Jesus Was Poor

For paid subscribers this month, a memory from kindergarten on Dandy Point Road.

I rode the bus. Each morning, I carried my lunchbox down the long gravel drive to the rusty old mailbox and waited for it. I could hear its diesel engine chugging before it rounded the blind curve on Dandy Point Road. The doors would swing open, and I’d climb the steps, take my seat, and sit there dreading where it was taking me. Every afternoon, I climbed back down and headed for home.

The bus was worse than school. At least at school, there were rules and somebody pretending to enforce them. On the bus, kids were in charge. The driver was just trying to survive. So was I.

One early September afternoon, a big third grader dropped into the seat in front of me.

“Hey,” he said. Big kid voice. Mean kid voice. I think his name was Butch, which feels about right for a school bully. “Is that old Halloween house really where you live?”

I had no idea what he meant.

“You know. The place the bus drops you off. That falling-down house.”

“What?” I said, totally lost.

He leaned in closer and raised his voice, like that would help. “That place is a dump.”

For reasons I didn’t fully understand, that statement lit me up. “That’s my house. That’s where my parents live,” I shouted back, trying to sound bigger than I was.

“Then your parents must be poor,” he spat over the seat, then turned away like the conversation was over.

But I wasn’t done. “What are you talking about?”

He wouldn’t look back. Instead, he sat chanting, “Alice is po-or. Alice is po-or.”

“I’m not poor.” I hissed back, not really even sure what he meant. But I did know it was meant to be an insult.

“Then why do you live in a falling-down Halloween house?”

The Joneses don’t take insults lightly. Even when they’re true. I didn’t really understand comebacks, but I reached for the biggest truth I knew.

“I’m not poor. But you know who is? Jesus. Jesus was very poor.”

How could anyone argue that? Insult the poor, and you insult the Son of God.

Butch stopped chanting and turned around, confusion and irritation written all over his grumpy face.

“Jesus wasn’t poor,” he said, as if I’d just insulted him personally. In the South, attacks on Jesus are not taken lightly. Since being poor was apparently a huge flaw to Butch, I had committed a serious sin.

“Jesus was definitely poor,” I said, looking him square in the eye.

“No, he wasn’t. He had like sheep and stuff.” Butch wanted to argue, but wasn’t quite sure of himself.

I may not have really known how to argue, but I knew my Bible stories. I was thoroughly confident that Butch was dead wrong.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, thinking I’d just won the argument.

“What did you say?” Butch growled, standing up.

“You’re an idiot,” I repeated, wondering if he was deaf as well as stupid.

Then he slapped me hard across the face.