17 May She’s Not Heavy, She’s My Tribe – Making a Connection

Each morning before school we sat around the kitchen table as my Mother prepared our lunches for school.  It never took long, but I would often wait impatiently. To pass the time I grabbed a piece of notepaper from my backpack and wrote down a word. Heavy. At the time I didn’t know where I was I going with it. I may have been describing the sheer weight of my backpack. I often felt the need to bring every single marker I owned and a doll or two in addition to my schoolbooks. I may have been thinking about the future ribbing I would take for my strange lunch- sardines on toast and sorrel tea. Perhaps I had fast-forwarded to 1pm when I had to stand in the library foyer. This, by the way, was an honor that I had earned for being a “good student.” Unfortunately Library Hall Monitor was not something that other students highly regarded. The brightly colored sash I had to wear encouraged a new and improved level of teasing.

The bang of the knife drawer closing and the smell of smoked fish filling the room snapped me back into reality. All the things I worried about were still to come, but at least for now I was still safe in my Mother’s kitchen. My Sister zipped up her pack and raced into the living room stopping at the front door. She turned to me with a look of hurried excitement. “Let’s go!” she yelled. With a deep sigh, I grabbed my brown paper sack off the counter and followed my Sister out the door.

Most days I actually looked forward to going to school. I was what you might call a nerd. That’s pretty cool now, but sadly for me, it would still be several decades before you could wear that like a badge. The truth is that there weren’t many people in school like me. Not by color or gender, but by nationality and interests. We are Jamaican and I was the first of my entire family to be born in the States. Other people in my school looked like me, but when my Parents spoke to my Teachers in English, I translated. Basically, we were the same, but different.

I was fine to play on my own during school rest periods and I wasn’t the only one either. Although some seemed like they were playing with other people who I couldn’t see. I never had an imaginary friend, but not from a lack of trying to summon one. It looked fun. When nothing came of that, I would sit and daydream about my perfect friend. She would like what I liked and I would like what she liked. We would come up with nerdy plays based on storylines we read about. We would take turns playing the part we didn’t want to cast; the witch, the ghost or the boy. At night, we would use our flashlights to communicate through a secret code. On the weekends, we would watch hours of She-Ra and Pippy Longstocking with a side of Ritz crackers. Afterward we would go out to my backyard where we would stand like heroines on the concrete wall. After chanting our incantations we would jump off the wall into the church parking lot. Heavy, I thought. Without an understanding of gravity, I could only hope the umbrella would slow down our fall.

I was looking for a spot at lunch to eat my sandwich when I noticed the line for the tetherball was shorter than usual. I needed a change of pace. I couldn’t wait to get up there and get my turn knowing I would get squashed by our school champion seconds later. The turn was short-lived, but thrilling and I needed to feel something. In this case it was a new feeling called defeat. You don’t necessarily go out for that, but sometimes you arrive at defeat over and over. Especially when you jump back in the line for another try right away, which I did. You have to practice if you are not to be defeated, right? Although even if you do make it to the top of the game, which I had a few weeks later, being number one was no picnic either. In fact it was harder by being lonely.

My Mother always said once you learn how to win you should teach someone else. Her rule wasn’t mandatory or punishable by paddle, but we could have ice cream if someone succeeded because of your support for them. I wasn’t a super fan of ice cream (I was lactose intolerant as a child), but I was a super fan of helping people win.

My tetherball predecessor had ruled the roost for a while, but I knew these things came in cycles.   The more you played, the quicker you could figure out how to win. Losing was usually temporary unless of course you didn’t observe the rules, which she did not. She also often changed the rules mid-game. It was OK to touch the rope or reach over the limit line to hit the ball, but only when she did it. Heavy. She wasn’t a mean person, but you could tell she had something to prove. The weight of the chip on her shoulder was the scale of a billboard sign.

And then BAM! The taste of sour and salt, seeing the color red, and the sting of an open cut all came flooding to my senses as I came to. Later the nurse told me that as I hit the winning set, my classmate went to block the ball and hit my face instead. She was always reaching over the line. In her zeal to win she had hit me hard. I knew it was an accident and she wasn’t trying to hurt me. When I saw her in a bar about a decade later, she admitted that she also never meant to help me either. She knew she was about to lose and she was devastated to be knocked off the pedestal. The punch she threw was the blow to save her standing in the tetherball circle.

She told me that she had been suspended for hitting me, which I didn’t remember. She also told me that she had felt bad for hitting me (so hard I passed out), but couldn’t say it. When she finally got the courage it was too late. In the middle of the semester, her family had moved away. I always knew that she was a good person, she was just good at what she did and passionate about winning. I never held any of that against her, but I was glad to hear her apologize. It turns out there’s no statute of limitations to say or hear the words- I’m sorry.

We started meeting up regularly after that night. We introduced each other to our respective friends. And like a puzzle, we fit together perfectly. We traded books and novellas about vampires and sleuths. We wrote mini scripts and acted out plots taking turns being the heroine. We set Sunday aside to watch Indie films at the Art Theater. When it came to dating, we gave each other advice and the benefit of the doubt. When it came to heartache, we handed over the Kleenex and a spoon for the ice cream (I had outgrown my allergy to lactose). We pushed each other to succeed because we were both very competitive. When one of us didn’t have the confidence, we reminded each other that we were great. We pushed one another to keep going. We taught each other how to accept defeat graciously. We fiercely protected each other from bullies.

Being hit in the face is one of the best things to ever happen to me. Although if you told me that then, I would have put you in the rubber room. The thing is opportunity doesn’t always look like opportunity. We have to take the time to understand each other, especially if we aren’t intuitive enough to recognize a diamond in the rough. If you are starting to build the tribe in your business, you will need to get good at doing both. Start by connecting to people going through what you are going through in your community.

Heavy. Decades later gravity is still a mystery to me. But I’m lucky to have experienced the true weight of having a friend that I could rely on no matter what. I am where I am today because true friendship and support aren’t imaginary.