'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.'
But name-calling could.
The names they called my grade school classmates hurt them
terribly. They called Brandon 'Fatso' because of his weight; Pete was nicknamed
'Dumbo' because of his big ears. 'Geek' was the name they gave to Max, while 'Psycho'
was reserved for Jason. Insults painful to bear when you are young. As for me,
I had a physical feature that had so far escaped attention. I was safe from verbal
abuse, at least for now. But I was worried, especially when I stared at my
reflection in the mirror.
"It's in your genes," my father explained, but I didn't
understand at all. What were genes, and how did my eyes get in there?
My right eye is brown and my left eye is light blue. Different
colored irises. As a kid, I believed I had a birth defect, a medical syndrome
that would one day require surgery.
"Your eyes didn't decide what color they wanted to be,"
my father reassured me. Still, I feared being ridiculed in school and avoided
making eye contact as much as possible.
Some kids are born with superpowers; others get them while growing
up and use them to ward off the name-calling. Max claimed he could see through girls'
clothing; Pete said he could fly if he wanted to, but only when no one was
looking. Jason was capable of lifting heavy objects, even a piano. He was still
waiting for the police to call on him to fight crime. And Brandon had many
superpowers. He could become invisible, walk through buildings, run faster than
a horse, and shape-shift. I wasn't exactly sure what shape-shifting was, but Brandon
boasted he could do it.
"What about you?" Max taunted me. "You can't lift
anything," teased Jason. "You'll never outrun me," sneered
Brandon.
I didn't have a superpower, but I had my eyes. My secret feature.
But what good were they?
Many years later, I was on a date with Jenny who lived down the
street; we occasionally did our physics homework together. It wasn't actually a
date, per se, but rather a spur-of-the-moment outing to the mall to see 'Star
Wars'.
"May the Force be with us," Jenny giggled when we sat
down for burgers and fries after the film. She slurped her cola and at that
moment, I thought I was the luckiest guy in our class. Then, before I could
avert my gaze, she stared at me.
"Your eyes!"
I looked down at the table, at my half-eaten fast food,
embarrassed. She had laughed at me and we'd never see a movie together again.
"They're special!" she said next, and I took a deep
breath of relief.
Actors Robert Downey, Jr. and Kate Bosworth; dancer Michael
Flatley, Canadian hockey star Shawn Horcoff; and Washington Nationals pitcher
Max Scherzer all had different colored eyes, I learned. And I heard that when Julia
Roberts accepted her Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress award in
1990 for her role in the film 'Steel Magnolias', she thanked her “beautiful
blue-eyed, green-eyed friend,” reportedly referring to Kiefer Sutherland. Most impressive
to me in those years of my science fiction fascination was the fact that Henry
Cavill, the Superman of the 2013 film 'Man of Steel', had eyes of different
colors.
Heterochromia, the variation in coloration in my eyes, was
something I could be proud of. They're special, as Jenny told me on that date
long ago. Take that, Max, Pete, Jason, and Brandon! I had my superpower at last,
and I wasn't afraid to flaunt it!
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