What I Learned from a Mucus Eating Know It All

Throughout the course of our fraught existence in this world there is a secreted-away, hairless, nearly translucent skinned naked mole rat that I think most people acquired around the age of six or seven.  Occasionally your little rat friend reaches its tiny pink head and long yellow teeth out of its burrow to terrify you, and make you question everything you know about life.  For me this is a kid we’ll call Jeremy.  He was the kid that everyone picked on.  Of the rungs in the caste system that is grade school, he was being bullied by kids still peeing their pants in third grade.  

Jeremy was from New York, and had relocated to South Carolina when he was six.  He wore glasses, had a weird shaped head that didn’t help his goofy haircut, and talked funny (like a yankee).  Oh yeah, he also sucked his thumb, picked and ate his dried nasal mucus secretions, and talked constantly about how awful the south was, and especially South Carolina.  If you know South Carolina, this isn’t advisable behavior.  

It was no wonder that this kid was bullied constantly.  Jeremy sucked his thumb, I know, until ninth grade.  I moved to Georgia in tenth grade, so I’m not sure if he got sober later on.  His parents had a medieval looking contraption put into his mouth so that, every time he put his thumb in his mouth, it would prick his thumb and make him bleed.  I asked him once, “Doesn’t that hurt.”  He replied “You get used to it after a while.”  It had to be like black tar heroin for Jeremy.

I was a sympathetic little child, and also, seeing as Jeremy lived behind my house with a pool and horses, I extricated myself from the manacles of toxic, school bus authoritarianism and befriended the poor, helpless, albeit pretty gross outsider.  While Jeremy and I hung out at his house, he was tolerable.  We would fish at the pond next to our houses, ride our bikes, swim in the pool and occasionally ride horses that I always wanted to ride but Jeremy never did. 

While I tried to be friends with Jeremy; even at school, where you could get beat up by who you were friends with, Jeremy could turn on me in an instant.  I’d be sitting with him in the hall before class talking, and then he would insult me out of nowhere and become really vicious.  I would walk away angry and not talk to him for a couple of weeks, but then would feel bad that he was picked on so much and talk to him again.  

Jeremy only had one real friend.  A kid named Jason, who swore he and Kit from Knightrider were best friends.  It made sense that they were friends, but it was a miracle that they found each other in a world without internet.  

Occasionally Jeremy crosses my mind, as he has always been something of a puzzle to me, and I can’t quite figure him out.  As I was driving the other day (as is my main job now), I thought about Jeremy for the first time in a while. 

Quick detour; I actually began to wonder why it is that I have a hard time standing up for myself sometimes and advocating for myself.  In a world where being outwardly selfish seems to be the only thing that stays trendy, I can’t even send back raw chicken in a restaurant.  Also, despite my general appearance towards the world, I want everyone to like me…at least more than they don’t.  I have a confidence problem, and that’s not a very sexy problem to have nowadays.   

I was a small kid growing up; that’s not hard to imagine.  I was also white, that also isn’t very hard to imagine.  A tiny white kid without the backing of the confederate underclass in school was an easy target, and I got a lot of abuse from some of the black kids in our school. I had a gun pulled on me in the hallway once at my locker.  Another time a kid told me that he was going to kill me in gym.  

I didn’t see that kid in school after the incident, but his friend kept insisting he was coming back to get me.  “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”  Turned out he killed a convenience store clerk before he got to me and went to jail.  

Other times it was just a quick head lock or punch to the face or body.  There was one black kid named Jimmy that I credit for saving my ass from a severe beating in a bathroom.  Three kids came in to jump me, and Jimmy, being bigger than all of them, and thankfully a good friend of mine, stood in their way.  They said they’d get him later, but I think they were too afraid of him. 

Needless to say, I kept my head down and just tried to get through the day without being singled out.  I had, what I thought, was a legitimate fear that if I was too noticeable I might not live very long, or at least live in a lot more pain than I considered necessary at the time.  I believe this is one reason I have a hard time sticking up for myself or getting on anyone’s bad side.  Not that I think they’ll kill me, but…you never really know.  

So, it would seem that Jeremy and I, at least on some level, would react the same to these outside forces in school.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  To be honest I only saw Jeremy get pummeled a handful of times, and mostly by redneck kids on the bus, because Jeremy wouldn’t stop telling them what losers they were.  An entire bus of rednecks and this goofy kid sitting there telling them all how the yanks were coming back to finish off the south.  Once during eighth grade gym, all the bullies were asking the non bullies if they liked girls.  Of course most of us were entirely fascinated and terrified of girls by this point.  Everyone answered yes, of course they liked girls.  Not Jeremy.  Without hesitation he said “No.  I mean, I don’t like boys, but I don’t like girls either.”  

I realize now that whatever Jeremy was thinking or feeling, no one was going to stop him from saying what he thought or doing what he felt like.  Not the rednecks kicking his ass for pushing gestapo-like rhetoric about New York down their throats, not his mom and dad who tried to break him from sucking his thumb with metal torture devices, and not every kid and teacher visually and verbally disgusted by his nose to mouth daily snacking habit.  Jeremy was, unapologetically, himself before it was trendy to be “unapologetically yourself.”  Sorry, not sorry.  

Also, maybe Jeremy realized I was trying to be his friend out of charity, and he didn’t want it or need it.  Jason and him were, as far as I remember, always friends, because Jason was just as weird as Jeremy and they got each other.  No charity, just two weird people being friends. That’s also possibly a good definition of marriage.  Regardless, I never thought I would think about Jeremy one day with this new sort of reverence; of the courage and downright not giving two f’s sort of attitude, that now makes me stop and take note.  

As Jeremy discovered in band class, all that he needed for a quick snack was within himself, maybe that applied to his resilience in the turmoils of elementary and middle school life as well.  

The thing about the naked mole rat is, despite its grotesque appearance, eating its own feces regularly, and (probably) being bullied by cute, fluffy rabbits and squirrels on the reg, it easily outlives every other species of its size; living 5 times longer.  It is possibly the most resilient of all animals on earth.  

I don’t know whatever became of Jeremy, but I can guarantee whatever it was was of his own choosing.  And he’s not 44 still trying to figure out who he really is.

Me 99.9% of my life in school and now

Jeremy 99.9% of his life in school (and probably now too)