Two Boys on a Hill

On a warm summer evening, in a fairly small city, in a nice suburb. Two young boys were play fighting on a hill that was attached to the school that they would be attending come fall. They would run up to the top of the hill, start to push each other until one of them fell and started to roll down it. Then the victor would also drop down and roll down the hill after the first boy.

They were thirteen years old. They were mature and immature, they were children and they were men. They were lost because they knew what they were about to lose, they were afraid because of what was replacing it. They were confused because they couldn't put any of it into words.

The boys were both small for their age, and they were each others only friends. They were not popular, in their school, their class, or any of their extracurricular activities. For the one boy, he was not popular because he was very skinny, and very smart. He was also very mean spirited. He had not learned to forgive the other children for being mean to him for so long, so that other children, even new ones, couldn't even try to be his friend if they wanted to.

The other boy had no friends for a much more simple reason. He was ugly. He wasn't fantastically ugly, but he had bucked teeth, and he was pudgy, despite being small. It made him look like he was a chipmunk. So that's what people told him he was. Even his own father. And that gave him a soft disposition, so that people would either be mean to him, or not notice he was there.

The skinny boy, after a fairly rough bout, once he got down to the bottom of the hill, said to the other boy, who was dutifully waiting for him:

“I wonder what it would be like to actually punch each other...”

This was a test. And tests with young boys have never been subtle. It was also a trap. With one sentence the skinny boy had forced the pudgy one into two situations that would be undesirable for him. Either, he would have to say yes to punching each other, which he did not want to do. Because, rolling around on a hill is one thing, however, punching was advancement that he was not ready for yet. But, if he said no, then the skinny boy would be able to make fun of him and call him vulgar words, all of which meant coward.

There was always a chance, that the skinny boy was bluffing. There was that hope. The pudgy boy knew that he was bigger than the skinny boy, even so, most of the time the skinny boy was so angry, that the other boy was afraid of him.

“Well, we could if you wanted. But as long as it's not a real fight. Okay?”

“Why can't it be a real fight?”

“Because, I'm not mad at you, and your not mad at me...right?”

“Right.”

They sat on the grass thinking about this for a while. At least, the skinny boy was thinking about it. The other boy was thinking about how he didn't want to get punched at all. The skinny boy was trying to figure out how mad you had to be in order to punch somebody. Did you have to want to kill them? Or could you just want to hurt them? Did you have to start off wanting to kill them, and then pull back and only hurt them? Could he ever really want to kill someone?

In truth, the skinny boy didn't want to hurt the pudgy boy at all. It was the opposite, he wanted the pudgy boy to hurt him. He wanted to know what it was like to be hit. He needed to know what it was like to be hit. To be hit by someone his own age, his own size.

The skinny boy had too much hate in his heart, and he knew it. So he wanted to be punished for it, but he wanted it to be a fair fight. This wasn't conscious though, this was an instinct mixed with thought. Instinct, manipulating him with thoughts, refusing to be clear about the reasons of these violent urges. Only giving him a need, and forcing the rest of him to justify it.

“Well, don't you just want to know? To know what it's like to be hit?”

There was a long pause.

“Kind of? Not really? No?” A nervous laugh, well suited to the honesty of the statement

“I just kind of want to know what it would be like to be in real fight, like in a movie.”

“Yeah I guess, I just don't want to get a nose bleed.”

“But black eyes are so cool! And we can tell people we got mugged or something and that we fought them off!”

The pudgy boy was now less afraid. There was something in the eyes of his friend, something that he had never seen, or more likely had never noticed, in anyone else before. Children of that age are only beginning to learn how to empathize and sympathize, truly, with each other. Most of the time friendships at that age are a projection of what they want the other person to be. Since neither boy had any other friends, their projections of each other were simple, and two dimensional. They were friends.

When he looked into the other boys eyes, he saw something he had never seen in himself, yet understood it completely. He saw how much the skinny boy hated himself. It was the first time he ever fully comprehended someone other than himself. For, the pudgy boy had no hate in his heart, he loved himself, and most of those around him. But, from that moment on he knew why the skinny boy was so mean.

After a long time in silence, the pudgy boy stood up off the grass. Walked over to the skinny boy, and as hard as he could, he punched him in the face.

Because he was his friend.