Park Bench
by Grace
Mattioli
“Why do
you call me Park Bench?” was all John
Grassetti said to me for six years- from seventh
grade to twelfth grade. I never answered him in
all that time. I relished the fact that he didn't
know why I called him by such an odd nick name,
and that he really cared. He didn't seem to care
about much of anything. He certainly didn't care
about the snot coming out of his nose and
dripping down his rosy cheeks that day in seventh
grade. In fact, I'm quite sure he didn't even
notice it. As he walked by my desk, I was afraid
that some of it would fall off his grubby face
and onto me. When I looked at his face, all I
could think of was that Jethro Tull song that
goes, “sitting on a park bench….snot is
coming out his nose.” And from that day on,
he became Park Bench.
I imagined him
struggling to figure out the meaning of the
nickname. Maybe he thought that I thought he
looked like a park bench. Or maybe he thought he
that I thought he was no more evolved than a park
bench. But I didn’t think his little
mind could go that deep. In any event, I'd
never tell him and as time went by, I could see
him getting more and more bothered by the mystery.
He could do whatever he wanted. Turn his eye lid
inside out to gross me out or call me names like
Space Cadet or Judy Jetson. I still
wouldn’t tell him the meaning of his
nickname.
Then one day
about a week before high school graduation, he
begged me and I took sympathy on him and finally
told him. “Because there was snot coming out
of your nose one day in seventh grade!” He
looked at me with the most confused, squished up
face I’d ever seen. I guess he didn't
know the song.
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