| Not Forgotten |
| by Miss Weird |
| Today I sit in front of my bedroom window at the age of twenty-six, thinking of my childhood. I don't usually like to remember my childhood days. They were always painful. I didn't talk about it either. To my family, what I truly felt about my life as a child was a mystery to them. Even my parents. Why? Why did she do this? After all these years? You must be wondering what could've made my childhood so awful. Well, to most, I was the "loner." By first grade, I already had glasses and my favorite pastime was reading. I was on the pudgy side and really timid. None of these things made me popular among my peers so I was often picked on. As I sit here on my cushioned window seat, writing, images start to form in my mind and words can be heard in the distance, even though the room is silent. Maybe it is time. Maybe it is time to remember. Eighteen years ago, I sat on my school's playground at recess reading a book. I sat on the edge of the planters near the basketball courts. Usually, the kids didn't use the courts, but today, they had decided to. One girl was playing with them that day. Gina Dowers. She was tall for her age and skinny. Her parents were rich, I remember, and all the kids liked her. I often wished to be her, to have friends flocking around me and watching my every move. I pushed my glasses farther up my nose as I leaned closer to the book. The shouts from the basketball game were drowned out as I enveloped my mind into the pages of the mystery. All of the sudden, a basketball flew at me. It hit the side of my unsuspecting head and knocked my glasses off. They flew clear of me and landed on the ground. I looked up as the ball bounded into the planters behind me. Some of the kids were pointing and laughing, as I rubbed the side of my head, trying to hold back tears. They knew I was going to cry. I stared at them, their images blurred because of the absence of my glasses and the tears that were beginning to fill my eyes. I could hear Gina's loud roar the loudest. It was higher than everyone else's and the most annoying. "Look at her!" Gina said in her squeaky, ridiculing voice. "She's crying!" The kids laughed louder along with her. I gathered my glasses and book quickly and fled. I wiped the tears from my eyes and placed my glasses back on my nose. One of the lenses was missing. I paused and turned around, considering going back to retrieve my missing lens. But the only image I saw out of my one eye was Gina pointing and still laughing at me. I turned and ran. Two weeks later, I had recovered from the incident. I no longer hurt because of it, but I still remembered it. My glasses were fixed, but my heart wasn't. I sat hesitantly back at my old spot by the courts, for the first time in two weeks. I opened my book slowly and tried to drown out the sounds of the basketball players once again. Gina was there playing. Soon, though, I was able to drown out the sounds. I was reading my favorite book in the world. I was quickly drawn into the exciting plot and my favorite character's life. Then a cry caught my attention. I looked up and saw Gina lying on the ground, clutching her knee, screaming in pain. I instantly dropped my book, and it fell lying open on the ground. I didn't stop, but ran to her. "Gina! Are you alright?" I looked at her knee as the bell rang, signaling the end of recess. Gina's friends ran off to go back to class. Gina and I were left alone on the basketball court as I looked at her knee. "It hurts." She winced. "We have to get you to a teacher." I said, feeling important. I helped her get up and hobbled with her to a teacher. The teacher helped clean her up and said that I could return to class. It was just then that I remember my book. I ran back to get my book. I found it in the same place, lying open on the ground, trampled. The kids had run over it when recess ended. I picked it up, tears close to my eyes again. My glasses and now my favorite book! All because of Gina Dowers! I wiped away a stray tear again and walked back to class, trying to straighten the pages. Life moved on. That Christmas I got a new copy from my mother, who was very proud of me. I didn't feel proud of myself. When I had seen my book, I had felt like I hated Gina. Years passed. I went through junior high, high school, and college without thinking much of her. Gina was never in any of my classes during public school, and she didn't go to the same college. Besides, it happened in third grade! My brain pushed the incident away as unimportant. And yet, from time to time, I thought of the incident. What had compelled me to be so nice to the bully? No normal person would have. Any normal person would have left Gina to bleed to death, and yet, I was sitting here the person who had demonstrated the impossible, something that the world seems to think as childish: kindness. After college, one of my college friends had moved to England to do business and sent me postcards from her new home. I received postcards monthly. It was nice to keep in touch with a friend, a real friend. Then today, I received something in the mail: a postcard from England. I smiled and quickly flipped it over. It was from�wait! The postcard wasn't from my college friend. It was from, of all people, Gina. Anger started to well up inside me as, with my eyes glued to her signature at the bottom of the card, I stood in shock. What was she doing writing me? I glanced at the front, a beautiful picture of the English countryside, and then read the tiny handwriting on the back. Dear Shana, It has been years, I know. But I felt that this was important enough to write to you about. Remember when you helped me when I got hurt in basketball in third grade? I know, it was a long time ago. Years after your assistance, I began to realize the enormity of what you had done. Then, your action haunted me like a recurring nightmare. It wouldn't leave alone. I knew I had treated you badly. All those years, and even into high school, I treated you like dirt. I don't know what I could do to make it up to you. But I want to try. I want to try to make it up to you. So, here, I ask you for forgiveness. I have changed now. I realize that I was wrong to treat you that way and I probably caused you much pain. But please, after all these years, can you find it in your heart to forgive me? Truly, Gina Dowers I gaped at the postcard. And again, tears started to fall. I wish I could write her back. I couldn't believe it. After all these years. She was asking forgiveness for something that seemed so small as an adult and yet, at this very moment in time, it made all the difference in the world. All those years of pain when I had been a child had seemed like a piece of my past. But today, my past was brought back as a shadow of the present rather than an old present. It was suddenly affecting my life again. I wiped away a cascading teardrop. But could I find it in my heart to forgive her? I recalled the names, the pointing, the laughing and wasn't sure if truly in my heart I was ready to forgive her. I could just stuff the postcard and everything related to it back into my past, back into the depths of my brain where my thoughts avoided any presence. I could just forget it and never forgive her. Again, why should I? She'd done nothing nice to me except this card, and I, on the other hand, had helped her that one day and never called her names back. She had no right for forgiveness. As I began to toss the postcard in the trash, I glanced back down at the writing written neatly on the page. I reread her last paragraph. There was so much heart in those words. How could I just dismiss it? I started to bring the postcard back to my chest, protectively. Then I hesitated. My heart felt like it was in a tug-a-war. First, it was wrenched towards anger and hatred. I have no reason to forgive this girl, it screamed. How will she ever know if you forgave her anyway? Its not like she left a return address. And then my heart was yanked the other direction, toward kindness, that one thing the world lacked. I glanced at the card. The world did lack kindness these days. But what could I do? I can't change the world! I am just one girl, one person. I can't do anything to save our world from despair. I pulled the card close to my chest and walked away from the trash-can confidently. I may be only one person, but one person is a start. I took out a pen and began to write a reply, even if I was never going to send it. Hopefully she'd send me another postcard so we could write. I paused mid-sentence to read what I had written. I read aloud. "Gina, I forgive you." |