Feeling strongly

The boy that felt strongly about nothing

“So Kevin, what in the world do you feel strongly about?!?”
June had a squeaky voice, mostly when she disliked somebody and wanted to pester this person. Plus she had a small nasty face, like a mad little mouse with freckles on it and sharp little light brown eyes that where very inquisitive. Kevin hated her, mostly when she addressed him. He would have liked her more if she simply would remember to ignore him.
“To tell you the truth I really have not thought of it. I cannot say I feel strongly about anything.”
The group started laughing.
“How perfectly dumb of you!” said George.
Now George was a fine specimen to talk of dumb things! An idiot like him was hard to find. But he had what it took for becoming the Alfa male of the group. He was three years older than anybody and, mostly due to his lack of intelligence, had a sense of bravery that got him in all sorts of dangerous situations, to say the least.
“O, come now Kev, there must be something … anything! Just think a bit, it’ll come to you.”
This was the mushy voice of Sandra. Kevin could take June’s dictatorial style better than he could take Sandra’s sentimental ways, with her soft huge eyes with their ever batting eyelashes, and the exaggerated candidness imprinted all over her large angelic face.
“But why am I supposed to feel strongly about anything? What’s all this hubbub about feeling strongly about things, anyway?”
“Well… if you want to be a man you should have opinions… of your own, that is! And in order toooo …. concoct opinions one has to feel strongly about whatever the opinion is about!” said George superiorly, whilst stumbling over words he did not really understand.
“You do want to be a man, don’t you?!” added June with a malicious smile that made her freckles enlarge themselves all over her pointy face.
“Well, I have nothing against being a man, I guess…”
“Ha! Nothing against it…” and George started to laugh loudly holding his belly tight into his arms as if there were the danger of it falling to the ground and smashing into a thousand pieces.
“So, we are to understand you do not want to become a man?!” said June snubbing.
“But of course he wants to…” said Sandra in an almost crying tone.
“Well, I think the question of wanting or not wanting is out of place in this situation… growing up, as a boy that I am, I will become a man … there’s really not much choice in it, is there? Boys grow up to be men, girls to being women… it is not like anybody has a say in this matter…”
“It is not like anybody has a say….” George was imitating him in a mockingly stupid and caricature-like manner, while lighting up a cheap smelly cigarette. “As my old man always says – you’re either a man or a mouse!” resumed the idiot.
“Well, technically speaking we cannot be mice… “started Kevin again, with an impenetrable exterior calm, although in the inside he was boiling madly.
“Technically indeed!” and June blasted out in a riot of hysterical laughter, pushing him abruptly as she sniggered and snorted.
Kevin was walking calmly on the street smiling in a subtle manner, remembering the “good, old, golden days “, the way the group,” the gang” used to tease him, in fact just George and June, Sandra always being soft and utterly meek.
He came from the judo hall, where he now, for two years already, was a sensei. His former teacher, now retired, had always told him: “force does not reside in bullying others, but in trying to hit the other less, so that the pain is no greater than the other can endure, and falling such that you get up promptly and unhurt!”
Kevin always seemed to remember his judo teacher’s words whenever painful memories came to his mind. And somehow the painful memories became tolerable, teachings and blessings in disguise.
“What babies they were!” thought Kevin. “Poor George!” he said to himself thinking about the elder of the group, the “cool one”, now a drunkard, up to his neck in depths, with two ex-wives that constantly sued him for something, one of them with two of his children, one with just one, living on alms, all of them.
And June – the dictatorial one turned into a top-executive. The one that made it big in life. The manager of the year, of several years in fact.  A woman that had dried up like an old shoe worn too many times on rainy days and forgotten in the hot sun. She was trying for years, amongst her notorious successes, to have a child of her own, to no use, since one of the couple seemingly could not bear babies. She was an embittered, withered woman already. Married to a vice-president of some sort, one that came with huge sums of money home, but cheated on her with half her so-called friends. And to round it up, the other half, he cheated on her with any of the junior ladies in his corporation ready, willing and able to do so. And, most tragically, this was not news for anybody in the county.
And Sandra! Ah yes, there was a happy lot if there ever was one.
She had had at a moment in time a small crush on him. She had cried once, telling him how she adored him and how he ignored her. He was taken by surprise, and not a pleasant one. He did not profoundly dislike her, on the contrary he thought she was ok, but he had never thought of her as of anything else but a round little plump silly girl in the middle of a serious grouping of teenagers. A group of individuals that had issues to solve. She had none.
But in the end Sandra came out all right. She married a silly little fat man, a middle class, respectable accountant, had three little adorable babies and became a housewife, turning from plump to down-right oversized. All five of them constantly smiled at all times and all places.
Kevin didn’t even notice when he reached the door and opened it.
“Ah, yes! They’re still interested!” he thought as he entered the lecture room, packed to the fullest with students, and put his thin briefcase on the desk.
“Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe!” he started enthusiastically. “Why do you think Pythagoras said this, dear students?”