In this week’s column, I relate a tragedy some 20 years old. Though not Williams family related, it lies not far below the surface of my consciousness whenever I see people engaged in summer water fun.
In this season, pools, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers and the ocean borrow our reflected images for a time on their “skin.” (Certain insects also walk on the water’s “surface tension,” apparently trying to convince us that they are “Galilaean.”)
My first girlfriend and I saw our images reflected on the surface of Blue Waters Pool (Blue Waters, to the best of my memory) back in 1973. For my “buoyancy” that day, I am forever indebted to her aid, and to the aid of an inner tube. I was “wrapped in water,” but to my benefit, not the water’s.
When aquatic fun is over, and we exit those pools, lakes, rivers, oceans, “swimming holes,” etc. we get back our borrowed images of faces and forms, in a sense.
At home, a solid with the “color” of water catches our reflections while shaving, putting on makeup, or double-checking the “finished product” before departing for school, church, work or party.
Instead of just borrowing, water sometimes “steals” something much more substantive than a likeness. It may return that stolen “item,” but when it does, the term “yielding up” is more appropriate than “giving back.”
Almost 20 years ago, in a county other than Rowan, my son Jeremy was about 10 years old when he befriended a child named “Gerrell” in grade school. I said before that this particular tragedy wasn’t a “Williams” tragedy, but in a way it was, since Gerrell was Jeremy’s friend.
From Gerrell’s picture, later seen in that small town’s weekly newspaper, I noted physical similarities to my son Jeremy. Both children were basically small, “skinny,” a little frail looking, with big-lensed, slightly thick glasses.
Jeremy had been in T-ball not long before. I don’t know whether Gerrell had been in T-ball, but imagine that he could have been.
Jeremy didn’t have much T-ball prowess, but the lack was gotten honestly. In a previous column, I said words to the effect that my softball “ranking” at Granite Quarry School placed me permanently in the outfield. That position, put in solar system terms, was somewhere in the region of the now defunct planet Pluto or Comet Halley.
Only a few of the excited, bleacher-attached parents at T- ball, softball, etc. and other games actually get into fights. Instead, “verbalization” (not conjugation) is the norm. If a skinny little boy with thick glasses gets up to bat, some parent of the opposing team may shout, “Easy out,” quickly registering on the unfortunate child’s face. When a supportive parent shouts, “You can do it!” that’s immediately registered too.
It’s not that the “easy out-ers” are evil people. In the excitement of the game, they just don’t think; and they forget that other parents might also want to give them an “easy out” (knockout).
I know from experience that kids not adept at sports are sometimes brushed aside by the “in-crowd.” So it was with me, Jeremy, and with an educated guess, Gerrell, as well.
Getting back to what happened almost 20 years ago:
That summer, a group of caring (more caring than observant) adults took a large, varied-age group of youth to a swimming pool to provide a recreational experience.
None in charge had to pay for the tragedy which later occurred; but if it were up to me, I would have made them pay, being a social worker then.
The adults basically let the youth fend for themselves. Other kids, of the same group but on dry ground, picked up rocks and hurled them at children who were swimming in the overcrowded pool.
It was said that a rock struck Gerrell in the head.
Some minutes later, a little girl rushed out of the pool screaming, saying that her foot had brushed against “something” deep down in the water. She said the “feel” of what she touched had frightened her.
(After Gerrell was struck in the head with the stone, he became disoriented to the point of “succumbing” to the water. Gerrell’s lifeless body was that “something” against which the girl’s foot brushed.)
Poor little Gerrell, probably having already been previously “brushed away” by some children, was physically “brushed against” in the pool that summer day.
But by then, that brushed-against feeling could be felt by only one of the two who touched.