An old nemesis December 11, 1985
Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate”
may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me.
I was simply available to him for abuse,
Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we
were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging
eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood.
He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a
tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James
Dean movies.
Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers,
who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the
safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second.
Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on.
But it was in the third grade that we began to work our
magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy.
Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully
represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So, the
nuns didn’t stand a chance.
I liked to melt crayons on the radiators, and did so as fast
as the nuns handed them out.
Me and Vincent Grady spent the better part of our day
shooting paper clips at the nuns’ head each time she turned to write something
on the blackboard – using rubber bands as a kind of sling shot. It didn’t hurt
since the paper clips simply hit the back of her headdress, more annoying than
painful, especially because we looked so innocent each time she turned around
to see just who was doing it. Finally getting caught when we changed targets.
We all fought a lot each time the nuns brought us over to
the church.
Surisky didn’t stand out in that regard. He simply singled
me out as his personal target.
He created a nickname for me “Al Bum” after he caught me
dressed up at a hobo for the annual Halloween parade, and while others used it
from time to time, it was a mantra for Surisky, which he constantly employed every
change he got.
The girls called me “Alfina” because I refused to become an
altar boy. This was before the church changed over to English for it’s masses,
and I refused to learn Latin just to have access to the sacramental wine (the way
the other boys did.)
Besides, Surisky was an altar boy, and I appreciated the
brief rest from his insults when he was required to attend altar boy meetings
or serve at mass.
He got downright nasty with me when I tried to join the Boy
Scouts, of which he was a member. On what amounted to my first night with the
scouts, he and his toady, Anthony Capise, met me outside, where I found out all
his talk about being tough was nonsense.
Somehow without real effort, I beat them both, sitting on
Surisky’s chest, while rolling Capise down the hill near the flag pole. I hit
Surisky on the back of his head with his own shoe a number of times.
The scout master caught us. I suspect he actually was there
watching the whole mess for some times before he intervened.
He seemed aware of what had led up to the fight, and when he
broke it up, he told Surisky and Capise to leave, and not return, then took me back
down into the Boy Scout meeting and encouraged me to join in with the other boys.
But that wasn’t the end of Surisky’s bullying. He continued
to pick up me during school hours, and in the 8th Grade, he jokingly nominated me
for vice president of the graduating class, and the class elected me, bestowing
on me all the duties vice president had to taken on, including monitoring the
classroom for whom is talking when ever the nun had to leave for a moment, and
thus, Sarisky’s name along with Capise’s, was routinely listed, resulting in
after school detention.
Many years after we all graduated, I heard from Sarisky
again.
People would spot him from time to time in the old neighborhood,
I had long since abandoned for digs elsewhere.
While Capise because a junkie (and later died of an overdose
after alienating nearly all his former classmates), Sariski somehow managed to
avoid that fate.
He was more of an actor than even his closest friends
suspected.
And like many of us, he went through all the tough times, a
bad marriage, living back at his parent’s house on East 3rd Street, back in the
hood that had spawned us all.
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