Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2003 11:20:46 -0500
From: Jim Tourtelott <aristides1791 at hotmail.com>
To: johnny at charm.net
Subject: Lake Tiogue, 1960



On weekends in the summer in the early 60s, my parnts used to take me to 
Lake Tiogue, which is in Coventry, Rhode Island.  They'd go over to the 
Tiogue Vista, the lake front bar, and let me hang out and swim with the 
other kids.  (For those of you who are already shocked, I should point out 
that letting kids play unsupervised was not regarded, in 1960, as child 
abuse; and most of us lived through it.  Go figure.)

One Saturday, I met a Negro boy my age.  (That was what Mother had told me 
to call people with brown skins.  Nana referred to such people as "colored." 
  There were other words I'd heard, but I knew they were very bad, and that 
only mean and trashy people would say them.) We swam together for about half 
an hour, splashing and joking and having a pretty good time.  As we were 
sitting on a rock talking, I wanted to find a way to tell him how much I had 
enjoyed myself, and how funny I thought he was.  So, since they were guys I 
admired a lot and thought were extremely funny, I told him I thought he 
could be one of the Harlem Globetrotters when he grew up.

His face hardened.  "So I'm just a clown, huh?" he said. He jumped off the 
rock and started to swim away.  I followed him and tried to apologize, but 
he wouldn't listen.  I'd hurt him very badly.  I don't know if I could have 
gotten him to believe I didn't mean to, but it didn't matter.  I'd ruined 
his day.

I genuinely felt dreadful about it, and tried to understand how I could have 
hurt somebody with those few words.  It made me start to think, in as 
unformed a way as a ten year old can, about what it would mean to feel 
marked out as different.  Every time I think about race, or think about any 
other way people mark each other out as Other, some part of me is thinking 
about that day.

Now here's the thing.  I honest to God meant no harm; and I suppose I could 
have started to defend myself, that day, by telling myself a story in which 
I was the misunderstood innocent.  But I could see that boy was hurt, and I 
knew I was the cause.  My story of that day is that I said, innocently, 
something wounding.  His experience, to the extent I can properly imagine 
it, is that he was wounded, and wounded in a way he had probably already 
been wounded before.  And those are both real experiences.  Both those 
things happened.

Jim Tourtelott