
but just because that’s what friendships sometimes do. And that’s too bad
because it was such a great friendship.
Even
though I was only six years old, I was armed with an arsenal of snappy comebacks like
“I'm rubber and you're glue”; “I know you are, but what am I”; and the classic
“Oh yeah?” I opted instead for a more ruthless, less original retort. My
“You're ugly, too” must have stung him like a serpent's tooth. I can only assume it was
much worse than death-by-a-thousand cuts. And a year later, the appearance of
Dave’s first pair of glasses would put to rest any questions he had had about my physiognomy.
Who’d have guessed that the
words “you're ugly,” with such obvious potential to cause pain could signal the
start of an incredible friendship. And who could have guessed that six years later, the boy
who said those words to me would step in to fight a battle that should have
been mine, to take a nasty beating as I looked on, horrified – frozen and
sniffling – as I wiped a bully’s hocker from my face.
In
spite of, or perhaps because of, the intensity of our friendship, we became
fierce competitors on many of the battlefields of youth – in the classroom and
in a variety of sports. But then what friendship’s ever been worth a damn that
didn’t include a healthy dose of unhealthy competition?
