My Friend Richard

From first to sixth grade, I went to Miami Shores Elementary school.  During baseball season our gym class was all baseball and everyone had to play.  No matter how hard I tried, I never could hit that stinking elusive ball.  Fortunately, I was in class with a boy who had had polio and had to wear metal braces on his legs and walked with metal crutches.  On the first day of baseball season, I had a scathingly brilliant idea and put it to the boy,  "Hey since you can hit the ball, but can't run very fast, and I can run fast but can't hit the ball, why don't we team up?"  We did and both got A's in gym that quarter.

In sixth grade, my mother married her husband of 49 years and we moved to Catskill, rather visa-versa.  She got pregnant the night she was wed and Julie was born exactly 7 months later.  No wait.... Julie was 2 months premature and weighed in at 4.5 pounds. By the time I got to jr. high, six months later, the rumor that Julie was mine, had begun and so my reputation was already besmirched. 

In my seventh grade homeroom, I sat in the first desk in the second row.  During that first week of school, I noticed that the boy in the wheelchair who sat in the back of my row, didn't speak to anybody. Another scathingly brilliant idea was forming. The next time the boy came rolling down the isle next to me, I put my leg up so he had to stop. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

Richard: "Why are you doing this?"

Me: "Why do you always roll right past me without so much as a hi, how ya doin?  I have feelings too ya know!" People think they know something about me and they don't know anything!"

Richard: "I can relate."

I believe that was the first time I ever heard that expression but I knew instinctively what it meant.  I really only meant to be light-hearted, to engage him in conversation but somehow it became deep.  We looked at each other for a few moments before he broke the silence.

Richard: "Hi, how ya doin?"

Me: "Well, I'm just fine thank you very much, and how are you?"

Richard: "Well, I'm pretty good, but I really need to get by."

Me: "Oh, OK, well, don't be a stranger."


                      CHS 1966 Yearbook   Ninth Grade

                  

From then on, I would always stop Richard in the same way and he would always begin with, "Hi Kathy, how ya doin?"  Sometimes, when life was particularly hard, I wouldn't stick my leg out to stop him, he would stop just briefly but wouldn't say anything. Other times, I would stop him and if he didn't say Hi, I would let him go. We had this connection, like we always knew when the other was just not up to it. I didn't see much of Richard after seventh grade, we might see each other in the hall once in a while, and just say hi as we passed by. Our seventh grade homeroom teacher who had observed our little interactions, took me out of a study hall one day when I was in ninth grade, and told me of Richards passing.  She had tears in her eyes as she passed me one of the tissues she had brought with her, knowing how I'd react.  I had lived with this teacher for three months when I was in seventh grade, while my parents vacationed in FL.  It's in the book!

Richard was a special boy and I feel blessed to have known him. I have pictured him playing baseball with that boy in Florida, no one has to run the bases for either of them any more.