It started with a necklace.
My maternal grandparents gave it to me for my First Communion. My family went out to a nice dinner after the mass. There were polished floors, black velvet chairs, a back room we reserved for the special occasion, and a heavy curtain closing us off from the regular restaurant din. The small private area had expensive, indiscernible, meaningless art hung on its walls. The table looked expensive but the wood sounded cheap. The napkins gave a grandiose impression, but they were made of that fabric that feels like a cross between printer paper and cotton. It was called “Biyonda,” but has recently been renamed “Firefly,” and I think the latter a more apt name for the dining room’s low-lit, pastiche, over-priced atmosphere.
I was moving around the room as a restless 7-year-old usually does, probably trying to figure out what the pieces of art meant, when my grandmother pulled out a small wrapped box. I tore it open, and to my slight dismay I found a 24 karat gold necklace and cross. I thought, Jewelry has cooties. It’s so girly, and I don’t want to be girly. I want to be a big boy. My parents could read my face like a book. At the silent command of their widened eyes, I hugged and thanked my grandparents for the gift.
That night, I sat next to my bed stand and looked at the present I had received. Should I wear it? As a sign of my faith? As a testament to my God? As a thank you to my grandparents? As an order from my parents? As a tradition in the Church? As a boy, I wanted to say no, but as a son, I had to say yes. My stubby fingers fumbled with the clasp. I secured it, and looked down at my chest. So shiny, and new. So expensive, and ornate. Such a weird sensation on my skin, but so traditional.
Three years of sweaty recesses, hot showers, playful wrestling—typical youthful wear and tear—had made their marks on the necklace before I lost it. On that day, recess—everybody’s favorite time—became something of a nightmare for me. Usually, my buddies and I untucked our shirts as soon as we gasped that sinus-clearing Wisconsin air. We ran around putting holes in our pants and grass stains on what little fabric stayed intact. We sometimes talked to girls, teasing them until the bell ringer for that week called us back to academic civility.
This recess started much the same. We freed our scrunched up shirt tails from pleated pants and ran to the field. We chose to hesitantly converse with a group of girls, a grade lower than us, which was an odd occurrence. The ringleader of this group was named Caroline. It is obvious to me now that my friends all had crushes on her. She was a gymnast—is a gymnast now at the College of William and Mary—and she would sometimes show off with a series of round-offs, back-handsprings, and flips.
I can also now say that her mind was equally as restless as her body, and she spewed fantastical stories of unicorns and green, blue, bright pink, purple poop. She’d bury her face in her lap and suddenly throw her head up to show us all her bright red, convulsing face of childish laughter. It spread like a plague, and sooner than later everyone was consumed with giggles and rolled around on the trampled clumps of grass.
Something similar probably happened that day. But what matters are the events that followed our little pow-wow with Caroline and her crew under a pine-tree’s shadow. On a silent count of three, my buddies and I grabbed one of every girl’s possessions. The bell that ended recess was our starting gun, and we bolted from our blocks. Like many tactical moves that fail in execution, our attempt to scatter fell flat, as we were all running toward the same destination. We were on the brink of safety when I felt a hand around my collar. My air supply was cut hard, my head snapped forward and back again, my feet flew from under me and my spine met the hard, late-autumn grass.
My pursuer turned captor stood menacingly over me, a girl of remarkably small stature but a fuming, unapologetic face. I surrender what I remember to be a pencil and she scampers off smartly, the clear winner. I sat defeated. I began to massage my sore neck, only to notice I didn’t feel my chain. I felt the grass around me, and didn’t feel my chain, and I felt again and felt the chain. I picked it up but found no cross, so I felt around again, and felt around again, and felt and felt and neither felt nor found anything and I panicked.
I would go back later that day after school with my sister to search and search for the lost cross. I was furious. I knew it was there, and I couldn’t find it. That thought frustrated me the most of all—it was like I was handcuffed with the key taped to my forehead. Venomous, quivering, boiling fists of hate pounded the dull ground because I hated Caroline, and I didn’t just hate her because she was a girl, and that made me hate them all. I hated girls for doing such silly things, I hated girls for caring so much about a stupid pencil, I hated girls for being careless and daft and—I hated them. They as a collective whole had torn off my most precious, most valued possession from my very body and they had done it without remorse.
I think now of how tarnished my necklace would be if I still had it—how dirty it would look, hanging there from my neck. I think now of how every thought and word of hate would have blackened the cross that was meant to be so gold, so pure. I think now of how many ancient traditions Caroline had broken when she pulled the chain from my neck, how hated she was in a little boy’s story, how loved and important she was in a big boy’s reality. I think now of how wrong I was to look for meaning in a piece of factory produced art, and how right I am to know that such art speaks merely of hollow wealth and outdated tradition.