"Come on, Mistah Dave!"

Yet another Brady—Brady Wyler—also developed a vigorous attachment to me. And I developed a commensurate fondness for him.

Brady W. was an African American boy about twelve years old who I believe was diagnosed with mental retardation, although he didn't have the characteristic physical appearance the term conjures up. He looked pretty much like a normal adolescent child—sans the encrusted snot perpetually caked from his nostrils to his upper lip. He also wore large and extremely thick plastic-framed glasses that distorted his eyes, magnifying them into disproportionately large and goofy orbs. His behavior was likewise goofy, particularly when he cocked his head like a Labrador and gazed at you with his mouth agape, seemingly preparing to say something to you yet not uttering a word ... just gazing silently and without an ostensible reason.

Brady stayed for some time on the crisis unit, and one of his favorite pastimes was to play catch with a Nerf football. I think nearly every night that I worked while Brady was a resident, during free time we played this game of toss-and-catch. It was the main process by which we bonded.

This game was a great deal of fun. Brady would cock his head and look at me out of the corner of his glasses—his comically enlarged eyes opened up wide—and then fling the ball at me in a spasmodic two-handed flick, like he was impatiently swatting at a fly with both hands at once. His throwing motion would make any quarterbacks coach cringe, but somehow it was effective. The ball would fly at me with an incredible amount of thrust, and Brady's accuracy was formidable: More often than not, the ball would be on-target and reach me with an ample degree of velocity.

Catching the ball was a different story for Brady. Usually he would lunge at the ball and abruptly cross his arms in an attempt to cradle-snatch it, the ball ricocheting off of his chest and bounding away. Brady would then chase after the ball with an extreme sense of urgency as it flipped and flopped away, pouncing on it when he finally caught up with it.

The most memorable thing about our game of toss-and-catch was this: Whenever I would throw Brady an errant pass that was out of his reach, he would cock his head and peer at me out of the corner of his glasses with his magnified fish eyes, and cry out, "Come on, Mistah Dave!" His voice would screech out in a high pitch and had a slur to it reminiscent of a drunkard.

His little shout out—"Come on, Mistah Dave!"—was so emphatic and frequent (I guess my aim must have been pretty bad), that it earned a sort of infamous status on the unit, eliciting frequent laughs from my coworkers as well as mocking repetition from them on many occasions. And so, I recall that phrase now with much vividness, as it is inseparable from the source. It will always be Brady's trademark slogan, the sound image married indelibly to the visual image of him, the icing on his endearing cake.

"Come on, Mistah Dave!"


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© 2008 David Lee Cummings