Je regrette

I took a drive today. I found myself cruising past the turn-off to my childhood home, and I smiled when I went past. It’s so beautiful there. The woods are lush and gorgeous, and they contain good memories.

But there are bad ones, too. Shameful ones.

Directly across from the road where our house was, there’s an old house. Paint peeling, yard tatty, old car sitting in the driveway. It was there when I was growing up, too. There were a lot of people who lived in that house, but it’s only one of them that I remember. And that’s because of something that I did.

He was about 17, and I don’t even remember what his name was. Termite, they called him. They were poor, even more than we were, and it was just him and his Mom and his sister. They didn’t even have a telephone, so they used ours on occasion. His mom would send him over, and he’d walk the quarter mile and come down our driveway, tennis-shoed feet kicking the rocks and making little puffs of dust. It bothered him, I could tell.

I was an angry kid, with no idea why I was angry. I won’t go into the whole dynamics of family drama, but it contributed. Add it to the normal angst of the 15 year old, and I was a hot mess.

I didn’t like him. I don’t remember why. So I told my Dad he was rude to me, and the next time he came over to use the phone, feet dragging, my father made him stand there and take a lecture before he let him use the phone.

I went into my room. I could still hear it, though. I could hear the unwelcome tears in his voice as he protested, the shock and hurt and anger. Then he used the telephone and went home, and he never spoke another word to me again. He never came to use the phone again, either.

I never apologized, and I never told the truth, and I could feel the weight of that today when I saw that battered old house.

So I’d like to say I’m sorry.

I could make excuses, I could explain, tell him that the truth is that I felt powerless and worthless and I twisted those feelings into occasional spiteful acts. I could say that at that age, I didn’t have a lot of empathy, that there were was such a complex mix of emotions roiling inside of me that I didn’t have room to consider other people’s. I could tell him that I’ve thought and regretted many times what I did. But it doesn’t really make any difference why. I can’t take it back.

It was thirty years ago, and it’s still vivid to me. I hope, really I do, that it’s just a small thing to him, something that he shrugged off and doesn’t even remember. I hope it didn’t haunt him, as it does me.

The things we do, the things we’re exposed to, they all have an effect on our future behavior. This taught me empathy, so I’m not sorry for that. But I am sorry for what I did to that poor boy.

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