The other day I heard a story on the news about a young man who, after a traumatic head injury, was making good progress in rehabilitation, and the way he spoke – haltingly and with difficulty forming the words – reminded me of someone I once knew who talked just like that. Until that moment, I don't believe I had thought about her in decades.
Her name was Pat Boynton and she was in my gym glass my freshman year in high school. On the first day of classes, the PE teacher led our class out to the track behind the school and ordered us to run around it. That's when I noticed Pat Boynton. When running she looked like an electric mixer that has escaped the bowl. Her legs did a Crazy-Legs-Hirsch kind of thing, and her arms flailed at her sides. I was behind her and called out, “Boynton – you are totally uncoordinated!”
She turned around and let me catch up, treating me to the most engaging lopsided smile. “Yah … Ah know,” she said.
Some other girls came over to me, pulling me away. “There’s something wrong with her,” one of them said in a harsh whisper. “Don’t make fun of her.”
“I wasn’t making fun of her,” I said, “I was teasing her.”
When we were herded into the infield to perform some calisthenics, Pat managed some toe touches and some deep-knee bends, but she was all over the place trying to do jumping jacks. "Watch out," I said to her, "or you'll fall down and hurt somebody." That made her laugh.
There was something wrong with her, of course – cerebral palsy, I think, or some such disease. We never talked about it, and the only time I ever saw her was in gym class as we had no other classes together. As I recall (or think I do) she didn't last the entire fall term either in gym class or in school.
I'm glad that that young man's voice put me in mind of Pat Boynton. I have no idea whatever became of her, but it makes me happy to remember the girl with the cockeyed grin who liked me because I teased her about having cerebral palsy.
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