Devotional by Carter Wheelock
When I was 10 or 11 years old, I had the only fist-fight that I have ever had. Orville Sederbaum, who was a kind of domineering kid, wanted me to go home with him after school one day, and I didn't want to. He grabbed me by my belt and started dragging me home. I jerked loose from him, and that made him mad, so he beat me to a pulp. For the next week I walked around with a painful knot on my head.
When I was 12 or 13, I was living in a small town in Oklahoma. In that town there were very few black people. One of them was a boy my own age--a little guy about my size, whom all of us kids called Mean Bobby. He was tough and feisty. He picked a fight with just about every white kid in town and whipped them all. It was during the Depression, when every-body was more or less poor, but I was lucky: my father was able to buy me a new bicycle. As soon as I ventured into the street on my bike, I ran into Bobby standing on the corner exchanging insults with a couple of white kids. He said he wanted to ride my bike, and I said no. Right then, in front of the others, he slapped my face. I was startled, and I just stood there doing nothing. I had no inclination to fight, for two reasons: first, I didn't want another knot on my head, and second, I couldn't feel any anger toward Bobby, because I could see where he was coming from. He was a little black boy in a white town, with no friends, no status, and no bicycle. One of the white kids said to me, "Are you going to take that?" I answered, "Yes, I'm going to take that," and I rode off.
I lost face with the white kids. But a couple of weeks later I ran into Bobby again. He showed not even a trace of his usual cockiness and belligerency. Instead, he acted as if we were old friends, and I thought he acted a little nervous or embarrassed. He offered me a bite of his nickel hamburger. I was the only kid who had backed down to Mean Bobby, and I was now the only one he was friendly to -- the only one who had taken the fight out of him. I had turned the other cheek, sort of.
Many times I have wondered what ever happened to Bobby. At times I have thought about how I could have been his friend, and how nice it would have been if I had done something to help him get a bicycle of his own. Although I can't do anything for Bobby after all these years, I try sometimes to do something kind for some other Bobby, and I like to pretend that Bobby knows it.