His name was chiseled into my memory. He stole my baseball. He did. Took it and went home with it. Big bully. That’s what he was. I hated him. The year was 1951. I was ten and he was probably eleven. But older and bigger. Bully. It was my only baseball. When I got home, Dad made me go to his house and demand my ball back. That scared me, but I did it and he gave it back. End of story. I never saw him again. We had been playing at the local softball field, Lamar Porter Athletic Field in Little Rock. His name drifted decades ago from my memory of events best forgotten (but that never were).

Until today. While browsing the internet for something far different, I stumbled onto a book about Lamar Porter field ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Porter_Athletic_Field), a local softball stadium that was across the street from my elementary school, the very place where my baseball was taken from me—written by that kid who stole my baseball. Yes, him. Could this loving story of experiences at that ballpark have been written by this person whom I felt was an ignorant, stubborn, bully? Or, just maybe, could he have just been a child back then, doing childish things?

Seeing the book, and reading a summary of the book, his life began to emerge as a true baseball athlete, a person who was elected to a local sports hall of fame in later years. Writing that book is evidence of his love of the game and his love of the people involved in the local community. Having spent much of my childhood on that same athletic field, I recognized many of the names and loved the photos of that piece of my life. And he wrote it, the bully of my childhood memories.

Yes, there was a lesson here that I continually struggle with: the fact that people change, and that people may hurt us, but never intentionally. We each grow and mature in our own way, and what we do at one time should never be how we are viewed for a lifetime. Further, I realized that he had been just eleven at the time, engaged in what he may have felt was just a prank, since he and I attended the same school. He was just a child, as was I. He was no monster, no more than I.

In reading about the book, I immediately felt I should write to him, to tell him of my memory of our encounter in 1951, how foolish I was to remember such a minor event, and how impressed I was with his writing of the memories of that wonderful part of both of our childhoods. Yet, my web search for his address yielded something else: his obituary. He died in 2009, a loving father and devoted member of his church. Sometimes it is too late to tell people of our feelings. Too often, we wait too long. He probably wouldn’t have remembered me, but I regret not being able to ever tell him of how I had so misjudged him. My failing.

My challenge now is to revisit the monsters in my memories, events where I have retained anger, frustration, fear, embarrassment, or personal disappointment. If I am honest with myself, then I must admit that one of those monsters is me. Working through that will not be easy. But to do it I must stop this inner punishment that simmers, to some degree, within us all.