William the Retard

Back in Boy Scouts, we had a kid named William. Nobody ever called him Will; it was always William, like we were his parents constantly having to shout his full name to let him know he was doing wrong. He was a year below us, but that was no excuse for his behavior, such as chasing a squirrel with a makeshift club. No, his maladjustment could be blamed squarely on his parents' poor luck: William was a retard.

He was only borderline retarded -- a few points above the line that determined if you were fit for society. Our school accepted him well enough. And he could carry and follow conversations, and didn't have the worst grades in his class. Really, it was only his looks and speech that gave it away, even before you knew he was inclined to occasionally shit on trees in plain sight of the nearest path. A redneck cherub wasn't someone you could easily mistake for intelligent, buckteeth and blotchy dark skin and slow drawl, and glazed eyes and chubby cheeks and all. William had a presence, which, for me, was the nicest thing you could say about him.

I didn't know quite how to treat him back then. Even being in middle and high school, I had enough of a conscience not to make fun of him just for being born unfortunately, even behind his back. (The same couldn't be said of Max and Andy, two of his classmates, who constantly tormented him and made him pitch their tents or throw out their trash. Perhaps because they had to be around him more than we did.) But the fact of the matter was that I did not like dealing with him. None of us did, not even the leaders, who would awkwardly laugh at his jokes, or just say, "yup." I was never unfortunate enough to have to share a tent with him (like Max and Andy did). Sometimes, though, I would end up next to him at a table, and I would try my best to sit in my seat fully, and not scrunched uncomfortably to the side, away from him and his loud, open-mouthed chewing.

One instance stands out in my wasteland of a memory bank. At Camp Massawepie one year, our grueling one-week summer venture in the Adirondacks (made bearable only by the rifles and the bows), we had sat down for lunch in the mess hall, with myself two seats down from William. It was taco day. A bowl of meat laid in the center of the table. After avoiding the prayer and trudging through the pro-boy guttertalk in the announcements (complete with the slapping of tables and Lord of the Flies-esque chanting), I was ready for my midday break from thought. But William, sweet William, grabbed the bowl first. The spoon was large, almost like a ladle, and William took full advantage of its higher functions -- namely, spooning a shitton of meat onto his plate. After fully a third of the bowl had been depleted, he seemingly remembered that there were eleven other people at the table, and instead of scooping some of the meat back into the bowl, he simply passed it down, making his taco. Cries of "William!," the shaking of heads, the dead stares, and the rubbing of temples prompted him not to apologize, but to eat in silence. Not having to hear his voice was enough for me.

The meat would have been no big deal coming from anyone else (I've always been more of a sharer in group meals), but from him I just got sullen and frustrated. Frustrated because he screwed up, again, and sullen because it was never his fault, and he would never learn. He works as a cart retriever at Wegmans now, 20 years old, and I see him sometimes. I wave and smile, and he says, "hi Patrick" as he waddles to a cart he has forgotten. I helped him grab that cart one time, knowing it to be the largest contribution I could make to his day -- leaving the curing of mental incapacity to gold-hearted intellectuals, while I walked barely ten feet, to and from the cart.