Barry
I remember his name after all these years: Barry. Sometimes I can’t remember the name of the coworker who sits in the cubicle diagonal to mine. When I get a massage I often forget the name of the massage therapist mere seconds after she has uttered it. Amanda? Mindy? Caitlin? But Barry from second grade, that name I know. Barry sat in the very last desk of the first row, the row closest to the door in our suburban Dallas classroom at Victor H. Hextor Elementary School. I also remember my teacher’s name: Mrs. Higginbotham, but what second grader wouldn’t marvel at the existence of a name so close to a word for one’s rear end? Barry had been held back a year. He seemed cloaked in a sort of bitterness about that. I don’t think that’s just my adult mind; I think I felt that even at the age of seven. Barry never appeared happy, one arm slung on the back of his chair. He had th...