Thinking About You

Chapter 11

Spring was around the corner and I was happier. It showed in my work, my father was proud and noticed it but didn't question me.

On nice days like these I didn't mind letting my car sit and walking to and from work. I had another great day and it was gorgeous out.

On my way back home I let my mind wander and started to think about Alex and when we first met. We didn't get along and that was mainly my fault. We first met in Kindergarten and I wouldn't have recalled this if it weren't for me one day stumbling across an old yearbook. He looked like such a baby in his Kindergarten photo, wasn't smiling but wasn't mean mugging, it's the cutest thing.

But it was around second grade when I started to pick on him with a couple of my friends. Alex's second language is English so back then he wasn't so good at it. Kids would pick on him for it, myself included. One day he fought back, he was a lot shyer back then. And the person he decided to get back at was me. One day in perfectly clear English he bombed on me and my eye color. I can't remember exactly how he worded it but he had never before spoken English so well. He said something like me being so ugly that's why my mama had to spend bread on getting me colored eye contacts. The whole class was in an uproar and I was embarrassed and mad at the same time.

My natural eye color is gray, sometimes it'll get as light as a steel gray color. I also have black "flakes" around my irises which make them pop out more. Not a whole lot of black kids have gray eyes. I got them from my mother. She had two different colored eyes. One was brown and the other was my gray. I had gotten both gray eyes.

Alex was the first and only one to actually bring it up and bomb on me at the same time. He was definitely on my most hated list.

For the rest of the year I would take any opportunity to trip him, knock him down. Plenty of times we got into little fights that had to get broken up. I picked on him for other reasons too such as the fact at how easily his skin turned pink or red. Teachers got tired and moved Alex to a different classroom, as if to protect him. That didn't stop us. Lunch time came and it was on.

Eventually it was suggested that one of us transfer schools. Our parents weren't having it and my dad started giving me brutal ass whoppings to keep me in line. So I started to leave Alex alone... not quite, we just stopped fighting is all. I assume his parents started spanking him too because he just stuck with giving me ugly glares. I still stole his pencils and what not and pushed him out of chairs and told 'yo mama' jokes on him.

It was pretty much the same thing in 3rd, 4th and some of 5th grade. We came back to school after summer break and it was like nothing changed; we still hated each other. Alex's parents were frustrated and eventually moved to the east side near the start of our fifth grade year. And that's when school started to get boring because he was no longer around.

Near the end of the year it was long forgotten. Then my dad moved us to the east side. Alex and I went to the same junior high. Damantaé and Linc were always around and ended up also at our junior high. By sixth grade I definitely matured and kind of forgot about Alex (same thing that eventually happened with high school).
We didn't start becoming cool with each other until almost halfway through sixth grade. At the start of the year we hardly talked to each other or noticed one another until we had to do a book report together. Then we had to become partners a few times in Science class. We joked about elementary school and started fresh.

Then was seventh grade.

With all this thinking my memory was jogged to the time in seventh grade when Alex told me:

"I always liked boys, I think I actually liked you since elementary days..."

I don't remember my response or even where we were or what we were doing but he did tell me that.