Merry Christmas Special K

Back in the day when I was married we, my second ex wife and I, lived in an apartment building. In this building there lived a special needs man, his name is Kevin. He was quite retarded but very nice. He was a challenge to my so called Christianity. He lived in the apartment adjacent to ours. He loved Looney Tunes and naked fifty year old women. It was sad. He didn’t start out life like that, he had a mean step father who beat him with a baseball bat at the age of nine and poor Kevin never mentally got past that age.

He was just un-retarded enough to live on his own but not un-retarded enough to deal with his loneliness. It was clear from moment one that he was totally in love with my ex. She was cute and nice to him so why wouldn’t he be? He knew I could fix things and he was just un-retarded enough to break stuff for me to fix, just for the attention.

He reminded me of the dude in Of Mice And Men. He had a bicycle that he rode around town on. He would bring it to me from time to time to fix. I could tell that he didn’t know his own strength. This one time he came and I asked him what happened and from what I could gather from his jumbled story, someone had pulled out in front of him while he was going downhill into town. It scared him pretty bad so he hit the breaks for all he was worth. I’d never seen anything like that before. He squeezed so hard that the cables came out of their holders. The break calipers twisted and bent in ways that I never thought possible, at least not with the use of human hands. Fortunately he was naturally gentle.

Anyway. He supposedly believed in Santa. I was never sure if he really did or if it was just an act, it was hard to tell with him. But every year around Christmas he talked about Santa just like any other nine year old. We would usually get him some gifts from Santa. He would always leave stuff out for Santa. A few cookies, some milk, and some carrots for the reindeer. The problem was he would stay up so friggin’ late that we had to stay up half the night just to sneak over there without him spotting us. I can remember more than one Christmas eve going over there in freezing cold temperatures at three in the morning just to sneak up on his porch and leave some gifts and to make his treats look like Santa had been there. Do you know how hard it is to bite into frozen carrots? And since we knew he wasn’t totally stupid we would have to bury his frozen eggnog in the snow since he’d know if we just dumped it in the open. At least we could bring the cookies in our house so they’d thaw out.

Poor Kevin. I don’t know if I’m a Christian because I’m not even sure what it means. I’m not sure I ever knew. But whatever it means, I know that he was always my biggest test. And for a number of years he was a part of my Christmas, he was my Christmas test. I don’t know if I ever passed it but I did leave plenty of teeth marks in frozen carrots at three in the morning.

I don’t know what ever happened to him. People like him really need routine and don’t deal with change very well. I know that he took our divorce pretty hard, on some levels probably harder than we did. I think of him every Christmas.

Wherever you are Kevin, I hope Santa visits you and I hope you have a safe and Merry Christmas.