Unfiltered Story #313255
Back when I’d just graduated from high school and was working full time while going to community college I got the crazy idea to sign up for Big Brother’s Big Sister’s of America. I’d had some little experience with younger kids, but never in a sort of one on one situation like with mentoring before.
BBBS decided I was too busy to be a traditional big brother program, but did let me sign up for an in school variant where I would meet my little brother (LB) once a week at school for his lunch and recess time.
They pared me up with an 8 year old boy who was a middle child out of 6 with a single mother. When I finally went to meet him for the first time I confess I was nervous, boarding on terrified. You have to understand I was a strange, geeky, introverted, bookworm, the closest you can get to a real life Steve Urkel. I was always near the bottom of the popularity social ladder in high school, though some of that was because I was going to keep being me and refused to modify who I was just to fit in. Still I knew I wasn’t exactly what a young kid would imagine as an ideal big brother. I honestly feared he would take one look at me and ask if it was too late to trade me in for a cooler brother alternative.
Our first day together they had an activity for us where we made books about ourselves, I still have the one my LB made for me and occasionally bring it out for nostalgia. But still on the second meeting I was still worried I may not cut it as a big brother. That day he had a cookie shaped like a person and I made a bad joke about how he shouldn’t bite the person. He laughed at this and next thing I know were doing 10 minutes of his slowly eating his cookie-man while I begged for him to have mercy on it. It was a silly little thing, but I felt it broke the ice some and was the first step to us playing properly.
Over the course of the next year I found myself struggling to figure out how to be a good big brother. It was a constant struggling figuring out how much I should be encouraging and helping him with schoolwork and how much we should just be having fun, when I should let bad behavior slide and when I should say something, and generally how to be someone that actually taught my LB all the important lessons of life he would need to succeed. Half the time I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and just stumbling in the dark, but my LB never seemed to mind. He was just happy to have me there no matter how often I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing.
As time went on I saw both his desperation for attention and also a surprising acceptance that he wouldn’t always get it. Any time another kid came to talk to me I could see the look on his face, as if he was afraid he would lose me to some other kid but was too mature to let himself be jealous or act out. Of course I made sure to always redirect attention back to him and make it clear that he was the one I cared about and wanted to be with, but it was oddly endearing seeing how desperately he valued even the slightest bit of attention from me.
I have a number of fond memories, of the little birthday party we had together for him, of the time he and I managed to organize a class wide snowball fight during recess, of how upset he got when I told him I may not make it to one visit, and how excited and relived he was when I bent all my plans around to make sure I still made it that week.
Then the end of the year came, and I realized that I’d completed all the courses that I could transfer to the college I intended to get my bachelors with, which meant I was going to have to leave my home, and my LB, sooner then originally planned to attend college.
I remember how hurt my LB was when I told him I wouldn’t be able to come back next year. He tried to barging, claiming since I was already going to community college I didn’t need to move away to go to college, trying to figure out if there was some way I could stay one more year before leaving. When that didn’t work he begged to see what my car looked like, and insisted on showing me his parent’s car, where he lived, and everything else about himself. I eventually realized he was trying to make sure we could find each other if I wanted to visit during the summer. Unfortunately the rules for BBBS were clear, I was only suppose to see my LB in school not visit him at home. He also begged me to come to school more then once a week and to attend his end of the year field trip with him, both of which I was able to do. One thing that was clear was that he wanted to spend as much time with me as he could before I had to leave.
When I first signed up for BBBS I always knew I would be leaving in a year or two, and told them that. However, back then, when I was still afraid my LB may not like me, it never occurred to me that he may value me so much that he wouldn’t want to let me go. His constant attempts to keep me around were very bitter sweet for me, making me happy to see how much he valued me, and making me feel all the worse for having to leave him.
This was back in the days that E-mail existed, but wasn’t regularly used. I tried to stay in contact with my LB via old fashion mail, and we traded a few letters back and forth, but he was still learning to read and write and over time his letters back to me became less common until eventually he just stopped responding at all.
My year with my LB was a very important one for me. It was what made me realize that I wanted to keep volunteering with kids, but also made me resolve to not commit to another mentoring experience until I was certain I was settled down and wouldn’t have to leave a child that cared for me again. I’ve sense spent half my life with children and have many kids I’m a godfather, honorary Uncle, and otherwise a mentor for; but none of that may have happened if it wasn’t for my first mentoring experience with my LB.
After all these years with kids one big thing I learned is that you don’t need to be Marry Poppins to be a mentor for a kid. Kids really don’t care how cool you are, If you are geeky or not, or if you always know what your doing; all the stuff I worried I wouldn’t live up to in my LB eyes. All kids really care about is that you are there for them and give them love and attention. As long as I was wiling to give that to my LB he didn’t care about any of the rest.
And to anyone who’s ever considered doing BBBS, or any other type of mentoring, that’s worried they didn’t know how to do it or wouldn’t be a good enough role model let me assure you if teenage me could manage it you can to. I have faith you can do it, and won’t regret it, if you ignore your fear, as I did, and just try.
