I would like to recount a story.
I grew up with a boy named Bill. He was in several of my classes in school throughout the years and so we knew each other fairly well. He was different, to say the least. He was constantly changing his name, his hair, his clothing style, his music preferences, etc, etc. We also all speculated that he was gay. But that doesn’t pertain to this story. Anyways, he seemed to be troubled, and I can recall that he was usually the subject of ridicule. Now, I’m a pretty nice gal. And I have no recollection of ever being mean to him. In fact, I remember standing up for him on several occasions. I was always one for fighting injustices, I like to think. But during our 6th grade, a year in which Bill happened to be in my class, it was discovered that he had made a lengthy hit list entitled “People I would like to make disappear”, and my name was on the list! I couldn’t believe it! Bill was suspended from school and after that I think everyone shied away from him a little more than usual. Well, the next two years went by without incident and then we were all off to high school. I do not remember whether or not Bill went to my high school, that’s how little thought I gave to him. By then we were all over the strange things he’d done and we were moving on to bigger things. I never saw Bill or heard anything about him until… About a month ago, Evan and I went to Macy’s to get some new work clothes before his month long business trip. We were spending a considerable amount of time there because he needed a ton of stuff and we had our own private room with a fashion consultant (named Lugman…) if we needed him, and so we were taking advantage of being able to bring hoards of clothes and shoes into the room, and put together outfits and such. Well, as I scampered about the store finding different sizes of things for Evan, I noticed an employee who looked really familiar. I kept thinking to myself that the guy looked a lot like Bill, but I really couldn’t be sure. The guy kept looking at me too, but I couldn’t tell if he was just weird, or if he thought he recognized me too. So anyways, after we had picked out all of the clothes Evan needed, we went over to the belt department to see if there was anything good. Standing there was that same guy, and his nametag read ‘Robert’. And I knew right then that it was Bill! His real name was Robert, he just chose to go by Bill… who knows why. So he looked at me and said, “So you were just going to leave without saying Hi?” and I’m like, “Hey Bill…how’ve you been?” So we carried on with the small talk for an awkward minute and then I went on my way and helped Evan pick out a belt. And that was that. Now, my first reaction to him saying that to me was,
“Wow Bill, sorry for not knowing you didn’t want me dead anymore and it was acceptable to speak to you……” But, upon reflection, I’ve come to a different conclusion (or three).
Morals of the story:
(1) Don’t assume that just because someone used to wish you were dead, they don’t want you to say hi to them.
(2) Be extra nice to people who may possibly consider putting your name on their hit list.
(3) And most important, just apologize. Even if you don’t think you did anything offensive. Just say you're sorry. For all I know, Bill may have been tormented not only at school, but at home as well. I could have been a ray of sunshine in his life, but instead, he wished I would disappear. That is sad. I should have said I was sorry.
