Road Trip
It was the summer before fifth grade. My parents said, “We’re moving to West Virginia.”
I climbed into the old station wagon…fiddled nervously with my calculator watch…and wondered what was waiting on the other end of this road trip.
Western Virginia? Never heard of it.
As a skinny 10 year-old wearing the thickest glasses known to mankind…I certainly wasn’t going to take over this new town. I was far too busy being self-conscious. About everything from the style of my clothes to the size of my nose. But I knew life must move fast in West Virginia (a sentence that had never been uttered before), and maybe it was time for me to grow up.
Driving through the new neighborhood felt like entering a cold, strange forest. Massive trees everywhere. Each one taller than the last. By my calculations, there had to be a 99% chance that the new house was haunted. But my parents looked thrilled to walk through that door. And their first-day fun might have lasted…if I didn’t overflow the toilet within 10 minutes of our arrival. My mom watched me loiter aimlessly after breaking the bathroom, and strongly suggested:
“Take a walk. Explore your new surroundings.”
Now that was a great idea. Exploration. It’s exactly what a grownup would do. So I put on my lucky off-brand Air Jordans (in case I needed to run through the haunted forest). And off I went. Like a tiny Neil Armstrong discovering new worlds. As I reached the end of the street, a loud neighborhood kid yelled from his driveway:
“Hey weird kid, come over here!”
Uh-oh.
Was he going to tease me about my absurdly thick glasses?
Did he sense my fear?
How did he know I was weird?
As I tiptoed toward his house, I got a closer look at the guy. We seemed to be the same age. And he was everything I wasn’t. Confident, handsome, and possibly the most athletic person in the world. He dribbled a basketball like he had Olympic tryouts the next day. His blonde hair bounced gracefully as he drained shot after shot. What was this…a Salon Selectives commercial?
Then he rolled the ball over and said, “Shoot it!”
Gulp.
My messy brillo hair stayed in one unmoving clump as I dribbled the ball…
…right off my foot.
Sigh.
But, for some reason, the future Olympian and I hit it off.
Maybe he’d never seen a brown guy before.
Maybe he was secretly impressed by my calculator watch.
Or maybe he just needed a friend too.
However it happened…I suddenly felt less alone. And that changed everything for me. West Virginia wasn’t a strange, possibly-haunted forest anymore. It was a fun playground. I hung out with my new buddy all summer. We ate bologna sandwiches at his house and tandoori chicken at mine. Rode bikes for hours at a time. I’d known zero curse words a few weeks ago…now I was fluent in all of them.
Maybe this was grownup status?
Nope.
See, fifth grade was only days away and I was terrified that my peers would laugh at the weird kid.
Could I convince my mom to take me shopping somewhere cool…like Burlington Coat Factory?
No such luck.
Well, when school started…through some sort of magic…I wasn’t the freak that everyone laughed at. For some reason, other kids actually wanted to be my friend. Sure, there were times I felt out of place. Like the first day of deer hunting season – when the 2 Chinese boys and I were the only dudes in school. But, overall, it started to feel like home. Most days, the bell rang and I biked around the neighborhood with my friends. All these years later, only one of those afternoons is still tattooed on my brain…
I remember every detail as if it happened just yesterday…
We were running through the streets shooting water guns, laughing, and acting like the clowns we were. When, out of nowhere, we heard a loud scream from the house in front of us. Not cartoony like in the movies. It was the actual sound of terror. And it stopped us in our tracks. For the next couple of minutes, we heard violent crashing and yelling followed by a woman’s desperate screams. She was pleading for this person to stop doing whatever he was doing.
Until it finally stopped.
A man stormed out of the house, jumped into his car, and peeled tires as he raced away.
We stood in that street…water guns dangling by our sides. All of us had dysfunctional families, but this was something very different. It was clear that the man had beaten up a woman inside that house. We heard it all. So I turned to my friends and asked what we should do. I wasn’t the leader of the group…just its nerdiest member. But it was obvious…even to a group of kids…that something seriously wrong was going on inside that house. Everyone looked frozen, so I decided to knock on the door. I thought maybe that’s what a grownup would do?
I tiptoed up to the porch and gently touched the doorbell.
(My armpits were sweating like there was a faucet inside my shirt)
A few seconds later, a woman appeared. She was young and pretty….it looked like she could have been one of the teachers at my school. Her face was in terrible shape. Two black eyes were starting to form and she was swelling up.
(I was completely overwhelmed by the moment)
With a whisper I asked, “Do you need help?”
She looked at me coldly and responded:
“Mind your own business.”
And then she closed the door.
The years passed quickly. Like other kids, I spent less and less time playing outside. My glasses were replaced by contact lenses…the calculator watch was replaced by video games…and, eventually, the bicycle was replaced by a car. I was 17 now. A badass with the freedom to drive anywhere.
(Which usually meant the local mall)
One random day, I walk out of the arcade…
And see her sitting in the food court.
She’s 7 years older but I could never forget her face. I grab a slice of pizza (that I’m too nervous to eat) and sit a couple of tables away. Time has not been kind to her. She seemed young before…now she looks totally lifeless. More broken. I’m not a mind reader, but it’s certainly possible he’s been beating on her for all these years.
And then she sees me.
It looks like there’s a moment of recognition. The faintest of double-takes. Maybe I’m imagining it. Then again, I’m literally the only Indian male my age in this town. I take a quick peek back and notice one of her lifeless eyes has a tear in it.
Oh man.
What the hell would a grownup do in this situation?
And then I think back to her words from all those years ago:
“Mind your own business.”
So I did.
I threw out my uneaten pizza, turned in the opposite direction, and left the mall without looking back.
In the years that have passed, I’ve thought about her from time to time. Why did she take it? What broke her self-esteem? And did that man eventually kill her?
I don’t know any of those answers.
I’m sharing the story with you because it’s always stayed in my head.
As I got older, I learned that nobody is 100% “grown up.” We all carry some childlike (and childish) stuff inside ourselves. I can look back at that moment with the kind of adult thoughts we all have:
“It’s not your problem”
“There’s nothing you can do”
“That was really dangerous”
“Those people are both crazy”
And so on.
But, when it really comes down to it, I’m more proud of the 10 year-old boy who knocked on that door than I am of the young man who ran out of the mall.
And here’s why…
Nothing outside of our own little world is our business. A lesson we learn so well as grownups. We become experts at keeping a safe distance. At disconnecting to protect ourselves. Sure, we can freely defend our space in traffic and eagerly point at celebrities’ flaws from afar. But what about putting ourselves out there in a vulnerable way? What do we do when we might actually get hurt?
We mind our own business.
Sure, I was just a little kid. And of course I couldn’t have actually done anything to help. But I hadn’t learned how to close myself off yet. I hadn’t learned how keep my armor carefully fastened at all times. For just a moment, I didn’t mind my own business.
Maybe I could learn something from that kid.
And maybe you could too.
