When Vengeance Is Best Not Served At All...

I was going to write about a couple other things, but something happened yesterday that is stuck in my head... and it's still bothering me a little bit.
Here's some background. When I was in high school years ago, there were these guys that made it really hard for me to want to go to school. They picked on me and my brothers for any reason they could think of. They made fun of us, because we were short, skinny, fat, nerds, not sounding like we were black, etc. I had more than my fair share of fights with them, but things could have been a lot worse. Regardless, I grew to hate these guys. I mean I REALLY hated them. I wished a slow and painful death upon them. Some nights, I would go to sleep dreaming of ways that they could perish and hopefully burn in hell.

Fast forward to a month ago. I regularly visit the library, and the last few times, I saw this guy... do you ever do one of those things where you see a face, and you think that you recognize that person, then brush it off by saying something like "everyone looks like someone we know" and then call it a day? I did that the first few times. But the last time was different...

He was by himself this time... and I finally got a good look at his face. I knew him, and I knew exactly where I knew him from. Now was the time to say something to him.

I walked towards him, and called his name a few times. On the third call, he turned around. His face changed maybe two or three times in just a few seconds... he thought he knew me, but he wasn't sure how this happened.

"I know you... " he said.

I looked at him, and realized that life had not been kind to this person at all. He had leaves in his hair. His skin had blotches of what appeared to be mud. Judging from the odor, his skin and clothes had clearly not been washed in weeks. In his hands, he was carrying a couple plastic grocery bags that held clothes and pop cans. This man was homeless.

"Yeah, you do know me," I replied.

"How do I know you?"

"Do you remember back in high school when my brother tried out for the football team? You and your brother ran him off the field by yelling how fat he was, and you kept going for the rest of the year. When he told me about what you did, I hit you in the face with my science book. We fought, then you got your friends involved and kept picking on the two of us for the next year plus some."

"You... "

His face changed again to sheer disbelief. He looked down at the ground... I couldn't tell, but he looked like he was ready to cry.

I, too, was in shock. The person who stood before me was on the road to getting a football scholarship, and was smart enough to do something productive with his life, regardless of who he stepped on and crushed in the process. I had so many questions, but I couldn't put together the words to express to the person who was the bane of my existence... the person who I desperately wanted to help at that moment...

"I have to go, but I WILL see you around here again soon, right?"

He looked up, and didn't say anything. Then he looked back down, turned and walked away slowly.

This is stuck in my head, because those that know me know that I never forget, and that I hold grudges. I had not thought about this person in years, but when I saw him and realized how terrible his life had become, I KNOW how wrong this is, but... for a split second... I REALLY wanted to dance in his face. In that split second, everything that he and his friends had done for that long period came back to me, and I wanted him to know and feel as badly as I felt in high school.

But I couldn't do it.

As quickly as that thought came, it left. And I felt sorry for him... and I really wanted to help him.

Vengeance was not an option.

I'm not sure if it's because I want to help a fellow graduate, or if it's because of how terrible I feel about what I felt and thought for that split second... I really wanted to help him... and I still do.
I'm not sure of how to find him or figure out what happened... but I have ideas of how to figure everything out...

And I'm going to do everything that I can to find him, take him for a cup of coffee, find out his story, and see if I can help get him back on his feet...

I'm not even sure why I want to do this... or why I need to do this... but I'm going to try. I hope I didn't scare him to the point of not going back to the library again. And I hope he doesn't think that I'm in this to cause more pain on him.

If I find him again, we'll just see what happens...