I Watched The Film The Song Remains The Same

George Saunders is one of my favorite writers. His work borders on absurdity but always manages to hold together, barely, by its grasp on that thing that makes us all actually human. It's the fear and the weakness I read in his books and stories and essays, but they aren't actually as we usually have them presented, certainly not in the way I can't seem to help but serve them, which is with the hope of the reader feeling the pain and sorrow of the writer or character. He manages a sort of kindness in his preposterous stories about inevitable failure and endings. And so I love something he wrote a few years ago for a commencement speech at Syracuse University. These are the last few lines of his speech. Maybe you've seen them before, but they bear repeating, especially in the context of this song and how it's latched onto me with such an almost sewn-to-my-heart grip. These are what he wrote:

              So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

              I have such a vague memory of being a very little kid and a little girl who lived next door to me for what seems like a very short time. Most of the houses in the neighborhood never changed hands. Rarely did neighbors move away. And yet I lived right next door to the one house that seemed to turnover almost every year it seemed until finally after I left for college, a big happy family bought the house and as far as I know, they're still there minus some of the kids.

              My memory of this little girl is so vague she's almost a ghost. In fact, the whole memory seems to take place in a fog, real fog, as if it was a foggy fall day. I was standing where both homes' yards met, and no one had fences where I grew up. I still think a fenced-in front yard is one of the weirdest things we get up to as a species. I know she was a friend of sorts. That much I can feel within the wrap of the memory around my shoulders. We couldn't have been more than 5 or six, and I think she was likely a year or two younger. So we were friends the way two shy little neighbor kids are friends, which is to say not fully connected or in any way intimate, but I can feel it in my chest that we liked each other. I've had this memory all my life. It's one of a few select moments which make what Saunders resonate so deeply in me.

We both had basic cement backyard patios. Ours had an awning, and while her house never did, it did have a basketball hoop which we used a lot as kids regardless of who was living in the house at the time. Often no kids lived there, and yet we just claimed it for our own. I don't remember ever being asked to leave or anything like that;  it was just as if, at some point early in my life, the kids of the neighborhood just won a war of attrition and forever held title to this maybe 16 by 16 square of cement with a basketball hoop at its edge, centered perfectly. In this ephemeral memory, she is wearing a light blue little formless and featureless dress, and maybe it was still the nightgown she'd worn the night before. But it's what she's holding that everything swirls around and has driven me to tears so many times over my life. I don't know what it is. I can never see it. She's standing a few feet in front of and facing the backboard pole with her little body. Whatever she's holding, she's holding it in two cup hands and bending up her little arms as well as bending her head down to get as close as possible to this object. And all I've ever known for sure is that it's precious to her. I sometimes watch her from a little farther up towards the back of our yards, so I can see a little more of her face as she looks at it in a mix of sadness and wonder. At other times as I've tried to remember more of what this memory contains, I'm a bit farther behind her, and her face is obscured by the hair on the side of her head.

And so it seems we just stand there locked in each other's presence but stuck where we stand, and we are as close together as we're evidently going to get. Something prevents me from walking over to her to find out what she's holding. Sometimes I think it's a baby bird or rabbit. We always had lots of little rabbits in our yard. They'd dig little holes, have their kids, and do whatever it is rabbit parents do. It was always in the summer, making mowing the lawn terrifying for me because I could always imagine running a little baby rabbit over as I unknowingly pushed the slashing blade of the lawnmower over their little houses. Such a horrifying thought. I don't think it ever happened. God, I hope not.

Suddenly and yet almost in slow motion, she drops the thing and tries to grab it before it hits the cement, but she misses it and hit hits and shatters. I can just see pieces of whatever it is all around her feet, and still, sometimes I see it as a baby bird, but they don't split into little chips and fracture. At first, she just stares down with her little arms hanging at the side of her little blue dress. And then she starts crying but unmovably so. I can just hear her if it's the version where I'm a statue slightly behind her, but when located a few yards up the yard, I can see her face.

I don't do or say anything. I don't offer her any sort of help or comfort or whatever a little kid would reflexively do when they see a friend suddenly turn to pain and tears. I just remember standing there, and in a few minutes, she looks up at me and then, still crying, walked into the back door of her house.

But the regret isn't so much that I did nothing to help her that day, but she just vanished. It was as if her family had just left. I'm sure it's almost nothing like the timeline I imagine, and maybe the entire memory is all screwed up and halfway a dream, but it doesn't matter because all I have to work with is my accounting of what happened. And so, as far as I'll ever know, I stood there meek and dumb while a friend felt some great loss, and I never got a chance to ever see or say anything to her again. And where did she go? Sometimes I almost swoon at the idea that people can just waft in and out of each other's lives, have very intense shared moments, and then they just are yanked back into the ether, and it's as if they never existed in the first place. But they did, which is what makes me crazy, wondering what became of her, where she wound up, and what was the thing she loved and cherished and somehow accidentally shattered it into a billion little pieces. All of those questions walk over me lightly at night if I can't sleep, and there are so many others as well. So many friends who were just up and lifted out of my life like a cat being picked up where it sleeps and deposited into some other whole room. And entirely new life.

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In the song "I Watched The Fim The Song Remains The Same," which this story is entirely wrapped around, the singer Mark Kozelek seems to focus on these same sorts of little soft slivers of memory and how we seem to carry them forever often letting them fall by accident, and we don't have all the pieces when we try and glue these tiny loving cups back together. He mentions a fight he gets goaded into in some elementary playground and with a punch that catches the other little boy off balance and knocks him down, glasses broken and the crowd cheers as he walks away ashamed and feeling that feeling, THAT FEELING of being unkind to some other person and witnessing their humiliation and broken glasses (and the sickness that these feelings swim in) and as he tells us he was "never a schoolyard bully" this moment has been chewing on parts of him all of his life and that wherever his version of the little friend I had in her pale blue dress is he's sorry.

Mrs. Roberts taught third grade at Wakefield elementary school. It occurs to me how nice it is to finally be writing about a memory that's firmly grounded in a recorded, measurable moment of time. I was in third grade. Mrs. Roberts was surely the grand old dame of the entire school. If we were a bit older and could conceive of such things, she'd be the teacher all the kids would hope never to be assigned to and whispered voices would tell of horrible things she did to kids behind that heavy wooden door in which the window was placed high enough so that only an adult could see in.

She loved me. I'm not sure if I was old enough to even understand the concept of a teacher's pet, and I don't seem to recall any obvious perks to my status. I know she's the person who pointed out that I stuck my tongue out and to the left when I was concentrating, and as teacher's pet, my desk sat right in front of hers so as to give her the closest access to my magical aura; to tell the truth, I'd always wished I sat more dissolved into the middle of the class, but it really wasn't too bad. Our conjoined desks sat cattycorner to the door, the typical four or five rows of desks between us and there. I would guess the class size was around 25 or so. Jimmy Humphrey sat at the end of this labyrinth of little scribbled-on wooden desks with scraped blue bent steel tube legs. Jimmy sat at the desk, the very closest to the door he would never be able to see out of, given how high the windows were. It has never occurred to me until just now what a clever design and control method those window placements were like an elementary school panopticon.

When the various moments throughout the day required us to leave the room, such as lunch or gym or simply going home, there was a very strict lineup that Mrs. Roberts had designed and to which she was fiercely loyal. Students would form a line to the same side of all their desks, thus designing a serpentine and thus more easily pulled and led and governed by Mrs. Roberts as she stood at the door and watched us all slowly make our way up and down the spaces between our little desks. So, Jimmy Humphrey was always the first out, and I, given my perch of honor at the far end of the room, last. When these moments arrived, there was some unspoken but very adhered to rule that the students were to pretend, silently, as if they were completely unaware of what these exact moments experienced day in and day out meant. When the clock reached noon, for instance, and we were to be marched to the cafeteria, Mrs.Roberts would arise and graciously walk to her spot next to the closed door with the unusually high window. As such, and given that she was an adult, she could then see the movements and ushering out of all the classrooms farther down the hallway. Each classroom seemed to follow her system at the group level. When she took her last step into her place of reconnaissance, the children were able to take that as a visual cue to act as if this event had never happened before and within this feigned (and not particularly well-executed) excitement stand and form the snake that would soon be slithering out once the coast was clear. We were meant to be quiet, of course, but invariably someone or more than one would incur a gentle bark to be quiet and still from Mrs. Roberts. There was a military precision to it. And good Lord, this has all made an entirely unthought of memory come splashing against mind!

Every afternoon the USA and the Maryland flags were taken down from their respective flag poles in the front yard, of sorts, of the school. Somehow, Mr.s Roberts had arranged (demanded? And maybe this is where the matriarchal power she held over the entire school came from. Maybe she had simply seized power)that two chosen students of only her class would have the honor of walking out of the tall windowed door about 30 minutes before the end of the day and dutifully march outside (after rigorous training oh which I can't remember but can also not imagine not happening) and retrieved the two flags very respectfully and secured the ropes in just such the way that they were taught and bring the flags, untouched by earth back to our room. At this point, as every single day ended, we began the "Flag Ceremony." The participants changed routinely to either give everyone a turn at the various apparatus of an almost funereal flag ceremony or maybe to simply deprive the experience to those Mrs. Roberts had a bone to pick with. We had been taught how to stretch each flag by its four corners, and then each end pair would walk towards each other, holding the flag aloft, and the designated one would then hold the corners of a flag now folded in have. The non-holders, the initial pullers and walkers of the corners, were then done and banished from the spectacle to watch from their desks. At this point, the flag was folded in half again, which could barely be but usually well done by the fully outstretched arms of two little third-graders. There may have been another fold, but at some point, the flag, now roughly 18 inches wide and 20 feet or so long, was held tightly and stretched horizontally from both ends. Maybe on cue or maybe by instinct (mind you, while all of this is happening, a record on a portable but sturdy record player played various patriotic marching band songs), one student, long practiced would start, while keeping tension walking toward their distant partner and slowly folding the flag into its familiar twenty-one gun salute sort of affair triangle fold. Slowly the two ends would meet, and if everything had gone right (and it almost had to because it's the basic geometry of folding a rectangle of any size or material), the final triangle of the flag was tucked neatly under itself and held on two outstretched little hands as if on offer to a sad widow. Again, two others were sent to watch. This entire operation was then repeated for the Maryland flag. Now, this may seem like quite a bit of pageantry to end every schoolday for a third-grade class, but the finale was just about to begin. "Flag Ceremony" ended each day with the memorized recitation of the Gettysburg Address by one student. Perhaps that was just a weekly climax, or we all took turns and had multiple days in the sun. It was quite an affair, and we did this at the end of every single school day.

So, it's not unthinkable that, at times, some of the kids would grow weary and impatient and find their little less than patriotic minds wandering and on one particular day, I suppose this happened to Jimmy Humphrey. I can't remember where the flags wound up each day, but I remember on this day, as the ceremony ended and Mrs.Roberts took her spot to stand vigil at the absurdly high windowed door, and the snake was formed, Jimmy was acting up. I was standing at the far end of the snake. I was the rattler, so I really can't remember knowing exactly what was happening, but I just heard Mrs. Roberts command Jimmy to "the back of the line." What was a teacher's pet perk for me was evidently punishment for Jimmy. I seem to remember him having blonde hair, and I can see him walk towards the front of the room and then turn, still smirking, towards me. Finally, he's standing next to me, and I just remember a tension in the air, which I always loved, and it felt like something big was going to happen. Something dramatic. I lived for these moments of tension in groups. I still do! And then I remember Mrs. Roberts sternly saying, "Michael, take care of him!." And without thinking. Without emotion. With no memory of animosity, I just reflexively turned and cold-cocked him in the face, tumbling over a desk, knocking it over and landing on an upturned chair. I was more stunned than he was, I think. All the air got sucked out of the room, and all that love of tension faded as now I was the one who was surely the target of derision. I only love group tension as an observer, never the cause. I was still stunned by what I had done but was also now very scared. I was in for it. And then Mrs. Roberts simply said, "Thank you, Michael," and opened the door, and the snake, completely flummoxed by what they'd just witnessed, slowly started slithering out and away from me and Jimmy, who by now had got up and looked humiliated. And I felt horrible.

I can't honestly remember feeling shame or really any depth of emotion. I just remember standing there looking at him in that pile of overturned little kids' furniture, hurting and knowing I'd done something horribly wrong. I also remember feeling so confused as to how doing something like that would be rewarded by a teacher. Surely Mrs.Roberts couldn't have meant for me to sock him in the face when she said, "take care of him," but what else could she have meant short of something physical? I don't remember my emotions immediately after hitting the poor kid very well at all, but I do know that I've told that story in my life many times, and regardless of the absurd laughter it usually elicits, and what is surely what I'm fishing for, I always tell it with a twinge of shame.

These little things we see or do or even imagine as we go through life, the ones that get caught on a crag of our soul and wave there and fester, are the little fires that light our way out of the cave. Or at least it makes me feel a little better to think of them like that. The memories of our failure and shame and ugliness keep us on track with so much a brighter light than all the things we've done right. Unfortunately, I guess that's just how we're wired. We only learn through pain.

Third grade came and went. I remember no interactions, good or bad, with Jimmy Humphries after that day. It was as if the whole room, including Mrs.Roberts, all signed a social contract to agree that the moment never happened.

In fourth grade, we moved to Wakefield Elementary School, which was just down the hill from Wakefield and housed the fourth thru sixth graders. I was exactly the opposite of the teacher's pet in fourth grade. I can't remember my teacher's name, but by then, I was beginning to hone the art of being the class clown and general pain in the ass for whatever teacher had me (Except for sixth grade when Ms. Titleman became the first teacher who I had very strong, very vivid and to this day very definite sexual fantasies about. God, what I wouldn't do to her on one of those little wooden desks with the scraped blue bent steel tube legs) I spent much of fourth grade in the "isolation booth," which was a desk in the corner of the room facing away from the class with a folding partition around it. I sat in there a lot. I also stood out in the hall a lot which made me prey for any passing principal or such, which would usually lead to an escalation of punishment and which on one occasion earned me a paddling on my ass, pants down, underwear up and bent over a chair with the ornate wooden paddle with holes drilled in it the principal kept in his office for such occasions. It was so rare that the kids it happened to were almost lionized.

One day we were all outside for some reason. I don't really remember being outside for anything the whole three years there, but for whatever reason, I was out there with what seemed like several classes of fourth graders, very unorganized, just sort of wandering around as if a very lax fire drill had occurred. I remember standing and looking at the building and turning slightly just to catch sight of Jimmy Humphries sucker punching me straight on the side of the head and just going down. That's all I remember. That's all I need to remember. Wherever you are, Jimmy, good for you, man. I love you.