It doesn’t take much time or effort to impact another’s life in a positive manner. If one has compassion and slows down enough to meet anyone where they are, good things will ensue.

Oftentimes joking and having fun with the lonely will reap unimaginable, far-reaching rewards. Probably as we march our separate ways to explore the unknowns of life, memories both good and bad continue to flicker longer than we know.

In junior high, a fellow moved in for a year or two and, the brunt of incessant jesting from us, became one of the gang. He was weird in ways, like each of us, yet had a good heart and was honest.

Within two years he was gone, and no one I knew ever tried to look him up.

However, he did resurface in my life maybe 15 years later and, with persistence, I finally learned his sad story. We spoke freely for the first time after junior high school while sitting in his prison cell.

He told me that his early years had been clouded with redundant passings-on from foster home to foster home. It saddened my heart to learn that his short year-plus stay in my hometown was his longest stay anywhere during his youth. He said my hometown was his hometown.

Unhappy as an adult, alcohol ruled much. And it was the combination of the two that led to our in-jail conversation.

His story, in super-abbreviated form, began when police wanted to pull him over for yet another Driving Under the Influence ticket and he cried “Enough.”

He jumped from a pickup near his rural home, hopped on his horse, and raced cross-country for multiple miles. Requiring rest for himself and his steed, he finally pulled into a vacant barn. In short order, however, the state police arrived and, because my sorta-friend from junior high was armed, a standoff began.

Remembering me as a “friend” from years past and aware I owned the local newspaper, he asked that I be called to the scene to mediate the situation. The Troopers tried to locate me, but I then was hundreds of miles away covering a basketball tournament.

But my “friend” remained adamant he would not get a fair shake if he surrendered, and proceeded to burn the barn down. Miraculously, in the ensuing smoke and confusion, he escaped on foot, eventually taking refuge by breaking into an unoccupied house miles away. Bad news for him, and maybe good news for police trying to track him down, was the fact he discovered a case of beer in the unoccupied house. I’m told all 24 bottles had been consumed when police found him, sleeping, in the auto he’d stolen, located in the middle of a state highway during wee hours.

Do you think he might have broken some laws?

The first time I saw him after junior high was during his arraignment, when all officials present – especially the judge – were exasperated not only by the charges he faced, but by his refusal to say one word in his defense.

I only knew bits and pieces of this prior to our visit in prison.

I was busy in those days, working between 70 and 80 hours per week on the newspaper, yet with a little compassion and a little time was able to do a positive thing. I found a pro bono lawyer willing to take up his cause and work toward reducing the harshness of a penalty generated by a lack of love, and alcohol.

We never know how random kindnesses will impact another.

Jabberwock II columnist Rocky Wilson is a reporter for the Chieftain.