Easy

He walked like a tumble weed rolls but he did it with grace. His body moved up and down as each foot moved forward but not with any jerking motion. It sort of rolled into the next position.

"Galumph," someone once said. But that didn't stick.

"He reminds me of a tumble weed dancing across the desert in front of a soft gentle breeze," another said. So they tried to pin "Tumble Weed" or just "Weed" on him. But, those names didn't stick either.

Naturally, he was teased and mentally tortured by the other kids. But, he just rolled along doing his farm chores and going to school like the other kids.

His given name was Joseph but only his mother used it.  Everyone else had another name for him, including his father who called him "Tater Eyes"  He may have set some kind of record for the number of nick names that had been thrown at him.

Despite his handicap he learned to walk without any problems but he never spoke a word until he was five years old. He always understood what was being said to him and when he did start speaking he had the vocabulary of an adult.

Somehow he always knew when people were teasing him or talking about him and from his toddler years he had learned to smile and ignore remarks that were not kind.

Some time just before or just after he entered high school someone remarked how easy going he was.

"You know, that boy never gets mad. No matter what others call him or say about him, he just smiles. I have never seen anyone so easy going."

And there it was.  A name that stuck..."Easy".

With the name, the taunting stopped. How can anyone taunt someone named "Easy". There is no use.

The definition of taunting might include "the way to get inside of someone's brain". If it didn't work...what was the use?

But, Easy's way of walking caused him to bump into the class bully while he had a full can of soda up to his lips. All of the bully's friends laughed and Easy apologized and tried to wipe the soda off the boy's shirt.

Embarrassed and mad, the bully simply solved his problem by punching Easy smack in the left eye. Easy landed flat on his rump and the eye bulged out more into a rat sized lump than a mouse size lump.

The bully's friends began to laugh at Easy as he sat on his butt with both hands flat on the floor to keep him from continuing back wards and banging his head on the tiled floor. 

Then Easy did something that hadn't been part of him. He got mad and when he stood up he had his fists clamped and ready to fight.

The bully was so sure that Easy wouldn't fight that he just stood there and laughed.

He was right. Easy relaxed his fists and walked away. But, he wasn't afraid. He had decide on a better solution.

The next day Easy planted his body in the hallway of the school where he knew the bully would walk by and waited for him.  When he saw him walking down the hall towards he took a candy bar from his pocket and peeled the wrapper off.

He was holding the bar and almost ready to take a bite as the bully walked in front of him. The bully took the bait. Just like fishing down at the pond, Easy thought.

Easy smiled as the bully shoved the bar down his throat.

"What are you going to do about it?" the bully taunted.

Easy shrugged his shoulders and turned and waked away. The bully laughed.

As Easy walked out of the school door he dropped the candy bar wrapper in the trash.

If anyone had looked in the trash they would have seen the writing on the wrapper.

"ex-lax" - use sparingly.

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written for "Two Shoes Tuesday"

by gs batty/July 2013