For some reason I had an old memory pop into my head… Strange how old memories bubble up to the surface of cosciousness and pop, causing you to re-examine them from an older perspective. Well, maybe not strange. I guess the memory percolation happens all the time, and it’s just the ones that you see in a different light that come across as strange. Hmmm.
Anyway, I recalled my Junior Prom night.
It was fantastically boring for a good portion. I mainly spent the evening with my date, Kristi, away from the actual prom venue. We hung around outside in a nearby park and smoked cigarettes, trying to make smalltalk, feeling like it should’ve been some kind of momentous event and somewhat disheartened that all the hype never materialized into some meaningful Event To Mark Our Highschool Years. Mainly we discussed Monty Python and how cold it was.
Eventually, this cold drove us unwillingly back into the building, where we found the dance floor as we left it: Empty of souls, but filled with loud and slightly distorted music. There’s something very sad and pitious about a loud, empty dance floor. You just kind of feel unhappy and a little embarassed by it. At least I did, and I’m willing to project my emotions onto everyone there because it’s my journal and my memories; and no one I know from that school is going to read this entry, in all probability. (In essence, I could say that the school was swallowed by a freakish, spontaneous mud-hole and no one would contradict me).
Rambling here. Just woke up. Sorry.
So, the dance floor was empty and all eyes were on it — my classmates and I clustered at the long folding tables surrounding in the half-light of the hall. And then Brent walked out and started dancing.
Spazzing.
Very, very much like he was having a seizure yet miraculously could keep standing.
Brent was around 4′ 6″ tall in the 11th grade. He was an often dorky kid with no social skills and always walked around school REALLy fast. Kind of like powerwalking. His mother dressed him, or at least helped him dress, and his clothing was all straight from Goodwill judging on the looks. In the first grade Brent had a brain tumor, which was removed and replaced with a plastic shunt to drain excess fluid from his skull straight into his bladder. It was still there in the 11th grade, and he used to visit the bathroom ALL the time. Probably every hour at least, if not more frequent.
So, Brent was not well-loved. I honestly think if he’d socialized more he would’ve ended up semi-normal, regardless of his height or frequent bathroom breaks. It was not to be though.
The next school day after Prom, I was visiting with Mrs. Matthias the Special Ed teacher (teachers can make great friends to lonely students) when I mentioned prom and Brent’s performance. I asked how Brent enjoyed Prom, and I was indeed curious to know… in an “investigating the natives” sort of curiosity. She said he’s had a blast, and how he was crowing that he’d gotten everyone to dance by just going out there and doing his thing.
That wasn’t quite how I’d remembered it. As I remembered it, Brent had spazzed for awhile out there, got tired (or self-conscious) and left. Five minutes later, other people trickled onto the dance floor.
I expressed my dubiousness at Brent’s interpretation of events.
Mrs. Matthias said that I may very well be correct, but that I shouldn’t tell Brent that; and indeed I should support his notion that he’d had a positive impression on the other kids.
Is lying for someone else’s betterment acceptable? I’ve always had the view that one should never lie, and if a situation arrises where one must choose to lie or hurt someone, one shouild take the undeclared third option and just not say anything; or at least, say something tangentially related, but neither confirming nor denying the other party’s statement.
I don’t know the answer. The stronger, yet related, rule I’ve followed since I was around 3 or 4 is the Thumper Rule, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it at all.” I remember very little of seeing Bambi in the theater, but I very clearly remember that salient bit. So that rule tends to take precendence and lend credence to the tact-response; that of not saying anything or being diplomatic in your answer.
Ah well… we’ll probably never know the answer. It’s one of life’s little mysteries.
