by Craig Birk
Interlude Three
Alex (5)
Alex Reine’s family, which consisted of father Edward, mother Cynthia, and older sister Samantha, moved a lot when he was young. Edward was a project manager for a consulting firm focused on complex computer programming. The company’s primary client was the military. Most projects lasted roughly two years. Then it was time to pack up and go. The family owned a home in Florida, but Alex only lived in it for the first year of his life. Normally, they resided in rented houses.
When Alex was five, it was an oceanfront ranch house on the East side of Oahu, Hawaii. In the backyard, Edward taught Alex to surf on the days when the waves were not too large. In Honolulu, on the other side of the H3 tunnel, Alex was enrolled in a private kindergarten where he was expected to improve his very simple reading and math skills and hone his abilities to interact with other children.
Probably because his family had moved three times by his fifth birthday, Alex had never had the time to develop a true best friend like most children had. Still, he was good with other kids and usually gained acceptance into any group he chose.
On the first day of the new school, Cynthia had worried that little Alex would be upset to leave his mother. On the contrary, he was so eager to join his new classmates that she found herself fighting an emotion of rejection.
Alex had no reason to be afraid. In his brief life he had always been treated like a king. His parents probably overcompensated for their guilt at moving so much, and he won over most strangers by learning how to look cute. With other kids, he already understood the tactic of gaining acceptance by sharing and taking an interest in others.
So, during the first recess at his new school, Alex did not fret when he found himself playing alone on a tire swing in the playground. When a new child came to join him after a few minutes, in this case a larger seven-year-old from the adjoining elementary school, Alex found it natural to climb off the tire and offer it to the other child. The bigger kid grabbed the tire and pulled it back, but did not climb on it. Instead, he paused, looking at Alex who was watching expectantly, not saying a word. The other child then threw the tire in Alex’s direction with as much force as he could muster. There was no mistaking the fact that the intent was to inflict pain. The tire struck Alex squarely in the chest, knocking him back a few inches but not down to the ground.
Alex took inventory of his body and realized that he was not meaningfully injured. Unsure what to do, he simply stared at the other boy, trying to comprehend why he did what he did.
