A sudden shriek and then the following ripples of sobbing. Most heads turn, most people walk towards the sound. But three kids don't. Three boys grinning and talking nonchalantly. I hurry.
"What happened?" I spill out. But it's self-explanatory. Small hands cradling a small bruise over his right, tear-soaked eye. More tears leave snail-tracks on his rosy cheeks. His mouth firmly sticks as a black arch. I roll my eyes. A fight.
"Who hit you?" I ask. He points to a boy, flinching as he does. Before the kid can run, I grab him by the shoulder and whip him around.
"Why did you do it?" I demand. He doesn't bother feigning innocence. But he doesn't answer. I shake him again. "Why did you punch him?"
"I didn't punch him." He says to the floor.
I pull his chin up and look him in the eye. "So why did you hit him?"
He says nothing. His eyes try to look away, but I won't break eye contact. Other people try to intervene, but I brush them off with a wave of the hand. This is between me and him.
Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Now thirty. Everything restarts around him, and savagely, I won't let him be join in. And then he cracks. His eyes begin to bubble up. A short sniffle. And then more tears.
Groaning inside, I tell him some words how it's not his fault and how everything is OK, even though he was the kid who punched the other one. Something irks me though. I tell him to sit next to his victim, side by side, and then I leave. Before I'm finished turning, I hear someone whisper "sorry", and the other say "It's OK." They make up. They laugh. And everything's back to normal, as if nothing had occurred in the first place.
And I'm not satisfied.
At its simplest, this is the story of a bully forcing his will upon a younger child, savoring the fact that he can make the kid cry without hitting him. Screw justice and reconciliation. I did it because I wanted to. And I'm not ashamed. There were thousands of ways to do it without making him cry. I knew this the instant the situation occurred. But I wanted him to cry. And I would not be satisfied if there were no tears. How could I let a kid go who punched someone and within a few moments afterward, is talking with his friends without a conscience? But maybe that's my falsely righteous side rationalizing. After all, I am such a hypocrite.
Moments after I'm done with the two kids, I sit down, lean back, and begin a nonchalant conversation with another Teacher's Assistant. I crack a joke. We grin. We laugh. And everything is forgotten between us.
But when I look to the side, I see a few pair of eyes on us; no, it's me they're staring at in shock. Those eyes aren't from the kids who were crying, nor their friends. They aren't even from the teachers. They are from the other children, with a look that is a mixture of anger and horror and fear and disgust. And its only because of their looks that I can remember this instant now.
And I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Because I can't tell: is my life a comedy or a tragedy? One thing's for certain though: it's definitely a drama. But I sincerely hope it's not a tragedy because I would really hate for my life to be a copy of Hamlet. Not because everyone dies in the end, but more because Shakespeare has at least twenty different swears that I've never heard of. What the hell is a 'huggermugger' supposed to be? Am I a Fustiliarian? I give up.
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