Similar to an earlier post about a very good friend who has fallen on hard times due to his own foolishness, I muse on another guy I knew when I was young.
In 1973 the public grammar school I attended closed as I completed the 7th grade. I had attended the Hawthorne School since 5th grade. It was located in the old St.Mary's School building where I had endured kindergarten through fourth grade. St. Mary's was the first parochial school in Salem closed by the archdiocese of Boston. The city rented the building as a public school for the next three years. 1974 brought me to the 8th grade in the Phillips School which was just around the corner.
A few of my friends from the Hawthorne came with me to the Phillips. It was a bit of an adjustment for all of us. We were the interlopers and the put upon at the same time. The kids at Phillips were a bit nervous about us (Hawthorne had a rough reputation) and we were unsure what to expect at Phillips.
This guy was one of the first kids I encountered. He heard how I pronounced my name, LA-GO, as opposed to LA-GALT and used the "Leggo of my Eggo" commercial to bust my balls. He would run up to me in the hallway between classes, shout it out to me and then run. I would chase him for a bit and then go to class. This went on for the entire year. He got some sort of rush from the whole thing while I kind of got tired of it. As the year went on I would chase him less and less until I didn't chase him at all. The fact is I had no interest in catching him.
High school came and he and I encountered each other very little. We ran in different circles. The one thing I noticed is he always had very good looking girl friends. He seemed personable and popular.
Fourteen years ago I returned to Salem. Eventually I asked about him. Family members, his brother in particular would change the subject quickly. I later learned he had been arrested twice in child rape charges and in between those incidents jailed twenty years for the rape of a Salem State College (now University) student. He was released a few years ago and according to police records was "homeless" in Cambridge.
It turns out he was not in Cambridge at all. He has been living at his sisters house here in Salem and working as a roofer. Today he is on the front page of the Salem News after being arrested again for rape.
I look at his picture. Hard eyes, tight tense lips, slicked back hair and try to reconcile this appearance with the smiling, personable blond kid who playfully provoked me to a chase 35 years ago. It doesn't fit. It doesn't make sense.
Look at where you are today. Look around at the people you have known for years and where they are. Realize and appreciate that whether it be by design or by circumstance we are what we have become.
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