I'm Wrong

 

               I have a relative who grew up loving communism.  He hated American Citizens.  He was born an American.  He lived in America.  When he was nine years old he got a short wave radio.  That is when he learned to love communism.  His hatred of America began earlier than that. 

               He thought he was the best.  He always thought everyone else was the worst.  He’d play baseball.  He was good at it.  He was not great at it.  No one is great at anything in the beginning.  But that effected and affected him emotionally.  Who is great, even after years of playing it? Anything?  If you’re better than some you are probably worse than others.  He’d play hockey.  He was good at it.  He was not great at it.  He’d play football.  He was good at that too.  He was not great at that too.

               He got mad when other people were better at these things than he was.  He especially got mad at kids that were older than he was.  He would stand in line at school.  Everyone stood in lines at school at that time.  Some kids in back of him would taunt him for missing a pass or for getting struck out.  Who did not get taunted in grade school?  He’d get mad, and he’d hold his sharpened pencil in his right hand, and stab down and backward at the kid who was taunting him in back of him, whether that kid was still there or not.

               There was a song on the radio when we were growing up.  It was called “Running Bear.”  It told about Running Bear and Little White Dove.  When this neighbor got mad at school he would start pacing.  He eventually would start hopping as he was pacing.  When he was nine or ten and some teenager was laughing at him (teenagers laughed at younger kids because they can), he started getting mad and paced and hopped even more.  One time, when somewhere a radio was playing,  “On the banks of the river stood running bear.”  That was when the teenagers started calling him Running Bear.  The teenagers noticed that he was pacing and hopping.  Teenagers notice things like that.  And it stuck with him when they said, “Hey.  He is not Running Bear.  He is Dancing Bear.”

               Dancing Bear.  That name remained with him through the rest of grade school.  It was with him all through High School.  It followed him to college.  He was anointed with another name in grade school.  A popular candy that you could get at the Dime Store was Orange Nip.  On the candy’s box was a stick figure drawing.  This character just had stick arms and legs and body but it had a huge fruit colored Orange head with eyes and a line mouth.  His head got colored orange too.  When Dancing Bear got mad, the blood vessels in his head would pump and pound.  Dancing Bear had a rather large head to begin with.  When he got mad that big head would turn red and orange with his high blood pressure.  Many teenagers then began calling him Orange Nip.  That name, Orange Nip, also followed him through grade school, high school, and college. 

               I was raised a Catholic.  He was raised a Catholic.  Since he was better at sports than anyone, he was also better at being a Catholic than anyone.  When I would visit him he would play at being a priest.  He would get a small table in his bedroom.  He had covered that table with a towel.  He kept a glass on the center of that table.  Since I was there, I was supposed to be a worshiper.  It was my job to kneel in back of him, fold my hands, and stay quiet.  It was his job to look over the room.  It was his job to speak Latin (he made up words).  It was his job to lift up the glass and look at it.  It was his job to turn around and face me and lift up the glass and look at it.  It was his job to turn around again and place the glass back down on the middle of the table.  This could go on for hours.  I would get bored.  I would try to say something and he would condemn me because I was evil.  I constantly left and he’d go on and on for hours lifting his glass, looking at it, speaking his made up words of God.

               When he was nine years old and got his shortwave radio he already disliked everybody.  He soon realized that he disliked America.  He listened to Radio East Berlin.  He listened to Radio Moscow.  He listened to Radio China.  They were moral people.  They presented good ways to live.  There were no teenagers there.  Their sports teams were the best.  He conceded, begrudgingly, that they might be not so good on foreign policy but they are the best at domestic policy. 

               He saved his money and bought books about these countries.  He bought pictures of the leaders of these countries.  He bought the flags of these countries.  He would also write to the radio stations that he listened to.  The radio stations wrote back to him.  He became more disconnected to the world at his doorstep and more in love with the world he heard, that world he read about.

               I am two years younger than he is.  Back when I was seven years old we, America, did not have diplomatic relations with The People’s Republic of China.  He wrote to China often.  Back when I was seven years old my family was interrogated by the FBI because of my friendship to him.  Me, a seven year old boy, was brought to a room, had a spotlight on my face, and was questioned about my activities.  I was questioned about who my friends were.  I was questioned about what I do when I think no one is watching me.  He was questioned too.  It appears that he wrote several times to The People’s Republic of China.  He declared that he did not.  The FBI agents showed him the letters that he sent.  Since we did not have diplomatic relations with The People’s Republic of China at that time those letters went to the US Embassy in Taiwan.  When the letters were held in front of his face, he admitted that he wrote them.  He said he was just inquiring about the weather there.  The FBI Agents asked him “If this correspondence is just about the weather why did you state, ‘All Hail Our Beloved Chairman Mao Tse-tung.’  He said that he was just being polite and that he wrote, ‘Your Beloved Chairman Mao Tse-tung.’  The FBI agents showed him several letters with ‘Our Beloved Chairman Mao Tse-tung.’

               It is bad enough that a nine year old had to go through interrogations like that.  I was seven years old.  At the end of the in person investigations he told the FBI Agents that he would happily work with them to help them keep an eye on what is happening in The People’s Republic of China.  He would talk to the agents on the phone periodically.  He still did not remove the Russian and Chinese flags from his room.  The good old Sickle and the Stars.  A couple years later he slipped up and told me that ‘I am working on the inside.’  I did not want to know so I asked no more.  He wouldn’t know the truth, or speak it if he did know the truth.

               Since he was so interested in his radio he learned foreign languages.  He started with German and then Russian and also Chinese.  Since he considered himself a Priest he took no interest in science.  In grade school, during seventh and eighth grade, the school had a Science Fair.  He built a volcano.  It was a coffee can covered with plaster and had baking soda and vinegar poured in so it would bubble up and spew over.  I had plants that I grew under ultra violet lights whose height measurements I took periodically.  Gee, which was more scientific?   Unfortunately I went to the same high school that he did.  It was great.  I am being sarcastic.  Everyone knew him and put him down.  As soon as I started high school, because I had been seen for years near him and not outwardly hating him, I had all the older students put me down too.  “Another Dancing Bear.”  “Another Orange Nip.” 

               But I did not react to that.  If someone would hit me I grabbed them and held them aloft.  If someone taunted me I acted like I did not hear them.  In school I got deeply into mathematical theorems and science.  The popular kids, the athletes and the student council people, the ones that hated him, they paid no attention to me.  They were not interested in math or science.  I remember a time when a kid, two years older than him, chased him down the block and started hitting him.  I intervened.  (Now since I was two years younger than the nut job that made me four years younger than the kid that was beating up the nut job.  I was smaller than both of them.)  I stopped Dan from beating up on him.  I was on someone’s front doorstep.  I was holding Dan above me, his shirt grasped in my fist.  Dan started yelling, “Come on.  Hit me.  Hit me!”  I just looked at him and said, “I don’t believe in violence,” and tossed him onto the ground.  He took off, he ran away, and laughed at me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              If you liked reading this                                                                                                                                 I would like you to read                                                                                                                                 Other things I WROTE