Read Online A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall - Free Book Online Page A

said that he wanted to drop the class. She had told him that he wasn’t an interesting writer. I said that I feel like he’s a talented writer, with a different style that not everyone can appreciate. I was proud of myself because what I wanted to say was something more along the lines of disparaging Hillary and everything she stands for.
    I walk over to his desk and smile at him before class starts.
    “Listen, if you don’t want to read it, I’ll read it for you,” I offer, even though I shouldn’t. It’s already the week before Thanksgiving and he’s gone almost the entire semester without reading anything to the class.
    “No, no,” he says, picking at the edge of the desk. “I’ll do it. I need to man up.”
    “It’s a great story. Your use of metaphor is spot-on.”
    “If I throw up, just try not to make a big deal of it, okay?”
    “How have you made it this far in life without having to give so many presentations that you aren’t at least a little bit desensitized?”
    “Honestly? I’ve had to give a lot, but it’s like it gets worse every time instead of better.”
    I make a sympathetic face and then call the class to order.
    “Gabe’s going to share his assignment from a couple of weeks ago, about a childhood memory, so give him your attention.”
    I grab a seat in the first row and I hear Victor mutter behind me, “About damn time.”
    Gabe stands in front of the class, trying so hard to make himself small, which somehow manages to make him seem even taller and more gangly. He cracks his knuckles and then smiles at the class. I can see the paper waver in his hands. But he pushes through his nerves and he starts to read.
    There’s a picture on the Internet of a tree that’s grown around a bicycle. The story goes that a boy left his bike leaning against the tree and then forgot all about it when he was called off to war. That’s not really the true story, but if you’ve never seen this picture, you should go home and Google it. It’s fascinating.
    It always makes me think of this one time that my mom and I were at the food store when I was about six years old. It was memorable in part because it was so rare that my mom took me anywhere all by myself. My older brother was almost always there, or one of my younger sisters. But I don’t know if I was home from school sick, or if maybe my dad was watching the other kids, but this day sticks out because it was her and me.
    An old man started talking to my mom and then he turned to me and asked me my name. I hid behind my mom because I was really scared of strangers. I think we may have watched too many stranger-danger videos in kindergarten, so that on top of my innate shyness made talking to people I didn’t know almost impossible.
    This old man was one of those scary old men, at least to six-year-old me. He looked like his skin was melting off his face and he smelled weird. What was left of his hair was long and scraggly, and his shirt was misbuttoned.
    In the car on the way home, my mom asked me why I was so scared, and said that I didn’t have to be. She knew the old man and he was her neighbor when she was little like me. I explained about his skin and his hair and his disheveled nature as well as I could with my limited six-year-old vocabulary.
    She said, “Oh, that’s okay, Gabe. You’ll grow out of that. You won’t always feel so scared and shy around grown-ups.”
    I remember thinking that day that I’ll always be scared, that I don’t understand how not to be scared. As I got older I thought about that day all the time. It was only very recently that I realized my mom was right, but not in the way she thought.
    I did lose some of my wariness and my fear as I matured, but I’ve never quite shaken my shyness. When I think about it, it’s like I would have never been able to grow out of it. It’s like the tree and the bicycle. I grew around it and it became part of me.
    When he’s done he glances at the classroom through his