Opinion with Michael Coren Sometimes the personal tells us so much more than the political. I thought about this recently when I was feeling especially cynical about Canadian politics in particular and world politics in general. I suddenly recalled Jimmy. I first met himwhen I was seven years old. He was the child of a neighbour on our street in Essex, England, and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t in my class at school. He was my size, after all. I thought he looked different, but then fear and judgment tend to be adult disorders and are not natural to the young and innocent. My mum explained to me that Jimmy was what was called “disabled,” and that it was important I treated him just like anyone else. Thing is, I thought, why would I do otherwise? We played a bit, but even then I could see a certain pain in Jimmy’s face. My games were those of children – chase, soldiers, hide and seek – and he seemed bored by them, almost sad that he was playing. I discovered soon afterwards that, while Jimmy looked like a child, he was really a teenager, and a clever one at that. His contemporaries didn’t want to play with him, he was lonely, and so he spent time with anybody who wouldn’t reject him. To my shame, to my everlasting shame and guilt, I too rejected him as I grew older. I became more aware of myself, more aware of those around me, more embarrassed that I was friends with Jimmy and that he was laughed at by other people and, because of that, they laughed at me. I wanted to fit in, wanted to be liked and so told Jimmy that we were no longer friends. God forgive me. Jimmy left school soon afterwards and went off to college. I stayed for a few more years, and then left for university myself. Sometimes, in the darker and deeper moments, I remembered Jimmy and a wave of cringing self-reproach came over me. But I shook myself free of it, and took comfort in the fact that at least I’d been his friend for a while. What nonsense! I had been seven, he was 16. He was treated like a pariah, a leper, a freak, almost a criminal. He indulged me partly out of desperation, but also because he was sincerely good and liked to see me happy and having fun. The years went by, and my life and mind were full of so much more than a distant memory of an agonized young man with a terrible handicap. I gave Jimmy not another thought. Especially after I met the girl whom I thought would be the one. Helen was beautiful, intelligent, an athlete, a doctoral student at Oxford. She took me home to meet her parents and they could not have been kinder and more generous. All went well, until Helen’s mother showed me around the house and I saw, on top of the piano, a framed photograph of what I first thought to be a child and then realized – coldness, shiver, sudden confusion followed by stomach-churning certainty – that it was not a child at all, but someone I knew. “Who is that in the photograph?” I asked, trying to hide my shock. “That’s a young man called Jimmy,” I was told. “Our nephew, and Helen’s favourite cousin. She idolized that boy and after the, well, afterwards, it took her a long time to come to terms with everything.” After what, I asked. “He had a hard time of it,” said Helen’s mum. “He was severely disabled, never grew properly, and he wasn’t treated well at school. No friends really, apart from one he sometimes spoke about, but who seemed to disappear. It all got too much for him and, even though he was extremely clever, really quite gifted, he found the loneliness too much, I suppose. Poor Jimmy. He took his own life two years ago. It was so horribly sad. Helen blamed herself, but she was the last person who was responsible.” Yes, she was, yes she was. Helen and I eventually went our separate ways, and frankly it was inevitable from that day onwards. As God is my witness, I will never act thus again, and I now know who the broken one was back when Jimmy and I used to play together. Yes, sometimes the personal tells us so much more than the political. 16 | www.snowbirds.org
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzMzNzMx