“You meet a Great Person and unconsciously tug your forelock (wish I had one) and one day wake up and realise you’ve known great persons all your life,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DIDIO.

When he was nearly 13, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. Sounds familiar? 

Yes, it’s the opening line of the classic Tequila Mockingbird, a newly controversial 1960 novel by Harper Lee we all had to read at school. 

One of the people who hated the book was my friend Norm, nearly 15 from memory, who had badly injured something – his back or leg or some such. We were boys and were really not caring about details like that so I remember so little about the injury.

What I do remember is this. Norm was a tremendous sporting talent – his dad had played footy for Australia and his own body movements while running or kicking or passing were graceful like Nureyev. 

As he held you face down in the country town mud, you could not help but marvel at the economy of movement, the preservation of energy for the next time Thistle Park’s finest would need to perfect the squirrel grip, the nut sundae or the wedding tackle, before hastily listening to the bell and going to a year 9 English class after lunch. Halcyon days.

Norm’s injury did not recover for many years, and his school career was punctuated by frustration at not being able to do what he did best. I tried to help by being an incredibly crappy friend, and we’d play touch footy on the back oval with Andrew and Peter P every day, until year 10 arrived and we were able to move 30 metres further up the totem pole to a better piece of real estate. This made the falls less painful but the good-natured violence was no less vigorous.

Funny thing, violence. I copped a lot less of it than I could have because, wounded or not, stone-faced Norm was around. In those pre-gym days, he walked around like he had a watermelon under each arm, like the scariest playground teacher ever.

Which is what he eventually became (I don’t know about scary – but a teacher). Andy and Pete needed his protection, too. 

Andy was small and smart – a lightning rod for playground psychopaths. Pete had a funny name but in mitigation he did have a gift that helped him plenty – if a bully started giving him what was in those days called a chinese burn, he would expel some methane so instantaneously rancid that class would come to a memorable halt and Mr Stuart had to issue World War I gas masks brought back from the Somme.

This is patently untrue but believe me, it would have helped. Peter claimed that the shenanigans of his distal colon were in some way beyond his control, and consequent to any kind of twisting motion upon his person, and went so far as to demonstrate it to his tormentors, by squeezing his own arm in front of them and erupting his bum like my cousin Silvio’s Kawasaki ZI-R, complete with absent muffler and setting off fire alarms at Macksville High.

The dogs accompanied the hastily assembled drug squad and Canine Officer Muttley had to go on stress leave at a special kennel in Nambucca, whereupon it was decided he could never work again, on account of permanent nasal damage.

But it wasn’t enough to protect Pete, and he needed Norm around just as much as the rest of us. 

Why wasn’t Norm one of the bullies? He hated that book, was unacademic, frustrated and looking for something. He took no interest in my love of Beethoven and The Phantom. 

But for years he looked after us. Why? He was just a great person. Forty years later and I see that reality. You meet a Great Person and unconsciously tug your forelock (wish I had one) and one day wake up and realise you’ve known great persons all your life.

People who lifted you, or who like Norm, were just and unconsciously kind and friendly, that made things worthwhile for those around him.

People get (rightly) celebrated for running into burning buildings and rescuing others. Norm was in agony half of the time and took on thugs when his life would have been easier if he’d joined them.

He saved us plenty, my unreliable memory recalls. His bravery saved me and probably others. And he did it without poisoning an innocent police dog. He died young, because life is never fair, but he will never be forgotten.

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader and nerd. There is more of his Kindness on citynews.com.au