Patience was never my strongest quality, particularly in 1st grade. Early in the year, my teacher realized that I already knew much of the grade material, but that I lacked the capability to work independently. Tormented by the slow learning pace, I desperately searched for something to interest me. I remember one day I wore my favorite green tank top. It usually countered my restlessness, until I learned the topic of the day’s lesson – Math.
"If you have five apples, and I give you two more, how many apples do you have now?"
My desk-mate turned away from me and laid his blond curls on the polished wood of the desk we shared. He began humming to himself. I shook his arm until he turned around.
"Look, it's not that hard." I tapped the irregularly large yellow pencil he insisted on using every day. He stared at the paper and sighed.
"Not for you, but it is for me."
Exasperated, I dropped his pencil and watched it roll down the table. It threatened to fall to the floor and I maliciously ignored it. But it never fell; it instead stopped at the curve of his forearm. Thinking nothing ever went my way, I sighed and slid my own workbook into the cubby underneath the desk. A touch at my shoulder caused me to flinch instinctively. I warily turned and caught Zachary delicately pulling up a strap to my tank top. I stared at him, demanding an explanation.
With his shoulders hunched over and his brow furrowed with concentration, he ignored me. His workbook was open to the page we were working on and I watched his pencil glide aimlessly over the slick, plastic-like pages. Leaning over my chair, I peered at his hastily scribbled answer. I sighed, and slid his workbook to the middle of the desk.
"If you have five apples, and I give you two more, how many apples do you have now?"
I sat next to the same boy for three years. Grades kindergarten through 2nd, my teachers always placed me next to Zachary. Eight years later, I recognize that my slightly strained but gradual friendship with Zachary occurred not entirely by chance. My first few years at elementary school were a struggle unlike that of my classmates. What others found difficult, I excelled at, and consequently I became a frustrated and ill-tempered student. In later grades, my teachers provided me with extra reading assignments and advanced math problems, but there wasn't much they could give me my first three years. The only thing they could do was place me next to struggling students and instruct me to help them. At the time, I absolutely hated it.
I know now Zachary had a mental disability similar to autism, but of course at 6, I didn't know what that meant. I treated him like the burden I felt I had been forced to carry for the past three years, and there was nothing that I wanted more than to be relieved of him. But even then, I had some sort of primitive awareness. I would see the look of confusion and fear in his face when worksheets were passed out and it would melt me to submission. So I worked. Piles of eraser shavings, hours of finger counting and the continuous humming was the result of my labor. No matter how hard I tried to pound the information into Zachary, only half of what I said he actually heard and half of that again would be remembered the next day. Frustration and irritation took over, and with my own child-like reasoning, I decided that Zachary would never catch up. After 2nd grade, I never saw Zachary again. Rumors between the school children said that his parents transferred him to a special school with "special" kids like himself. The first time I heard that, I felt relief. No longer would I have to wake up every day and have guilt stare me in the face, complete with blond curls.
I wouldn’t think about Zachary again until many years later. When that day came, I was grocery shopping with my mother. I saw an aging man holding hands with a young woman. Thinking they were a married couple, I thought nothing of it, until the woman turned to face me. She was so strikingly beautiful, I couldn’t help but stare. Startled, I watched them move around the produce section, the man leading the woman through the aisles with a careful eye. As they walked closer to me, I was able to study her face more clearly. It was beautiful, but had a strange empty purity that I couldn’t place. I quickly looked away when they reached my section, but not fast enough to miss the large stuffed bear the woman clutched to her chest with her free hand.
As they passed me, I heard the man speak in a slow, encouraging voice, “Let’s go, it’s time to go home now.” The woman tugged at her tightly linked hand, her knuckles turning white with the strain. The man turned to face her and looked at her with so much love I felt my own heart clench. But the woman’s gaze focused elsewhere – the ceiling, then the floor, and then the ceiling again. Slowly, he reached out to touch her face. Her reaction was impossible to decipher. At first she looked shocked, her innocent moon face fixed on the man’s eyes, but it rapidly transformed into fear and confusion. Alarmed, I saw another face in my mind, not so unlike hers. But then I saw her tap her fingers on her leg fervently and I very nearly cried right there and then. She whimpered like the child she was inside, but allowed the man to lead her to the front of the store, her fingers never losing rhythm.
It didn’t take long after that for me to miss Zachary. I longed to see his golden curls and his dimpled smile. I desperately recollected our simple conversations about machines and robots, one of his few passions. Most of all, I ached to hear him hum. The sweet little lullabies he sang to himself for comfort and to guide him through the dark path of confusion where I left him. The guilt, shame and remorse caught up to me. I gave up on him too soon, I told myself, I should have fought longer and maybe he would still be sitting next to me. The worst part was that he trusted me until the end; he cared for me when I should have taken care of him. I later concluded that the reason why it hurt so much was because I gave up. Zachary is the reason why I work as hard as I do. People tell me I'm an over-achiever. I tell them I try the best I can so the result is something I can be proud of, but they almost never understand. All I know is that this is how I will try to live. I do it to honor Zachary; an eternal apology but also a promise.
Imagine the world if everyone thought of someone else in times of sorrow and despair. I have a house, a family, food in my stomach, and that is more than enough to give thanks for. Whenever I feel like giving up, I think of Zachary and try to picture where he is now, only I still see him as that that little boy who struggled to count seven apples, but who never forgot to give me a Valentine’s Day card. I remind myself of the hummer, and suddenly, my life doesn’t seem that hard anymore.