Tuct Side - 10. Personal Account #2

[Personal Account #2] The following narrative is recounted by: FINN CASBALD

Hello to everyone whose reading this.

Um, doing this feels a bit weird, you know. You’d think with the number of times teachers make you introduce yourself in front of the class, it would be easier to simply transcribe it on paper. Only this time, millions and millions of people are going to be reading this.

Man, West. Why’d you have to go and get famous, huh?

I’m kidding. I’m happy for him and what he’s doing. This saga of our history needed to get out. As a cautionary tale, a scary campfire story, or a documentary. It doesn’t matter.

Anyway, my name is Finn Casbald. I was born on January 27^th, 1997 in Seattle, Washington. Don’t mistake it. I consider myself an Arab American. My parents, Salma and Abdus Samad Casbald, conceived me in Saudi Arabia. That might seem like a little TMI, but I’m proud of my roots. Unfortunately, other people didn’t like that. We lived in the dingier suburbs of Seattle, rife with thieves, vandals, and druggies. The woodlands in our backyard had tents at every third tree, so misery loved company in our close-knit neighborhood.

Our move to Tuct Side was rather dramatic. “Harrowing” is actually a much better word.

I wasn’t a very popular kid in elementary school. My social status was almost the complete opposite of what it was at Patriot High. Instead of a small-town basketball hero, I was a city block verbal punching bag. My Islamic faith was mocked and was called every name in the book. My personal favorite was “Casbah.” Good thing I happened to like The Clash and their music. Not only that, but I was a total nerd. Other kids got other kids to be afraid of me because they thought my intelligence meant I knew how to build a bomb.

Oddly, I felt both flattered and insulted at the same time.

Most of the bullying was verbal and emotional. Until it wasn’t. It was also the day I realized that bullying didn’t only go down in school.

It was the winter afternoon of 2009. A twelve-year-old Finn was running, or at least trying to run, in eight inches of snow. School was on an extended shutdown because of the wintry weather, so I thanked Allah by playing and dancing in the snow, completely unaware of two approaching and armed skinheads.

Now, I should preface that my parents were being harassed for months prior. Nazi symbols on our door, racial slurs being shouted our way, etc. And it was all kept away from my eyes and ears – that is, if it didn’t come from school.

This moment, however, was an instance that could have been worse. I consider it both lucky and unfortunate.

These guys looked like your everyday roughneck thugs with a swastika stamped on their foreheads. My parents were home sleeping off a free day from work. Though, I don’t think they were too disappointed settling for me. The memory is a bit of a blur. I remember one of them screaming at me while the other fiddled with his pistol. The words were a jumbled mess, so I don’t recall a thing of what he said, but it must have been pretty racist. A rough grab on the arm had me wailing for my mom and dad, then a loud bang that stole my hearing, sight, and consciousness. I was lucky enough to feel no pain.

I woke up in the hospital a week later, my teary-eyed parents surrounding me. They said it was a miracle I survived. I believe that, too. Allah blessed me that day I decided to sing and dance for him in the snow for closing down school.

Needless to say, after I made a full recovery, we moved out of that place. The monsters who shot me were arrested and had a pretty lengthy sentence, but it was not enough to comfort and keep us in place. It was no longer our home. Some people took pity on us and donated their money to help us get on the road, but not before attempting to convince us to stay.

Your community had no place for bigots? Yeah, tell that to the bullet scar on my shoulder.

Tuct Side turned out to be a lot better. We had enough borrowed money to land us a cottage on the eastern side of town. Due to prior events, our trust in neighbors was pretty shot to shit- no pun intended. So, we decided to isolate ourselves.

Not too many know I went to Wildwood considering the fact that we lived on the comfortable side of things. My folks had mistakenly thought the middle schools on the eastern side were private. I transitioned into Patriot High rather quietly. Seventh and eighth grade at Wildwood was a different year for me. At first, no one really spoke to me during my first few weeks.

That was until I nearly ran into Neil Morterero.

The fellow noirette was, with no holds barred, a bully and a prince. A fourteen-year-old seventh grader ruled the halls of Wildwood. And I’m not kidding when I say that. Having a big stature for a middle schooler, an acerbic and explosively hostile attitude, and three family members that still have a controlling hand in running the edifice put him on a tyrannical pedestal that no child should be placed upon. If you want them to grow up with a sound and humble mind, that is. Backtalking teachers, getting in fights, and defacing school property were only a few things on the list of offenses this kid has gotten away with.

In typical Nigel fashion, he laid into me, who shrank in the face of his lava-hot rage. I resigned to my fate that the bullying from my other school would spill into my time here in Wildwood, but like an angel in glasses, Nora Orellana jumped in front of me before the fist my would-be tormentor had been preparing could reach me. I was amazed about what transpired next. It was like she flipped a switch and the red-faced beast subsided into a grumbling but pacified one.

Nora was my first friend at Wildwood. And with her friendship, came Shaun McMann, Neil’s best friend. Enzo and Via Ramírez, twins, were next. Neil himself disapproved of me for the first couple of months, dealing out the occasional shove and jokes at my expense, but he warmed up to me after that. In fact, we got so close that I might venture to say we had a tighter relationship than we had with either Nora or Shaun. We shared dark secrets, he got me hooked on basketball, and I provided him with a healthy outlet for all his troubles at home. It was honestly one of the best years of my life so far.

But, as a wise man once said, “all good things must come to end.”

Now, I apologize to the readers if you all were anticipating what went down between us, but I don’t think I want to talk about that time. Call me coward, a simp, or whatever, but even after all these years, I hate to think writing about it will put Neil or any of the others in a bad light. It was not petty drama like everyone was led to believe. I already forgave them fully for everything weeks after it occurred. I will say that things got physical, and I was in a pretty dark headspace about it or the remainder of eighth grade. Though, knowing what I know now, I realized I wasn’t the only one hurting. People project their pain in different ways. Neil’s way was to unleash it onto others. Being scared, lonely, and out of control for most of your life will have you do the craziest of things.

High school was an improvement beyond improvements.

I was initially scared of West and Kaspar when I first met them. Kaspar was a bit like Neil in terms of their hothead behavior and quick temper. We were all teammates on the freshmen basketball team and whenever the redhead got mad, he would devolve into German expletives and obscenities. It reminded me of the two men that came for my family that day, which made me slip into a panic attack. I’ve had them since the shooting, but they gradually lessened as I got older. It was quite embarrassing sitting on the locker room floor trying to control my rapid breaths while my shoulder throbbed with the painful phantom sensation of what the bullet was supposed to feel like had I not blacked out.

Once again, I thought I had ruined my social reputation, but the angel this time around came in the form of a boy named Justin Shoemaker. The tall brunette had such an eccentric nature to him, I never saw myself being friends with him. Though, through that “energetic goofball” personality was a sensitive and attentive temperament. He had sat next to me, a soothing arm wrapped around my shoulder as I rode out the rest of my panic attack. West, Kaspar, and a good chunk of the basketball team had appeared sometime during my episode. The team captain, his cousin, and the boy next to me stayed by my side while they reproached anybody who would dare taunt the kid who freaked out over a foreign language.

I told them about my injury and the dirty details it came packaged with, but the three never left me since. Kaspar apologized for his fury that day and, at one point, even made it a goal to keep his angry German side to himself, but I insisted on him blowing up every now and then. Keeping such rage inside never ended well, and I’ve seen that happen too many times.

People wonder how I can keep such a positive attitude. It’s actually pretty easy for me. Nowadays, I prefer to keep my mind on the positive. Trust me. It works wonders on the mind. I am a hell of a lot happier for it and cannot express my boundless gratitude to everybody who's been a part of those good memories during my most turbulent years.

Damn. I wrote a lot, and it isn’t even the full story. You thinkin’ about hiring an assistant soon, West? 😉