by Colin Edmund Grant
July 30, 2004
Copyright © 2004, Colin Edmund Grant

Donnie Greenwood went to grammar school with me at the Bishop School in Arlington, MA. There were two classes for each grade, so Donnie was in my class about every other year. We were in the same grade in grades K-7, but not in grade 8.

He was a brilliant kid. I don't mean one of the smart kids, I mean perhaps the most intelligent person I ever met in my life. It was hard to tell, though, because teachers never called on him, and he did not speak much, but in the few conversations I had with him, and for the few examples of his work that I saw, he was a bona fide genius.

He was also an outcast. Donnie's problem was that he had the worst stutter that I have ever encountered. I never heard him complete a single sentence that did not include agonizing and anguished pauses until the seventh grade, and that only happened once.

I suppose I should start at the beginning, but that implies that there is a story here, and I am not sure there is. Donnie's family came to Massachusetts from North Dakota in the late '50s or early '60s, which probably put them in culture shock to begin with. Donnie's Dad, James, was a professor at Boston University. His Mom, Esther, was a stay-at-home Mom, as were most Moms back then. He also had a sister that I barely remember.

Although I don't remember the first time I saw Donnie, I also don't ever remember school without Donnie. I have a vague recollection that he was in my third grade reading group for a short time, and took about ten minutes to read some sentence like, "Dick threw the ball to Jane." He was never asked to read aloud a second time, and was very quickly assigned to a special reading class with Mr. Bates, the speech specialist that visited once a week or so.

It is impossible to overstate how difficult it was for him to speak. One learned very quickly to ask him only yes or no questions, because a question like "What are you doing" would take ten minutes to answer. He might try to say, "I am doing my math," but get stuck on every single syllable. Sometimes he would utter a single grunt, and then stand, mouth open, without breathing, for a minute or more while he tried to force out the next sound. He would often turn bright red in the face as he tried to force the words out, always to no avail. The blushed look was in stark contrast to his buzz-cut blond hair and extremely white skin, and I often thought he was about to burst. When he did manage to speak, his voice was extremely high-pitched, even for a pre-pubescent boy, and the whole effect was bizarre.

Through it all, I somehow learned that Donnie was a very funny kid. Not odd, funny. Although he might take forever to make a pithy observation, he did so, and for those who were on his wavelength, he was hilarious. You sort of needed to have a college professor in the family to get a lot of his references, but I came from a family of educated people and understood most of what he said, although he knew much more about everything than I did. I remember Donnie making fun of a particular evil and abusive fifth grade teacher, Mr. Sannela (I believe he is now dead, and I assume he is rotting in hell), to my absolute delight. He called Mr. Sannela a loser 20 years before it became stylish to label people losers, and that was incredibly daring and hilarious for the time.

Donnie was odd as well as funny. The morning routine at school was that students would walk to the school – there were no buses – and gather outside. Five minutes before school was to begin, when a bell rang, students would get in appropriate lines at appropriate doors. Another bell indicated that we could actually enter the school, but only when directed to do so by a teacher. It was a serious crime to arrive after the first bell, and a capital crime to arrive after the second. Donnie never arrived before the first bell, and often arrived after the second. And he almost never wore a coat of any sort. There were a number of occasions when in the middle of winter, with temperatures in the single digits, he would show up after the first bell wearing only a thin short-sleeved shirt. Usually he would laugh at us for asking him why he was not freezing, but now and then he would shiver. Only occasionally would teachers pull him out of line and hustle him into the school. My Mom knew Donnie's Mom and told me that his Mom could not understand what he was up to, because he allegedly left home with a coat on every morning.

There was not much violence at our school, so, although Donnie was picked on, he was not physically abused too much. I was lucky enough at that age to have been accepted into all the cliques – the smart kids, the jocks, the regular kids, and the "rats," as we called the tough kids. I was always the sort of idiot who would take in lost kittens and defend the weak (which later on caused the living shit to be beaten out of me on numerous occasions), and many times I managed to keep the rats from giving Donnie a hard time. I am glad I did.

What violence there was originated from some older kids, especially older rats, who no longer attended our school but were still regulars on the playground after school and during the summer. After about the third grade, Donnie never came "down the park" as we called it, because it was too dangerous for him.

I don't think Donnie had any real friends. I may have gone to his house once, and I know he never came to our house. I don't know of anybody in our school or our neighborhood who hung out with him. I don't know what he did with his time. We never saw him during the summer.

But all in all, his life could have been a lot worse, even if it was no picnic.

In Arlington in those dark ages, grammar school went from K to 6, and Junior High School (I had never heard of "Middle School") was for grades 7 and 8. So in 7th grade, we all found ourselves in the Junior High East, which began the craziest two years of my life. The Junior High East was a crowded, dangerous and violent place. Kids were beaten and seriously injured almost every day. I remember watching a kid who had previously beaten me up get beaten like a rented mule; I remember looking at two of his teeth in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. I was still a small kid, and as such, was a great target to be beaten up. I spent most of those two years primarily focused on trying to get home, a two mile walk, without getting pulverized. I was successful in this endeavor about nine days of every ten.

Donnie was at the same school, but I don't remember seeing him much, except in AT ("academically talented") English. I was in mostly regular classes (I got booted out of AT English a couple of years later) and Donnie was in all the AT classes. I saw Donnie slinking home a few times, using the same roundabout routes that I used, and saw him running away from trouble a few times. I would run in the other direction, because if he escaped certain rats, they might come after me.

The last time I really spoke with Donnie was on Halloween night in 7th grade. I was hanging out with a new group of kids, most of whom had gone to other grammar schools. This was a controversial Halloween for us, as we all thought we were too old to be trick or treating, but loved candy way too much to give it up. So a few of us got together and headed out, ever on our guard to avoid the older rats. Some of the high school rats were rumored around then to have knives, so we were very careful.

After trick or treating for a while, we ran into Donnie, who was also trick or treating, but doing so alone. Although most of the group did not know him well, I invited him to join us (evoking a few dirty looks), and he did. For the rest of the evening, I walked with Donnie a few steps away from the rest of our group, who, not having known Donnie for long, had less patience with his stutter. It was, after all, painful and frustrating to attempt conversation with him.

I remember thinking that Donnie's stutter had improved. Although he got stuck a few times and turned that vivid red, he also completed some sentences with only a few pauses, and once or twice uttered a complete sentence in a normal fashion. Rather than struggling with every single word, he struggled with only every second or third word. And he was in rare form, smiling, happy, hilarious, and just filled with joy. Donnie and I had a great time that Halloween, stuffing our faces with pounds of candy and laughing our heads off. Before we discovered sex and drugs, this was as good as it got.

When we all parted ways and headed to our separate homes, I remember thinking that I wanted to be Donnie's friend, but wished he didn't stutter so much, because that made it dangerous to be his friend. I recall thinking that what I really wanted was simply for Donnie to have friends. We went back to school, and I did not see him much, and we did not hang out together.

The school year came and went, and summer arrived. My academic year had been quite a challenge, as I had had a miserable year in English with another crazed and abusive teacher, Mr. Kenney (also now dead and rotting in hell), but a very successful year in sciences and especially in math. My parents were after the school to move me up from sub-AT math into AT math, but the school claimed there were no seats available in the AT math class. Since the desks were literally nailed down in crowded classrooms, this was plausible. But, knowing my Mom, I sensed that the school administration was going to be in for a long summer of telephone calls on the topic of me and AT math.

The highlight of my summer was a trip to a wonderful summer camp, where, after a few days of training, I went on a ten day wilderness canoe trip. I returned from that camp to the news that I had been moved up to AT math, and that Donnie was dead.

They found his body, along with that of his Dad, James, on some rocks at the bottom of a cliff on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. There were no witnesses, so no one really knows what happened, but it was thought that Donnie and his Dad were walking along the cliff, and one of them slipped, the other tried to grab him, and they both fell to their deaths.

Donnie's Mom and sister were of course devastated. With their family back in North Dakota, they were pretty much alone in Arlington, and that year my Mom invited them to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was an unremarkable dinner, as we always had a huge crowd at the holidays, but I thought then and think now it was a nice thing for my Mom to do. (I must have inherited the "take in stray kittens" gene from Mom.) We eventually lost touch with Esther Greenwood and her daughter; neither my mom nor I know what became of them.

In 8th grade I went through the Roman Catholic sacrament of Confirmation, wherein one becomes an adult and a soldier of Christ in the eyes of the church. I pretty much stopped going to church after that, as none of it made any sense to me. Where was God for Donnie and James Greenwood? Why did Donnie have that stutter? What was the point of giving the kid a brilliant mind and practically no ability to speak? Was Donnie lonely? How could he not have been? Was he miserable? Was that Halloween night the best night of his life? Did they fall, or was it something else?

It did not occur to me until years later that I got Donnie's seat in AT math. That eventuality did not have any profound effect on my life, as I did not turn out to be gifted in mathematics.

Donnie was the first person I knew who died, and I'll never understand why he lived.