Ronnie

At school, Ronnie and I weren't really friends. As a matter of fact, he was a bully, and I was one of his targets. But, on the weekends, well, that was a different story all together. His grandparents lived on the other end of our short road, and if my family wasn't doing anything over the weekend, I'd go over to their place on Saturday and spend the day there. They belonged to our church, and Mr. M. was a very nice and decent man. Mrs. M. was a shrew.

They were an old couple, and the farm had been homesteaded by Mr. M's grandfather in the late 1880's. It was one of the oldest farmsteads in the county that had stayed within a single family. Mr. and Mrs. M were members of our church, and, they were packrats. Dad said it was a result of living through the Great Depression, and I could see that. At the time I didn't understand it, but, I could see it.

Ronnie was a year older than me, but he had a growth hormone defiency, causing his growth to always be behind others. His younger brother, Mark, was four years younger than him, and was always a few inches taller. Even with the injections he got once a month, his growth was always stunted.

I think that's what made him mean.

Because he was always the smallest in his class, it was expected that he had other problems as well. His classmates typically picked him last for teams, and he was often the target for dodgeball. It made him a scrapper. He would fight anyone with no regard to his own pain, no regard to the wounds he received. During one month in second grade he had perpetual black eyes. Just as one healed, the other would be bruised. As such, he started looking for targets for his bullying behavior. I was one of them.

I soon learned to become invisible around him.

He was my tormenter all through my first grade year. Ronnie's classroom was in a different part of the school. Our school at the time was a bit weird. Our school distract had just consolidated many of the small country schools, and even though we had a new high school, it wasn't large enough to hold all of the students. Our elementary school was also too small to hold all of the elementary students, so, to solve this lack of space issue, the old high school building was made into both an overflow for the elementary and high school students that couldn't fit in the newer schools. Ronnie and I were in that overflow.

After a year of perpetual turmoil, my educational experience was further outsourced and I was sent to another school within our district in a small town that was about five miles east of my home town. Thankfully, Ronnie didn't make that journey with me. In second and third grade, I was out at that school, at which point, I came back to the main elementary school.

That was the year that our school district reorganized, and our junior high was dissolved, and we had a middle school. At the elementary school, it was just K-4, for grades 5-8 we went up the hill to the Middle School (which had been the same school I went to for first grade), and from 9-12, we were in the High School, which was just over the lawn from the elementary school. With this realignment came a long-term solution to the over crowding of our school.

And, it also lead to the renewal of my association with Ronnie.

It was a Friday afternoon in late October. We had shut down our cabin for the year, and Dad was working so I knew if we were going grouse hunting, it wouldn't be until Sunday. That meant I'd have nothing to do on Saturday other than run around out in the woods. No problem, I'd spent many Saturday's doing that. I was lost in those thoughts when I looked up and saw Ronnie get on the bus.

I felt the blood in my veins turn to ice as he walked the narrow aisle, hoping he wouldn't sit next to me. It wasn't until he found a seat in a different part of the bus that I realized I was holding my breath. Questions flooded my mind. Why was he on my bus? What was he doing here? Where was he going? Did he just get on the wrong bus? I kept a wary eye on him, doing nothing to draw his direct attention to me.

We were about halfway through my part of the trip when I noticed that he was crying. Not hard, mind you, but he definitely had tears leaking. While he was looking out the window, and timing it carefully so I got him right after he wiped his eyes, I leaned over and asked, "Is your name Ronnie?"

He turned, flinching as if I were going to hit him. When he realized I wasn't a threat, and he nodded that he was.

"Why are you on this bus?"

"I'm going to my grandparents."

"Oh. Who are they?" He told me, and I asked where they lived. When he told me, I told him that I lived only a mile north of there. I asked him why he was going to his grandparents, and he said that his mother wanted him to go and help them on their farm, getting it ready for winter. He didn't want to go. They never let him do anything to help, saying he was too small.

We talked the rest of the way home, and then, he asked if I wanted to come over the next day. I thought about it for a little bit, then said I'd ask my mom when got home.

That night, I did ask Mom, and she said it was fine. Ronnie called that night and I told him I'd be over the next day. So, I did. I rode my Huffy three speed over to his grandparent's farm.

For the next three years, in the fall of the year, I'd spend many of my weekends with Ronnie at his grandparents. We did a lot of things over there, too.

Yesterday, I started thinking about Ronnie. I was in the backyard, splitting wood for the fireplace, and then, came in and had some tomato soup for supper. As I sat down to eat my soup, I realized that I was with Ronnie when I first split wood, and his grandmother typically would make us tomato soup for luch. The things you remember, eh?

Today, I got online and checked the hometown newspaper. Ronnie is in there. Local business man turned bad. He had inheirted the farm when his grandfather died about 10 years ago, and he had his own used car dealership in town.

Guess he wasn't making enough money selling cars and running the farm. He was busted last weekend cooking meth in the barn where we use to feed the calves and curry brush the ponies.

Interesting twists.