Thomas

I used to play with the towel-head and the chink from down the street. Jerry didn’t really wear a towel-on his head, but that’s what he was. I think he said his family was from Pakistan or something. And Sing-song – that was as close as we could come to pronouncing his name – even though his parents were from Korea he didn’t talk funny at all. He talked really good for a chink. In fact, if you talked to him on the phone you might have thought he was a regular person. Both Jerry and Sing-song talked just as good as anybody else.

So, I always used to hang out with them – ride our bikes and pick on the younger kids mostly – because they were the only guys the same age as me on my block. Well, Sing-song and me were the same age, Jerry was a grade above us in school, but besides us, the only other guy on the block was Thomas, the retarded kid.

Sometimes we used to wait at the bus stop until Thomas got off the short bus and we’d pick on him for a while. We weren’t really that mean or nothing; we didn’t hurt him. We’d just ask him dumb questions and he didn’t know no better, so he’d always answer them funny and we’d all get a big kick out of it. Even Thomas most times. I think in his head we were all best friends, which I guess was kind of true, seeing as we were the only people that talked to him, besides his family. After we were done picking on Thomas every day, we’d always take him home, mostly so Jerry could see if Claire was home.

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