Being a 'Thon' person: Few people can say they're not

I'm not sure I exactly know what a Thon person is either. It's not like I could spot them out of a crowd or anything.

"It doesn't have anything to do with me," he commented.

He was not only stronger and more muscular than any 15-year-old we had ever seen, he could arm wrestle our fathers and win. Someone accidentally spilled a drink on Mark once.

It was a fine fight. He took a couple of steps, then threw one punch followed by a hook as the boy crashed to the floor. Because thug philosophy taught him it would pack a tougher punch, he always fought with a penny roll clenched in his fist.

The first time I saw Mark, he was making fun of Mary Ellen's toupee. She was very quiet, frail and had been blind since birth. When she spoke, everyone listened because her voice was softer than anything we had ever heard. For someone who couldn't see where she was going, she smiled an awful lot. Though it wasn't your normal ear-to-ear grin. When Mary Ellen smiled there was something else there.

I sat next to her in math and occasionally helped her find her books to prepare for class. She'd even participate in the antics that I conjured up.

"What the heck am I missing over there?"

A couple giggles would reply but all 30 kids were still staring on the ceiling of Room 15.

However, the best part was when he rushed to the middle of the room to figure out what was possibly more intriguing than the Pythagorean theorem. At that moment, he saw Mary Ellen, blind as a bat, smiling and staring at the ceiling from her wheelchair.

That was enough to make him jump back a step. If a blind girl was going to see this thing, he sure as hell was going to see it, too. So, he mounted Willie Laney's desk to get a closer look. At this point, everyone in the class couldn't contain their laughter any longer. The picture of Mr. Deshong squatting on top of Willie's books and squinting at the ceiling would have been enough to get him put away for bizarre toilet habits. Even though Mary Ellen couldn't see the product of her efforts, she laughed knowing it was a worthy cause.

The following week, we were in study hall and Mark was interrogating Mary Ellen.

"So, uh, whatdya do to get blind anyway?"

"I was just born that way," she replied.

"How come you have to wear that stupid wig all the time?"

"Because I don't have any hair."

"Man, that sucks. I hope I never have to wear a wig like that."

All of us were too scared of the penny roll to stand up to his badgering. Evidently, I had never seen a blind person cry until then. I guess Mark wasn't much of a Thon person either because he didn't care about anyone.

The last time I saw Mark was at a party.

He said, "I'm doin' good. I got some things goin'." Apparently, what he had "goin' " was a small-scale drug ring. A couple of his buddies would fly down to Jamaica to swallow some balloons and then make it back before their high-fiber diet kicked in.

From time to time, his name popped up in the paper under the police section. I came home one weekend and heard that he was stuck in jail down in Georgia. Because Mark got away with the whole drug thing for so long, somebody said, "He's as smart as a fox."

Mary Ellen died of cancer just a few months before. Somebody said: "She was as sweet as an angel."