Love Thine Enemy

Your government has kept me busy for the past month writing things that will be quickly tucked away and forgotten.  Two weeks ago, however, I came across an item that stuck with me, a Facebook post about my old elementary school.

It’s a handsome 1930’s era brick building that’s been a fixture in my New England hometown.  The playgrounds are in the same places as ever, despite being immensely scaled down from the long-chained swings in two-story frames or towering stainless steel slides that could burn off layers of skin on hot summer days.  One iron jungle gym was so big it was called the Muscle Man.  It’s where my friend Tim [Crosby] broke his wrist - and I saw the whole thing: the fall, the deformed ledge of bone above his hand, and the cast he wore for weeks afterward.

Kids today cannot imagine the danger we faced on a casual basis.  Compared to the pathetic little plastic toadstools they climb and the rubber safety flooring underneath, we were high in the rigging of tall ships every recess, when we weren’t blooding ourselves in games of Kill the Carrier out on the field.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a present day playground without some kind of soft headed, schlocky sentiment attached.  In that Facebook post was a plaque dedicating one of these installations, forged from recycled diapers  - suitably - to the ‘beloved physical education teacher Jim [Bridges.]’

Jim Bridges was a bully.  He’s probably one of the reasons I’m still lifting weights at age 57.  He wasn’t a teacher in any sense of the word, since he just collected easy money putting kids through activities that largely bored him.  I can still remember his black three-striped Adidas soccer shoes and track suit pants.  Apparently, he had once been a professional soccer player, and he drove a Porsche 914 to school everyday.  By the time I knew him, he was merely scorning those who could not function on the level to which his life had sunk.

This disappointment eventually killed him.  He died of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, news that in my college days or shortly thereafter drew little more than a satisfied chuckle.  That’s a grave to piss on the next time I’m passing through town.

We all have enemies or people who don’t think much of us, but the problem in this case was that he was a grown man with power over a squirrelly eight year old boy.  Bridges was quiet, given to stillness and a steady expression to quiet a class.  A mistake on someone’s part was met with a subtle glance at the rest of the class and the slightest shake of his head, which would prompt giggles and thus scorn and punishment by proxy.  Any greater sin brought out the word, ‘Fifty,’ which was nearly under his breath and meant 50 sit-ups, done as the class took stock of the struggle and the justice it represented.

I found myself doing 50’s often enough that the haplessness became self fulfilling.  Of course I couldn’t dribble the soccer ball between the cones, because Bridges had proven a hundred times already that I was an idiot.  It was just going to happen again: ‘Fifty.’  Bridges’ real legacy was making other kids realize they could pick on me.

I’ve been a teacher off and on through the years, and some of my greatest successes have been in handling squirrelly kids, precisely because I can understand the wild trajectories of their brains.  The reason I hold my high school strength coach in such high regard is that he took kids’ weaknesses in stride and knew how to address them.

I left that elementary school in June 1976, at the end of Sixth Grade, and never saw Jim Bridges again.  Bullies remained a bad subject.  Before long, I left that set of kids as well, commuting to Prep school a few towns away.  I was pretty much forgotten, gone in the mornings and back at night, going to school and lifting weights under the tutelage of a kindly History teacher - who had also been an All American shot putter at Notre Dame.  It wasn’t until 11th Grade that I signed up for rec-league hockey in my hometown with another commuting Prep school dude.  On the ice were some of the kids who picked on me or chose me last for teams at recess.  They were treated to bone splintering, concussive checks, since I learned how to dip my forehead in football and drive it into their facemasks or ear holes.  ‘You guys still play rough, don’t you?’ I’d ask as they were sprawled on the ice.

Thinking about Jim Bridges again compelled me to ask myself whether my life would have been better without him in it.

It surprises me to realize this, but the answer is, No.  He’s probably the guy who kickstarted the process of my growing up.  His timing was impeccable, since that whole sequence of events made me ripe for the influence of that high school coach.  After that came collegiate Olympic lifting and then Judo, endurance sports, and countless adventures that called for abundant confidence.  That’s a quality earned through long hours in the weight room, pool, on the road, or training combative skills.  It’s probably born of Jim Bridges and a reflexive feeling of defiance: ‘You will not deny me the opportunity  . . . ‘  Intimidation is best met with the strength of Mike Webster or the aggression of Jack Lambert.

In my idyllic little life in a nice family in a wealthy suburb, phys ed with Jim Bridges was my first realization that not all people are good or nice.  Maybe he did me a favor in the grand scheme of things.  I’d still piss on his grave, but maybe without such ill will.