School Days

This is a week that was always full of anxiety for me when I was a kid.
Summer ended with Jerry Lewis singing You'll Never Walk Alone. Usually meant I'd walk alone through Holbrook High the next day.
I'd frequently begin vomiting right after the song ended. Weeping would frequently follow and my mother would begin the pep talk/words ofconsolation shortly thereafter. One night Father Joseph Power had to come over to talk me down from an anxiety attack and twice I spent an hour on the phone with Samaritans.
For years afterward, I'd get sick on the day after Labor Day as though it were part of a biological clock.
In my day there were no news stories or outrage about harrassment or bullying. There was no Trenchcoat Mafia. I was all taken as part of a rite of passage as a student at a piece of shit school called Holbrook High.
My son has none of this. I like to think it's because he has a father who had been there and sometimes shows him how to fight and sometimes how to walk without fighting and how and when to acknowledge the bugs who inhabit his world. I like to think between me and my wife, we've instilled enough confidence that it shows in his walk and that keeps away the prepubescent predators as well as if he were wearing armor. That's what I like to think. I sometimes think it skips a generation. I've also walked behind him and acted like a skinheaded 200 pound bodyguard at his school. My mom once showed me this poem, just before the start of school one year. For a single Mom, she hoped it would instill something. This is for you, Ma.

Dear World
Author:
Dan Valentine
My young son starts to school today...It's going to be sort of strange and new to him for awhile, and I wish you would sort of treat him gently. You see, up to now he's been king of the roost...He's been boss of the backyard...His mother has always been near to soothe his wounds and repair his feelings. But now things are going to be different. This morning he's going to walk down the front steps, wave his hand, and start out on the great adventure...It is and adventure that might take him across continents, across oceans...It's an adventure that will probably include wars and tragedy and sorrow...To live his life in the world he will have to live in, will require faith and love and courage. So, World, I wish you would sort of look after him...Take him by the hand and teach him things he will have to know. But do it gently, if you can. He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just, that all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero...that for every crooked politician there is a great and dedicated leader...Teach him that for every enemy, there is a friend. Steer him away from envy, if you can...and teach him the secret of quiet laughter. In school, World, teach him it is far more honorable to fail that to cheat...Teach him to have faith in his own idea, even if everyone says they are wrong...Teach him to be gentle with gentle people and tough with tough people. Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone is getting on the bandwagon...Teach him to listen to all men - but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth and take just the good that siphons through. Teach him, if you can, how to laugh when he's sad...Teach him there is no shame in tears...Teach him there can be glory in failure and despair in success. Treat him gently, World, if you can, but don't coddle him...Because only the test of fire makes fine steel...Let him have the courage to be impatient...Let him have the patience to be brave. Let him be no other man's man...Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself. Because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind. This is quite and order, World, but see what you can do...He's such a nice little fellow, my son!