The Boy

I saw once, a picture of a boy in pain. Typically, I have no interest in boys, to say nothing of pictures of little boys. I have no children of my own and am very pleased to have little contact with children in the goings on of my day-to-day life. I am so far removed from the child I once was that I find it hard to connect, let alone sympathize, with anyone of that age. But this picture struck me, grabbed me and holds me still.

My friend is a professional photographer. He has had this interest for the entirety of our friendship. He has stacks and stacks of photos he has accumulated throughout the course of his life. I was flipping through a bunch of old pictures of students from some school. All the random happy faces and random happy memories meant nothing to anyone as uninvolved with those moments as I was. But it was while moving disinterestedly through these stacks of meaningless memories that I came across the picture.

He was pretty, in the way of innocence. His face unlined as those who have yet to have lessons beaten and scarred into them with lifes baseball bat. He had a shock of jet hair without a trace of gray, sticking carelessly from a backward ball cap, cut long around a delicate ear, practically glowing with the health children can take for granted. His face was smooth, unblemished. His jaw and neck were slender and clean as a brave sapling. A young boy, I would have put his age at perhaps 11 or 12. But his little boy face had the frown of a much older man. There was a mix of hurt and pain on a face too young, you would think, to even know the meaning of the words. I flipped to the pictures of his peers then back to the little boy. He didnt match. He didnt fit. He was as out of place with the glowing, laughing, memories, the cheerful little moments of frozen eternity, as a brown weed in a white bed of roses. Why would this child, with a pencil stuck so jauntily behind his ear, have such a haunting, struggled look on his face. Why would smooth young brows be furrowed so deeply. What had happened before this picture to paint such a naked battle between tears, shame and fury on his young face. I was mesmerized by the mix of too-adult emotion on too-young face scowling at forever. It was a look that tugged at the heart and made you wonder. And as this angry, angry little boy stared at the camera, I could not help but stare back at him.