Hard Truths: Gorillas in the Mist

Warning: Depressing content.

Some ugly truths will haunt you through your life--like powerful, chest-beating, strutting wild beasts whose shape you can still see through the mist of time. Even though you're older, and wiser, and softer and harder, and have weathered a lot, you never forget the stark moments that stood out in your life, that showed you that the world could be a cold place. Even if you were the one making it colder. I don't know why I'm thinking of these gorilla/guerrilla moments today, but I am. Dark and dreary, I know. Sorry!

1. My bad. I was really mean one time in particular. My friend V. coaxed me to write a hate note to N., our friend/her rival down the street. We said N.'s hair looked like spinach; we left the note in her black metal mailbox. I don't remember how we signed it. How awful, how devastating. I had a mind of my own; I can't believe I did that. It makes me sad for N. Especially because I now see, in retrospect, what a rough life she had, with a mean, difficult dad who wore windbreakers and drank too much. Wherever you are, N., I hope you still have that pretty red hair you had. It did not look like spinach at all.

2. Stranger danger. There was a girl I knew only by name; she went to the public school, I went to the Catholic school. One day we were passing each other on the sidewalk by Bedford Park and I smiled at her. My reward was a one-word reply--a distasteful four-letter word that I will not put here. At the time, in my naivete and sheltered childhood, I had no idea what it meant. Puzzled, I told my mom, who was standing near her sliding bedroom closet door at the time, and didn't do such a clear job of explaining it, either. But if I ever want to feel bad easily, I can immediately call up the harshness of that moment. We didn't even know each other! It's a naked fact--people can hate you without even knowing a thing about you.

3. Back stabbers. Ah, there's the rub. These are the people who act one way to you at work and then stab you in the back when you're not looking. I remember in particular a woman in accounting, who was really nice to my boss but hated me for some reason. And her assistant told me what she said about me. Ouch. Double ouch. I was all of 23. After that, I listened to the advice of my second boss. "CYA," she said, with her Midwestern practicality, as she peered out over her reading glasses. "Always cover your ass."

4. Death, the robber. It stole Eddie Gallagher, a nice high school classmate of ours who had a brain tumor. It stole my grandma, my grandpa, my cousin, the lovely young Andrea across the street, who limped to the stage to get her diploma and died way before her time. It snatched Irene's Papa at age 44, which seems impossibly young now.

5. Family secrets and sobering truths. Sometimes, people bring shame on the family when they get busted for pot and have to go to court, or need a drink every day at 80 years old and that upsets their wife of 50 years. Sometimes, husbands and wives yell a lot, and you can hear them when the windows are open. Sometimes, people you love fail--on yellow high school report cards, in college, in the work world--when you really had your hopes riding on them. Sometimes they mismanage their money, cheat on their current girlfriend with a visit from their old girlfriend [and ask you if you know how to get the mascara stains off their current girlfriend's towels, so she won't find out]. Sometimes, they don't share well, or they run red lights, or drive through tolls. Sometimes, they hit their kids. Sometimes, kids hit each other, or the boy next-door might choke the girl next-door when she reaches for more M&Ms from his pile. Sometimes, a boy you grew up playing Kick the Can with is later convicted of a hit-and-run accident, and he goes to jail. Sometimes, kids or adults have sex and hide it like they stole something. Other times, a person is not at all who they appear to be, and that is hard to accept. Some parents do really bad things and go to prison, and only see their kids, who still manage to adore them no matter what, at custody court dates in Newark--when Mom or Dad is wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and ankle chains. Some people never grow up, and some grow up way before they should. And it's not just a sitcom stereotype that a mother-in-law can get under your skin.

6. Lust in your heart. President Jimmy Carter admitted in a Playboy interview [November 1976] that he had "looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." That's another gorilla in the mist. Marriage can be hard, monogamy is limiting, and there will be people other than your partner who will cross your path--just once or repeatedly--and cause your heart to beat faster, make you want to dress prettier. There just will be.

Do you agree? Do you still conjure up old gorillas in the mist? I know that's a personal question, I doubt anyone will answer, but I'd love it if you would!