Sunday night before brushing his teeth, my kid said, “There’s a new kid at school.”
He was looking at me in a way that suggested I should understand the significance of that. And I thought I did. Tomorrow there would be someone new in his class, a stranger whom he would have to integrate into his existing circle of familiars, an added variable in the established order.
Not that I thought he would have any problem doing so. He’s a social kid, makes friends easily and moves between several friend groups with ease. But I could understand how he might be a bit apprehensive about how the new kid would, more or less, change the social dynamic.
“Is tomorrow his first day?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Do you know anything about him?”
He shook his head. “Only that he’s from Washington and I’m not sure if it’s the city or state.”
“Ask him tomorrow,” I said. “Ask him what it was like.”
He went to bed and had a terrible night. He got up about midnight complaining of a sore throat and vomited. His nose was congested and he had a headache. I gave him some cold medicine and he went back to sleep, but slept fitfully until early morning. At breakfast he was sneezy, but said that he felt well enough to go to school. I gave him some daytime cold medicine and dropped him off.
At about one o’clock, he called me from the nurse’s office. He felt dizzy during P.E. and had thrown up in the garbage can. He asked me to pick him up.
As we were walking to the car he said, “He’s ugly.”
“Who? The new kid?”
“Yeah. He’s got red hair. I mean really red. Even his eyelashes are orange.”
“Is he from Washington state?”
“Yeah. And he smells bad. It’s not a stench. It’s like Mexican air freshener.”
“What’s his personality like?”
“Kind of dumb.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah. During recess.”
“What do you mean by ‘dumb’?”
“He tries to be funny. Makes these dumb jokes. Stands close to you and stares. He said that he’s from a bad neighborhood in Vancouver and his brother is addicted to meth.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“No. I think he’s trying to be funny.”
We got into the car and I said, “There’s a barf bag in the side pocket of the door. Just in case.”
“Good,” he said. “Talking about that chopped redhead is making me sick again.”
We drove awhile and I said, “You know, being the new kid isn’t easy. He doesn’t know anyone. He doesn’t know how to get the things he needs, what’s going on with the people around him and what’s expected of him. He might seem dumb but he’s probably just confused. And the stuff about the bad neighborhood could be a way of acting tough so no one messes with him. Is he tough?”
“No. He’s the type who wouldn’t punch you back.”
“Why don’t you cut him some slack. He’s new. He’s trying to figure things out. Welcome him and give him time to adjust.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
We got home and he was nauseous and dizzy. “It feels like I’m walking on a highwire,” he said.
“It’s called vertigo, the dizziness you get from heights. Being sick sometimes makes you feel that way.”
I knew he was sick because normally he would have gone outside and tooled around town on his bike. But all he could do now was lay on the couch and watch TV. When I saw that he was watching the new Lord of the Flies series on Netflix, I remembered having read the book when I was his age.
My friend Hymie described a movie called Lord of the Flies he saw on TV—it must have been the 1963 film—in which some kids were marooned on an island and one of them, a fat kid named Piggy, got smashed by a boulder. It piqued my interest and later, when I saw Lord of the Flies on a bookshelf at home, I read it.
The kids on the island, who were about my own age, reminded me of certain kids I knew at school. The fat, smart kid who gets teased and bullied; the considerate, intelligent kid who focuses on matters of higher importance, like getting rescued; the cruel, power-hungry kid who hoards resources and lords it over others. The characters in Golding’s fable of civilization and savagery were true to the world I knew.
“This is based on a book,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“I read it at your age. You might like it. I’ll get it and we can read it together.”
“Okay,” he said.
The following day he was sicker and stayed home. The strange thing was, I woke up that morning thinking about Jesus. I say “strange” because I’m a secular humanist and don’t often think about Jesus. On my mind was a passage in Matthew 25:35 from the King James Bible. I couldn’t remember it exactly, so I looked it up: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”
I thought about the new kid from Washington state who had orange eyelashes and smelled like Chica Fresita. I thought about the hundreds of Afghani allies who received legal asylum in the U.S. for helping us in the war and who were now being deported to the Congo. I thought about how much Trump reminded me of power-mad Jack in Lord of the Flies, and how Golding’s fable is still true to my experience. I thought about how helpless it feels to be governed by a greedy and insecure narcissist, who has no ethical compass and lies to side with the worst in us—with our fears, prejudices and animosities; and how we cannot depend on a naval officer to serendipitously show up and save us before mad Jack sets the island ablaze and runs us through with a spear.