That stupid kid was me
Originally published in April 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.
Even a person of my obvious limitations can grow vain. When I put too much steam in my stride and know the world is lucky to have me, my merciless memory reminds me of the boy I used to be:
When you were probably 13, you thought it would be fun to shake up a bottle of Pepsi. And shake it. And shake it. Soda bottles were made of glass way back then, and for some reason you didn’t know glass isn’t the world’s strongest material.
It was a surprise when that bottle exploded with a big POP, wasn’t it? How close did that shard come to your left eye? Don’t pretend you can’t remember. You get a reminder every time you look in a mirror and see the scar where the cut was stitched an inch above the orb.
And that’s not the stupidest thing you ever did, not even close. Get too cocky and we’ll spend a few moments reliving the months after you turned 16 and got your driver’s license.
All it takes to straighten me out now is to spend some time with my past.
Despite evidence to the contrary, I’ve always believed I’m an intelligent person. Now, though, fatherhood has at long last forced me to reach a reasonably adult level of maturity, and I fear I’m truly only intelligent enough to be ashamed today of things I should have been ashamed of – and learned from – decades ago.
Or perhaps I’ve developed a more introspective aspect to my personality in middle age, one that turns the focus away from myself and sees the two beautiful girls growing up in our house. That part of me knows, just knows, I was never that wonderful and never will be.
Man, the biggest way I could ever fail is to make a mess of being their dad the way I made a mess of being a driver when I was a teenager.
So I now recognize that from time to time I’ve screwed up even though I knew better. Nothing epic, not at the level some of my friends did and I’m grateful. Part of this I credit to luck and part to the girls I knew, who didn’t cooperate with my lame efforts to do some wrongs I really wanted to do.
Happily, I can also recognize I wasn’t a total idiot. For example, I figured out within a year of my 21st birthday that it wasn’t impressive to empty beer cups so fast the liquid ran down my neck into the fabric of my shirt, despite the example of such cinematic classics as “Revenge of the Nerds.”
Plenty of 40-year-olds still haven’t learned that lesson.
My wife is Lisa. I met her when I was 24 and living in southern Arizona, where I ended up after completing a five-year trek to the bachelor’s degree I suspect Colorado State awarded me just so I’d go away.
I’d love to be able to claim I was finished being stupid at that age, but I wasn’t. I was, however, finished being alone because for some reason Lisa forgave the stupidity, which started with our first real date.
On that occasion, I was too busy showing off to pay attention to where I was driving and got my neat new truck stuck in the sand at a Gulf of California beach not once, but twice. Yep, it took getting stuck TWO TIMES to teach me not to travel where there was no road.
Friendly beachgoers helped dig me out both times while I sputtered and tried not to look even more like a jackass. On the way home, Lisa figured out a way to laugh with me about it, instead of at me like I deserved.
Even though I wasn’t a brainless boy anymore, I did plenty of stupid things during the years we were dating, and I’ve done more still in the years since we married.
In fact, that merciless memory is revisiting the last couple of months and reminding me that even now I frequently have occasion to thump my forehead and make apologies.
Maybe the best I can hope is that my kids don’t have to deal with my screw-ups, or that I at least don’t wait too long to recognize where I’ve gone wrong and do something about it.