The Wee'uns

I don't know who Petrova Elementary School was named for. It's one of the most common Russian surnames, and Saranac Lake must have had a doctor or other wealthy person in residence and willing to endow when the school was constructed in 1924. For a school, it's fairly typical; red brick exterior, wide, bright hallways, high windows in the classrooms, and filthy gum-stained carpet everywhere. I attended Petrova until third grade, when my mother thought I needed a stiffer academic challenge and enrolled me in St. Bernard's Catholic School, where I learned how to fist-fight. At Petrova I learned how to swear. Down a hill past the cafeteria wing, huge athletic greens, including the high school's baseball and football fields, stretched along LaPan Highway. When I played modified football in seventh and eighth grade, a handicapped student named Matt sat in a wheelchair near the highway, with his aide at his back, watching us stretch. Our coach had us yell "Hi, Matt!" in unison at the beginning of every practice. These fields are where we had recess for an hour every day. They'd make us sit patiently in the cafeteria until our time was up, and then, though it sounds cliche, we'd charge out the doors, screaming, run or fall down the hill, and burst onto the fields. The girls stayed on the tarmac or on the sandy playground, where they talked in groups or jump-roped or drew hopscotch with chalk. On the fields, there were early minutes of frenzy and chaos before the athletes among us organized into sides for that day's game. In the fall and winter, tackle football was the sport of choice, and aside from brief spring forays into kickball and softball, it ruled year-round. A soccer game also went on concurrently, and a mild rivalry sprung up between the two sides. Football players were "jocks," soccer players were "fags." My best friend at the time was Pat, a chubby, ruddy boy with a megaphone voice. He marched around with his chest out, maintaining order and barking at digressors. He spent a lot of time at my house, and one day after school when I felt terrible about everyone saying I had a big head, he consoled me. "I know what it's like," he said. "Everyone calls me Fat Pat." Along with being one of the best athletes in our grade, Pat was world-class at swearing. "Dave, what the fuck?!" he'd yell at someone who'd dropped a pass or thrown an interception, with special red-faced fury booming out on the last syllable. The word was usually accompanied by an incredulous expression, both hands raised in exasperation. "Fuck you," came the timid response, and Pat would only shake his thick head. Most of us on the field would copy the way Pat swore, with varying levels of success. The exception were the kids from Bloomingdale, the rough-around-the-edges outskirt of our town, where swearing was learned from birth and done with a hard stare, slowly, brimming with violence. They cursed for something other than fun. The rest of us just loved the way it sounded, the brief image of toughness we felt, especially after spitting out "fuck," a word so harsh and beautiful it seemed to sum up a thousand emotions and contain as many meanings. I resisted at first, because my mom taught me not to swear and I felt guilty. But it didn't take long to succumb to the appeal, and I remember the thrill at my first tentative foray. I was playing quarterback and threw an out-pattern to Pat, who looked upfield too early and dropped the ball. He stopped on the spot, grimaced and looked at his hands. As he ran back to the offensive side, I summoned all my courage, stared him down, and said "what was that shit?" It came out awkwardly, with the beginning swearer's over-emphasis and timidity. "Fuck you," he said, and shoved me. "I'm quarterback." Pat moved after fifth grade. His mother had family in Maine, and finally got enough money to get a place near them. They lived on an island with no electricity, and I didn't stay in touch with Pat for very long. The next and last time I saw him was at a varsity football game my freshman year. A group of us in the bleachers noticed him leaning against the rope at the sideline. He looked mostly the same, a little thinner, but with the same ruddy complexion and trademark scowl. "That's Pat," someone said. I didn't know what I could say to him, forgetting that it could be anything, so I stayed glued to the seat. Pat stood hunched on the sideline, hat pulled low, enduring his lonely homecoming. All of us knew him, but nobody said hello. But under his tutelage, swearing became second nature, something I could do efficiently and selectively, never slipping in front of a parent or authority figure. By fourth grade, I was a prodigy. When my mother put me in St. Bernard's, my friend Johnny and I fancied ourselves the toughest guys in school. I had a swagger in my step that beat anything I could have gotten away with at Petrova, where the Bloomingdale kids would have wasted little time burying me for that kind of attitude. But St. Bernard's was home to a lighter breed of person, and we ruled the roost for more than a year, starting and winning fistfights at will. That all ended in fifth grade. On a warm day in March, we were playing Pickle on the tarmac, and I accidentally knocked Joe Nickastrini's glasses off his face when I swipe tagged him. A massive, strong, quiet Italian kid, Joe was know more for his humor than anything else, and as his glasses hit the ground, I said "you're out." Joe exploded. "Don't touch my glasses!" he shouted in his deep bass, face quivering with rage. He punched me unexpectedly on the mouth, and I fell to the ground as he charged, trying to cover myself up while he kicked with his tree-trunk legs. I saw blood on my hand and panicked, rolled away, and yelled "help!" Johnny came and tried to stop Joe's progress, but he got tossed aside for his trouble, and it took two aides to restrain the fuming Italian. After that, my reputation as a tough-guy was tarnished, and I decided fighting wasn't my style. In sixth grade, I was back at Petrova for Middle School, and back to playing football. One lunch hour, a scrawny, quiet, spectacled kid named Ronald Rykker said he wanted to play. Everyone's instinct was to say no, and the word "nerd" was thrown around, but I was feeling like a samaritan and vouched for him. On our first drive, he stood open in the endzone and I threw him the ball. By a miracle, he caught it and held on, and our whole team erupted at the surprising success. I remember the glow on his face, and his strange words: "I'm gonna do it again!" And he did, near the end of recess, setting off a flurry of celebration and infuriating the other team. I felt high on myself after that, but Ronald didn't play with us again. Later that year, Ronald somehow burnt his face on a waffle iron. I gave him the nickname "paper," because he was thin, white, and had lines. It stuck.