Big Joe Mean

Joe Mean was big. He was huge. He was gigantically enormous. He was enormously gigantic. Those who knew him said he was the biggest third grader they had ever seen. Those who didn't know him, but saw him walking around, couldn't believe he was only ten.

But he was.

And, of course, Joe Mean was mean. He was nasty. He was terribly awful. He was awfully terrible. Those who knew him said he was the meanest person, third grader or not, that they ever knew. Those who didn't know him, but heard about him or read stories about him, said no one could ever be that bad.

But Joe Mean was.

Sometimes people called him Big Joe Mean. But as big as Joe was, it was nothing compared to his meanness. Big, that was just a nickname people gave him. But Mean, that was his real name.

As hard as it is to believe, Joe Mean's last name was Mean. Joe and his sister, Sally Mean, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mean all lived in the Mean house. They parked their car in the Mean driveway and sat down to eat dinner at the Mean dining table. When they sent out cards at Christmas time, they read, "Happy Holidays from the Mean family."

And his middle name? Well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.

How mean was Joe Mean? He was the kind of guy who never brought a lunch to school, if you know what I mean. He was so mean that when you saw him walking towards you, you didn't just cross one street, you crossed two more, just to be safe. He was so mean that grownups called him Mr. Mean.

And you know that old joke: Where does a 500-pound gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants. That was true of Joe. He slept anywhere and everywhere he felt like. Once, people say, he climbed into the cage of the biggest gorilla in the zoo and slept there.

But that could just be a rumor.

And then one day, something unbelievable happened. Something miraculously incredible. Something incredibly miraculous. Joe Mean met someone who wasn't scared of him.

The funny thing was that we always assumed that anyone who wasn't scared of Big Joe Mean would have to be bigger and meaner than Joe. But that wasn't what happened. No, that wasn't what happened at all. The only person in the entire town who wasn't scared of Joe was little baby Jessica. She wasn't big. She wasn't scary. She was two years old and playing in the sandbox when Joe walked by.

Baby Jessica knew Joe was big, but she didn't know how big, because everyone seemed big to her. And she didn't know he was mean. In fact, she didn't even know the word mean. Baby Jessica knew only one word. And when Joe walked by, she said that one word to him.

"Hi."

No one had ever said hi to Joe before. If anyone said hi to you or me, we would have said hi back. Big Joe Mean didn't know this. He didn't know what to do, so he sat down and thought. And baby Jessica crawled into his lap.

That one word changed Big Joe Mean. Completely. Totally. It's funny how one word can do that.

No one knows exactly what happened. Some people say that Joe could have been a nice boy, that he just thought he was supposed to be mean, because, well, that was his name. Other people say that he was mean because no one had ever shown him how to be nice. I think that all along there was a nice person inside of Joe. A nice person just trying to get out.

It's a funny thing about niceness. It's kind of like catching a cold.

When you have a cold, you can give it to anyone, even by accident. All it takes is one cough, one sneeze, one sniffle, and you can give a cold to the person standing right next to you. And you might not even know you did it.

You can give niceness to anyone too, even by accident. All it takes is one smile, one wave, one word and you can give your niceness to the person standing right next to you. And you might not even know you did it.

That's what we learned from Baby Jessica.

These days, Joe is the nicest person, third grader or not, that anyone has ever seen. He's kind. He's sweet. He's compassionately caring. He's caringly compassionate.

When he goes to lunch, he brings extra to share. When he walks down the street, people cross two and three streets just to say hi to him. He still sleeps anywhere and everywhere, but that's because people are always inviting him to their houses for the night.

Especially Baby Jessica and her mother. He baby-sits on Friday nights.

And we don't call him Mr. Mean anymore. We call him Big Joe M. We all know what the M stands for, but sometimes we pretend that it stand for Magnificent or Miraculous, or Marvelous.

And that's just fine with Big Joe M.