Ben Austen

You're pointing at the yearbook pictures here of these kids.

Yeah, yeah.

I do get it.

It's about what a hard time Eddie had back then, how much he felt like an outsider, and how I was one of the kids who made it harder.

But it's also just so weird, the two of us sitting here, two men in our 50s, and hearing him repeat what I said when I was like six or seven.

I make a nervous joke about spaghetti being positive.

It's noodley flexibility, plus it's delicious.

Those are the kinds of things I say to people, always have.

I recognize that how you react to Eddie's words, what you feel right now about him or me, probably depends on your relationship to your own past.

Maybe you're remembering things being done to you.

Or doing things to someone else.

Or maybe you're the type who's forgotten all this sort of stuff, and that's exactly where you want to keep it.

Eddie pauses, and I think he's done.

That's all he's got.

I guess I wasn't such a bad kid after all.

But then Eddie looks down at a yellow legal pad.

It's covered in handwritten notes.

Oof, there's definitely more.

I love it.

This turns out to be a story about a time I did something that seems worse, physically worse at least.