My Unresolved Cruelty

The weight of it all on the scale of one man's life

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By the time I’d hit my brakes, the nest hidden in the rocks was already underneath the blue front tire of my silver BMX. In an instantly regrettable moment, I’d crushed several speckled eggs with my bike.

This would be the last time I chased a killdeer, an activity my dad had asked me to quit. Except for the crying and pleading with my dad to fix it, I don’t remember much else, just the hot splash of regret on my cheeks.

The way he tells the story, I asked him if he could fix them with tape. Probably true. I was about five or six when this happened, old enough to care about the fauna of suburban Minnesota, but young enough for this foolish accident.

I’d be lying if I told you I was over it by now. Just the little I’ve written above has surfaced childhood horror in my chest and throat.

Where my wife and I live now, Playa del Carmen, there are plovers on every beach. I know they’re plovers and not killdeer because Gemini told me so. Killdeer have two stripes on their necks. Plovers have one, and they’re smaller, but they look very similar.

They’re so similar that every time I see one scuttling along the sand, part of me recalls the nest incident, and I wince a little.

For my father’s part, I have to give the man credit. I pull no punches with him in my writing for a couple of reasons. He doesn’t read anything I write anymore, and I’ve already been frank with him about my feelings. As he rounds the corner of 90 this month, I doubt he remembers much.

That said, Dad taught me not to be cruel to defenseless creatures. This early lesson was all the convincing I needed that he was right.

I wish I could claim there were no exceptions after that.

When the cops arrived

The blue and red lights lit up the whole division outside my Mother’s house. I knew they were there for me, but I’d hoped they were only there to bust my neighbor, Chad. I knew I was guilty. We’d just egged a townhouse around the corner. It was the Pound family’s, where Joe Pound lived.

In case you’re not familiar—either because you were never prone to depravity or you didn’t live the banal-but-cruel existence that is suburbia—egging a house is just what it sounds like.

As an adult, I cringe ten different ways at the damage we caused to someone’s investment. Worse than that, I’m nauseated over what that must have felt like to the family and to Joe.

The fact is, I know the feeling. I’d felt it years before the egging incident, when our family returned from a long vacation to find our screened-in porch vandalized. I was maybe eight at the time.

It was petty damage, but as a kid, it terrified me. It felt like a violation of our sacred space. In fact, the day we found the damage, something weird happened.

My Dad sent me to the basement to retrieve an onion. The basement was scary. After barely opening the door to the staircase, I heard a ghost moaning and ran screaming into my dad’s arms.

The distinction is that I was a child. Joe was old enough to interpret our shitty intentions. How it all felt for him, I can only surmise.

The whole event was a confluence of ego (mine) and timing. Days before, my older brother had returned home from his job as a police reserve with a bunch of eggs, taken from some kids who’d been throwing them at each other. This tiny cache, and the fact that Mother was out for the evening, was my chance to bump my status.

Lest anyone wonder where my Dad was, he was living in North Carolina by then, having divorced my Mom around age 12. I was closer to 14 when this happened.

“Let’s egg Joe Pound’s house,” I whispered to my neighborhood pals, which included two visiting exchange students from Guatemala.

“We don’t have any eggs,” one of them whined.

“Don’t worry,” I assured them, running off and shouting, “I’ve got this!”

We egged and toilet-papered the Pound townhouse, but someone hit the wrong front door. It was that neighbor who called the cops. I would have fried for the act, but we had plans to go to an amusement park the next morning, and Mother felt trapped to let me go.

Needless to say, she was furious. Still is, I think.

It gets worse

Long before this, I was friends with Joe. If it wasn’t my own life, I’d say this whole thing reads like a shitty movie about teen angst, told through the metaphor of eggs.

Let me be clear. Joe was not one of the cool kids, but neither was I. Joe was just a hair less cool because he was awkward and “into computers.” Back then, geeks were way outside the norm. But he was smart, and he was kind, if not tolerant.

He also had the worst-smelling farts in the world. (Sorry. It’s a dumb boy thing.)

He used to rip broccoli farts while I’d sit next to him at his very 1980s computer. That’s where we’d hang out while he dialed into networks and... do stuff. I had no idea. Once, we committed credit card fraud and had to pay for some crap we ordered because his efforts to hide our identities didn’t work.

Joe was also into spooky shit, like developing a sixth sense. He once tried to help me memorize something for my Christian confirmation by recording pertinent information on a tape deck and playing it back after I fell asleep.

It didn’t work, but he was kind enough to wait until I fell asleep so we could complete the mission.

Honestly, I don’t remember if the egging came first or if my attempts to ostracize him in class did. I remember giving him hell in literature class, but I’m sure there were other times.

At the time, I was under the thumb of my own bully, Kit Riter, and wanted some cred. Joe was easy pickings.

Many years later, including the day I’m writing this essay, I attempted to find Joe online. I don’t know what I’d say, but it would certainly include an apology. Admittedly, part of me is petrified to find him. Facing my own cruelty and shitty integrity sounds like the warmer side of hell.

What makes it all the worstest, is that I doubt I’ll ever reconcile. Instead, I’ll live with the knowledge that I probably caused rupture with intentionality. I’d like to convince myself that Joe had developed a resilience to attacks by that point, but I’m sure it stung, all of it.

If there’s any evidence to the contrary, despite being one of the internet’s earliest adopters, Joe is nowhere to be found online. I’m sure he has his reasons. I’m sure it’s because of shit like eggings.

In some ways, I’m grateful that my Dad is too advanced in years to follow this. He’d likely struggle to know how to respond. I could feed him the word disappointment, but he wouldn’t use it. He’d say something about how boys act and wave his hand.

Who I’ve let down is the part of me that owns the lesson he taught me about cruelty. It’s the unformed dad in me, the one who will never get to hand down this message to my own kids.

Beyond any prospective damage to Joe and the disappointment my Dad might feel, it’s the version of me that’ll never be. That’s who I’ve really let down: He and the boys he might’ve raised.

And then there’s the shame of it all. One could excuse “the nest incident,” but by the time those eggs flew at Joe’s place, I fuckin’ knew better. I’d learned it the day I crushed those eggs in the nest.

At 51, it just feels like there’s so much unresolvable shit left on the table. What is a man to do with all his unresolved shit, and how will I ever forgive myself?

Thanks for being here.

~Damon