Timothy Flynn at the Village Cafe in West Falmouth, June 25, 2019
Injustice
This story, as told to me by Timothy Flynn, is posted on Facebook with the permission of Timothy Flynn.
My friend, Tim, met me at the Village Café in West Falmouth to talk about the history of the Chappy Kiters, but the conversation was wide-ranging.
Somehow, we veered on to the topic of injustice in society, and Tim told me the story of his brother, Terry. Terry was two years older than Tim, but Tim played the role of "big brother" in their relationship because Terry was mentally challenged and oddly large for his age. As such, Terry was the constant victim of bullying by other kids with the destructive human proclivity to mock those who are weak because they are different. Tim was a good-looking, smart boy who excelled at sports and was popular at school. He recalled the pain he felt when everybody wanted him to be on their team when picking sides for basketball or football, but nobody wanted Terry on their side. Tim, early in his childhood, was confronted with the cruelty of discrimination directed at someone he loved. This, Tim explained, gave him empathy for underdogs and a sense of responsibility to stand up to mobs in defense of those who cannot do so for themselves. It gave him an abiding awareness of the injustice that permeates popular culture. Before Tim was a teenager, he was a protector for his brother. The stress was immense for both of them.
As Tim and Terry got older, Terry began inexplicably wandering off, sometimes for days at a time. Tim and his parents would scour their town and nearby towns looking for him. When Tim was fourteen years old, Terry disappeared for an extended period. Tim's parents drove out to look for him, leaving Tim at home to answer the phone in case anybody called with information about Terry. They found him, but while they were driving home a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road hit their car head-on, killing Tim's mother and severely injuring Terry and Tim's father. Tim struggled with the feeling that Terry was responsible for his mother's death, and it took years before he could recognize that it was not Terry’s fault. To this day, Tim feels guilt for having blamed Terry in the first place.
We gain a whole new perspective on the world when we listen to the stories from peoples lives. Imagine what it must have felt like to be Terry. Imagine what it must have felt like to be Tim. Imagine what it would feel like to be an immigrant in a new country, or how it would feel if your skin was a different color from the majority of people where you live, or how it would feel to be different in any of the random ways we've concocted to regard people as unlike us.
John Lennon asked us to imagine a better world. Can you imagine a world in which we see ourselves in each other?
Monte