By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

In the manner that some lucky rich children have valets, in the sixth grade I had my own bully. Bullying then wasn’t the crime against schoolchildren it’s considered today. Other people hardly noticed.

I noticed, though.

I never quite figured out the dynamics of the thing, but I see now that it was one of the most valuable relationships of my life.

It was not until spring of our last year of elementary school that Bruiser Imbroglio divined that I was just the kid he should menace at recess. From the other section of our bipartite sixth grade, I had not even noticed him until one April day when the sun was eclipsed as I played marbles with Lloyd Honnon. Actually, I know I was playing marbles with somebody, but I don’t remember exactly who it was. The point is, I do remember it was Bruiser.

So, you see how it was. He wanted me to notice him, that was the point, maybe even to remember him the rest of my life. Bruiser Imbroglio just wanted to make a difference in somebody’s existence; it may have been purely humanitarian instincts bubbling up from a troubled subconscious, or a psychotic consciousness, or whatever state of mind he had going for himself. Or perhaps, the kid just wanted to be my friend, but he didn’t know how to initiate the conversation, or even to participate in it, as things turned out. Because, as many times as he chased me stolidly around that five-acre playground, I never actually heard the lad say anything. I’m not sure he knew English. He just stood there, hulking, panting hard from the chase. That boy made “to hulk” a verb — an active verb.

The first time Bruiser swam into my ken I was, as I said, playing marbles. A shadow fell over the game, and I perceived something quite large hulking above me. I inquired if there was anything I could help the hulker with, but all he did was hulk. He was good at hulking.

What to do, what to do? Turn around and point at the boy whose marbles I had won and yell, “Look, that wimpy kid is getting away!?” Fall down and pretend to break an ankle, and hope for sympathy? Keep on running the six miles to Shelburne?

I kept on running.

However, as I was running I was thinking. And what I was thinking was, What in the heck does this brute want?

Boom, boom, boom! His footsteps reverberated through the playground. I passed girls jumping rope, boys tossing baseballs. A couple of kids called, “Hi, Mike!” to me as I passed. They thought I was just getting my exercise!

Boom, boom, boom! I reached the last chain-link fence. And here’s where things got weird, or I did. I decided to stop, turn around, and face my pursuer. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I figured I could always start running again if I had to.

Bruiser plodded up, boom, boom. Stopped. Forcing a smile, I stared at him. Still hulking, he glared at me. What? And so I started talking, anything that came into my head, something like this:

“Did you know that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice? But we’re not like that, are we? And did you know that the capital of Maryland is Annapolis? A lot of people think it’s Baltimore because Baltimore’s the biggest. Same thing for Illinois: it’s Springfield, not Chicago. Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln was buried, you’ll remember. After he died… Because they didn’t want to bury him before he died, of course…”

(Hulk)

I trailed off. But there was a curious expression on Bruiser’s face, sort of a fascination, the deadly viper charmed by the voice’s rhythms, the savage breast soothed by the music of language. So, I talked on: “My brother says if you mix oxygen and hydrogen in the presence of a flame you get water. Water! Can you believe that? So, what, you go on a camping trip with a set of matches, you could maybe make your own lake? Or think about this: there is no air in outer space. But what if there was? Then, in the presence of a flame (the Sun, let’s say), the air would combust to water. Water! So, we could swim over to Venus! Wouldn’t that be something? If I happened to swim over to Venus, you wouldn’t swim over after me, would you?”

(HULK)

I started running again, along the boundary of the fence and back the way I’d come. Boom, boom, boom!

“Hey, Mike!” some safer boy called as I panted past. I waved and smiled, as if everything was just fine. But everything wasn’t just fine. Boom, boom, boom!

And then, thank the Lord, the bell rang, and that was over and I ran into my classroom and The Hulk boomed onward into his.

Most recesses from that day until the end of the year Bruiser Imbroglio chased me around that playground. I think a teacher even noticed and commented how nice it was that I had found someone to play with! We must have been playing, she thought, because Bruiser appeared to be having fun and I was, after all, always smiling. Most days, Bruiser blundered up to me as I turned to face him at the far fence. There, we would work things out like civilized people, or like one civilized person and Frankenstein’s monster. And, yes, I would be smiling. And as I blathered on, Bruiser would tone down his hulking and look almost life-sized. It was a truly weird confrontation.

My sixth-grade experiences with Bruiser Imbroglio shaped the way I have viewed conflict ever since. I think going into Iraq, for example, was a horrible mistake for America. We should just have gotten Saddam into a room, let him hulk at us all he wanted, and then start telling him about Annapolis versus Baltimore, and about not burying Lincoln until after he was dead, and about swimming to Venus. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Mike Corrigan of Bridgton was a long-time writer and editor of The Bridgton News. He won numerous Maine Press Association Better Newspaper Contest awards for column writing.