2004-07-20 - 8:58 p.m.

Stupid summer virus thing.

I was having a retro thought time today- IO was thinking back to 5th or 6th grade summer. Rhiannon and I were the ultimate pair of geeks. i was short and fat with glasses and she was tall and thin with long blonde hair. You would think she'd be a bombshell but we were both totally outcast, out thinking everyone in the school, every teachers most brilliant and possibly challanging students. She went to Cornell you know. She was smarter then I am- not as quick maybe but a better studier etc. She didin't cut her hair till high school- EVER! Beuatiful straight blond hair. But I digress.

There is a waterfall in our town, attatched to the red mill. You've indubitably seen it on a post card. In those days ( did I just say that?) you could walk across the top or bottom of the falls and no one owuld say Boo. The bottom had a 3 or 4 foot wide lip then a drop off with a pretty sharp current. I've lost a few shirts and shoes in the drop off. But mostly we walked across the top because it was smooth concrete, soft with moss but not slippery.

Now I think people from the museam and the mill and the cops will shoot on sight if you even dangle one foot in the river there.

Now my school only had between 20-30 kids per grade. In my class there was a hierarchy of "bad" boys from smart and coniving to dumb and mean.

Dumbest of all was Jason Blackman. Dumb as the day was long and trouble written from head to toe. Couldn't lie with a straight face, immature, no parenting, spitballs, fart nosies. Not suprisingly he is some sort of druggie now, if not in jail for selling to minors.

Next up the line was Jamie Roll. Jamie's whole family was on drugs- that was public knowledge. He had this spiky hair that wasn;'t cool- it was scary. And his eyes were- crazy eyes. John Rocker eyes. He reminded me of a hyena- crazy laugh and mumbles. I don't know if he had any brains to begin with, but he might have, unlike Jason he could lie. But not even the lowest cool/slutty girls would date him by 8th grade. His slightly older brother OD'd when we were in high school and their house is for sale now.

Joe Manetta was the next on the brains scale. Smart enough to get the girls, stayed back once or twice so he was big and mean as a snake. Outright nasty to teachers, the whole works. He was attarctive under the sarcasm and scary-meaness. Over sexed wold be a good way to describe him. His looks got him a round of every easy girl in grammer school but only one round. Lots of drama and teen heartbreache when Joe moved on to the next easy target.

The smartest and meanest by far was Sean Cullen. He lived near Rhiannon and made her and her younger sisters' lives a living hell. He was sneaky, mean and smart. I know his home life was ok because his younger brothers seemed to turn out ok and his mom was very community active. I guess she had to be to make up for the stuff Sean did and said. I dreaded when his attention turned to me because he knew what to say and how to make me cry without raising his voice.

One summer afternoon Rhiannon and I were hanging out on the top of the falls when we saw a group of boys headed by Sean coming down the inlcine to the bottom of the falls. They had swim trunks and tee shirts on. I kno they saw us ( and what a target I must have made- every roll of tummy visible under a soaked tee shirt) but they ignored us except for a few glances and comments to each other we couldn't hear.

They walked across the bottom of the falls to the Mill side and onto the stone wall that flanked the Mills water wheel. They piled some towels and stuff on the wall and started jumping off the wall into the drop off. By the street side the drop off was only 2-4 feet but it must have been 8-10 on the Mill side because they stayed down for a while.

I don't remeber how it happened but suddenly we were over there diving with them! Some sort of truce had been called silenlty so we could all be kids for a few hours outside the classroom. They expressed admiration that we would be dangerous and play on the waterfall. We were impressed that they dived in the deep end- we had never ventured over out on the wall or thought of diving off of it.

Somehow for a few hours we all talked to each other like normal human beings- no mean jokes, just a few funny ones at no one's expence. We played in the water. screamed when we thought we felt water snakes, and there was balm in gilead.

That afternoon sticks in my mind when none of the taunts remain in my mind. I remember the impression of fear of them and the shock and awe that they were human beings under all that.

I know later we all walked into the mill ( broke in, whatever) in those days if the gate was open you walked in. and went past the back fence. That procedure involed waking on rocks in the river, and gripping trees to swing around the fence which they so rudely placed 2 feet into the water. There was a rope swing into the river back on the path there but Rhiannon had to go and I was far too scared of them and the rope's strength to swing and drop with them. But there was conversation back there on the shady river bank.

Later in my life I would walk with Annie down that path and pick blue berries and wlak in corn fields. If you followed the fenced off path far enough you could see dry river beds and colonial stone ruins from the time when the Mill first was erected.

I have walked there by myself as well, held a tree trunk and swung out onto a rock and then back onto the bank safe behind the fence. I don't know how no one ever saw all the kids going back there. I guess kids had been doing that forever, maybe thats why they put up the fence.

I haven't been back there in years but I bet it's all still the same. A few houses just visible through the three up the bluff as you first come in then you fade into the false comfort of wilderness. You aren't really alone but you could be. You can see how it used to be out here. You can see the rope swing and remeber the bizarre feeling of knowing people could be mean and hateful without hating you apperantly. I know if you go far enough back you can pick berries, many kinds. There's a cornfield back there I hope, not some new development.

I guess thats why it didin;t surprise me as much as it surprised my mom when I read in the local paper that Sean had gotten a business degree at the local community college.

I guess I knew there was a human being in there, somwhere.

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