Color Me Orange—Color Me Kind: The Inspiration

A Chevy Camaro and Nike’s

Nathan, 12

D’Mario, the 5’10” bully in our sixth grade class, struggled. I get it. He had two dads. His stepdad walked out on him. And D’Mario was really close to his stepdad. Since his stepdad liked cars, D’Mario liked cars.

But I struggled too. Suicidal thoughts dogged me for months. While going to the mailbox, I thought, If I just step into middle of road, I could end it all. The situation with D’Mario wasn’t helping. D’Mario didn’t start my suicidal thoughts, but my relationship with him made my situation worse.

For our sixth grade school report, D’Mario and I were teamed up. That’s when it started. He wanted to write something about the 1963 Chevrolet Camaro car. I like cars too, and the Camaro happened to be my favorite car. The first Camaro car came out in 1967. Not in 1963—like D’Mario wrote. I wanted the facts straight because our report would be posted on the wall.

So when I corrected our school report, D’Mario got angry at me. He used the F-word and flicked me off a few times. During recess while playing sports, he started going out of his way to bump my shoulder and give me dirty looks. He used sports to get his anger out; he used sports to control.

Meanwhile, at home, I was spending too much time on video games. I got lost in them. After spending hours playing, it wasn’t easy coming back to the real world. When I got off a game, I thought about suicide, so I would go back to the game—to lose my thoughts. That’s when I realized that I needed to take a few months off and put away my video games.

Back at school, I tried to keep my distance from D’Mario. But during basketball season, D’Mario and I ended up on the same team. At basketball practice, D’Mario threatened, “You better quit, or I will hurt you.” I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was aware.

One day, at basketball practice, I noticed that D’Mario was wearing an old pair of Nikes with holes, which gave me an idea. I made $2.50 a day walking a dog, so I started saving up. After two months, I bought a decent pair of Adidas shoes for $60.00 bucks. I worked hard for that money; plus I added a nice chunk of my own Christmas money.

Then I waited for the right moment to give D’Mario the basketball shoes. When I gave him the shoes, he looked at me. His eyes got big. He immediately took off the old dirty shoes and put on the new pair. The shoes looked good on him and matched his jersey.

That moment sparked something: D’Mario realized that I wasn’t out to get him. He didn’t have to bully me anymore. He also started playing basketball with more confidence. I wasn’t buying him out as a friend, and I didn’t fix him just like that, but I showed him that I care.

I needed to think twice about suicide too. I realized that I really didn’t want to die. I started remembering all the things I had and what I would lose. I have a lot parent-wise, friend-wise, and dog-wise. Without a device controlling me or a kid at school controlling me, I could now control the way I thought.

Once I reached out to D’Mario, he realized that we weren’t competitors anymore. He started giving me compliments on the court; I gave him compliments back. Soon we became pretty good friends. I felt relieved. By taking a risk and being kind, my actions brought out D’Mario’s nice side.

For reasons of security, names have been changed.

Color Me Orange—Color Me Kind installation at ArtPrize Eight