when i was in junior high, the eighth-grade bully1 punched me in the stomach. not only did it hurt and make me angry, but the embarrassment2 and humiliation3 were almost intolerable. i wanted desperately4 to *n the score! i planned to meet him by the *ke racks the next day and let him have it.
for some reason, i told my plan to nana, my grandmother -- *g mistake. she gave me one of her hour-long lectures (that woman could really talk). the lecture was a total drag, but among other things, i vaguely5 remember her telling me that i didn’t need to worry about him. she said, “good deeds beget6 good results, and evil deeds beget bad results.” i told her, in a nice way, of course, that i thought she was full of it. i told her that i did good things all the time, and all i got in return was “baloney!” (i didn’t use that word.) she stuck to her guns, though. she said, “*ry good deed will come back to you someday, and *ry bad thing you do will also come back to you.”
it took me 30 years to understand the wisdom of her words. nana was living in a board-and-care home in laguna hills, california. each tuesday, i came by and took her out to dinner. i would always find her neatly7 dressed and sitting in a chair right by the front door. i vividly8 remember our very last dinner together before she went into the convalescent hospital. we drove to a nearby * little family-owned restaurant. i ordered pot roast for nana and a hamburger for myself. the food arrived and as i dug in, i noticed that nana wasn’t eating. she was just staring at the food on her plate. moving my plate aside, i took nana’s plate, placed it in front of me, and cut her meat into small pieces. i then placed the plate back in front of her. as she very weakly, and with great difficulty, forked the meat into her mouth, i was struck with a memory that brought instant tears to my eyes. forty years previously9, as a little boy sitting at the table. nana had always taken the meat on my plate and cut it into small pieces so i could eat it.
it had taken 40 years, but the good deed had been repaid. nana was right. we reap exactly what we sow. “*ry good deed you do will someday come back to you.”
what about the eighth-grade bully?
he ran into the ninth-grade bully.
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