**I was unable to contact the subject of this profile for permission to use their names, so have changed the names for privacy's sake**
The halls of the middle school were crowded with milling students between classes, but parted to either side as the group of boys sauntered through. The popular boys - all athletic, funny, handsome, and quick witted - commanded attention. Tommy Mason was part of that elite group. Wavy blond hair with shaggy bangs, sky blue eyes, and a wide smile that glinted in the sun (it actually did, braces weren't clear back then) were all the qualities that he needed to fit in. He was the pitcher for the baseball team, so was able to clown around with the other jocks after school in the locker room. As with most young men his age, he ignored the girls until he was good and ready - he had the pick of the girls for any dance.
The bruise that appeared around one of Tommy's blue eyes, drew significant attention in school. All the young girls rallied that he had protected his younger sister from some jerk who was mouthing off. The jocks all supposed that it must have been someone from out of town, an opposing team most likely, it couldn't have been someone from our school. It eventually turned into a story of some poor sop could only have gotten in a lucky punch before getting the stuffing knocked out of him, and justly so. Tommy never said, just smiled at the jokes and pulled menacing faces at anyone who asked him directly.
Tommy didn't play basketball his eighth grade year, as he had in sixth and seventh grades. The starting line would miss his fast breaks up the lane due to the broken wrist he had gotten. His bike had lost a wheel while going down the long hill of his driveway, and he had landed on his arm when he fell. You couldn't see the white of his cast with all of the get well wishes and signatures from his classmates. A few daring girls even left lipstick kisses.
The anticipation of spring and the baseball season reached it's peak early in April. Tommy could be found hanging out with the other pervious players talking about tryouts and the new prospects. One weekend sirens were heard all through town, piercing the silence of a sunny day. Ambulances and police cars ripped down Main street, turning to head toward the outskirts of town.
Monday morning a special assembly was called and it was announced that Tommy Mason had had an accident and was killed over the weekend. The real story, as it came out later that week, was that Tommy Mason had committed suicide. The thirteen year old boy, still wearing fresh bruises from another encounter with his drunken father, had taken a shotgun to the closet and shot himself. He was pronounced dead upon arrival by the authorities.
The town was rocked with the news of the tragedy. A nice town like this would never expect such a terrible thing to happen, but it did. Popular and likable boys like Tommy would never feel so hopeless as to take his own life, but he did. Sadness such as this should never live in the hearts of children, but it does, even today.
I don't see this as profile.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit of a narrative, a bit of a situation, a bit of a character sketch, all good, but it doesn't have the box or frame around it a profile needs. The writer can't profile unless she can take a step back, see the subject of the profile with a little distance--but this is all up close, rushing toward a moral, a predestined close, a close we know almost from the start is coming.
(And we know that because one of the classic themes in literature is that of the golden boy whose fate is dark, despite being apparently beloved of the gods.)
A frame would simply be a few dates and facts, times and places and names, maybe some quotations from friends or yearbooks, a quotation from the obituary or news article, that sort of thing.
All that said, this is tightly written and does have, as I said, that inexorable momentum pressing toward the conclusion, which is impressive. But it's not a profile.