How I Learned...

A while back I was walking with a friend of mine in the woods I roamed as a child. He is about ten years younger than me, and though he lives closer to the woods than I did growing up, had never been back there. When we came to the old mill pond (I know that sounds all like Norman Rockwell, but can I help that it really is an old mill pond?). I stopped at the edge for a moment, next to the sandbag dam, looked out over the water said, “We used to ice skate back here.”

”What do you mean?” asked my friend, a bit confused.

“What do you mean what do I mean,” I said, “We used to ice skate back here in the winter, and play hockey”

“That’s insane!” he said, his jaw dropping to the floor.

“What?!” I asked, genuinely puzzled by his reaction.

“What if you fell in?”

“Well, we didn’t go ice skating in April, only in the dead of winter. My older brother and his friends would check the ice first, and mark off areas to stay away from, and then we just skated and played hockey”

“I would never do that!” he said, his mind still reeling. “That’s just insane”

This then seems to illustrate the main difference between his generation and mine. They think we are insane.

I don’t have any kids yet, so I am sure I don’t really have the right to comment on how they are raised these days. But I will anyway.

It seems that many parents are convinced that their children are on the verge of a violent bloody end at any given moment. In the interest of safety (and really who can argue with safety), we basically prevent them from doing anything that may be even the slightest bit dangerous. So, instead of teaching kids how to safely ice skate on a frozen pond, their parents tell them not to do it, because its safer that way.

They support this position with tales of all the horrific things that can possibly happen to anyone who attempts to skate on a frozen pond. You might fall in. If you fall in you will get stuck under the ice and drown. If you do manage to pull yourself out, you will freeze to death. I you manage not to freeze to death, you will almost certainly loose your legs, or your arms, or both. Then you will be a stump. A stump with no arms and no legs and you will never be able to go outside and play ever again. All because you didn’t listen to your mom and tried to skate on the pond. When the kids are sufficiently terrified, they drive them to the local rink, where you can ice skate year round for $7.00 an hour, because its safer that way. The thing is, isn't nearly EVERYTHING safer if you don't do it?

A friend of mine tells her kids to never open a can of soda all the way, to only just barely crack the seal. That way, a bee can’t fly into their soda, and sting them in the mouth. When they go to the shore, they are not allowed to go in the water, because they might drown. They are only allowed to ride their bikes around their small block, never on a main road, because they might get hit by a car. This is all well and good, until I remind her that a few years ago, in Florida, she kept trying to pet wild alligators.

“Now which do you think is more dangerous, riding a bike, or trying to pet a wild alligator who really doesn’t want you around? Hmmmmm……” I ask as she glares at me.

Its not that I am being critical so much as I just can’t relate to it. My dad did not raise me this way. To my dad, danger was not something to be avoided. Danger was just motivation. And the more you feared for your life, the more motivated you would become.

Take how I learned to ride a bike. I was a late bloomer in this arena as I was with most everything else. As I got bigger, my dad had to continually reinforce the training wheels on my bike with strips of metal he bolted on to the frame. After a while, not only was my bike stable, it weighed about 100 pounds.

I took the requisite ribbing from my friends willingly enough. But, by the age of 8 or 9, my dad decided that it was high time I learned to ride a bike. He took the training wheels off and refused to put them on ever again, no matter how much I begged.

“Come here” he said, “I am going to teach you how to ride a bike.”

I was reluctant, but didn’t seem to have much choice. He sat me on the bike and held me up for a moment. Pointing the bike towards the side of our barn (yes, we had a barn, get over it) he said “OK, on the count of three I am going to push you, and you will have two choices: You can crash into the side of the barn, or you can pedal and steer, and not crash into the barn”

I wasn’t liking this. My whole body trembled. I may have wet my pants. I really, really really, didn’t want to do this, but at the moment I had no say in the matter.

“One…two…..THREE!!!”

I froze. I heard a loud noise that I soon realized was the sound of myself screaming. The bike careened towards the barn. I tried to pedal, but my brain couldn’t seem communicate with my feet. Instead they got all tangled in the pedals as the barn got closer and closer. My survival instinct took over and a single word found its way into my terrified mind:

“Steer…”

“Steer!!!”

“Steer, God dammit!! Steer!!”

With every ounce on strength in my body, I forced my heretofore frozen hands to turn the handlebars just before I hit the barn. The bike swerved to the right and dumped me off onto the blacktop. I was in shock. My hands ached and there was a rather large road rash on my ankle.

“That was pretty good!” said my dad enthusiastically. “Lets try that again.”

The funny thing is, we did try it again, and I got better. The second time I actually was able to pedal a little bit. The third time, I swerved and rode halfway across the driveway before falling. The fourth time, I didn’t fall at all. Within about 10 minutes, I was riding around in circles whooping and hollering. The pain was numbed by the shear elation. I did it!! I could ride a bike!

This pattern repeated itself throughout my childhood. I learned to swim when my dad threw me off the boat without a life jacket and told me to swim back. I learned ski when he took me to the top of the bunny hill and skied away, telling me he would see me at the bottom.

Now you are probably expecting me to say how much I resent my father for doing such horrible things. How the memories of these events haunted me into my adult life. But the thing is, I don’t resent any of it. While I will admit there might be better, more organized, and less terrifying ways to learn such things, my dad never did any of these things out of anger. He simply felt that the best way to learn things was by doing them, and the best way to deal with fear is to face it head on. And in that sense, he is right. Absolutely right.

In each case, I found that the crippling fear that kept me from attempting these things was unfounded. In confronting my greatest fears and surviving, I was set free. My world widened, and new opportunities opened to me. I still find that true today. Do I have scars? Sure I do, both literally and figuratively. But they are simply memories of times when I faced my fears, and survived.

And OK, there is that one that I got from falling off my house after trying to scale it like Spiderman, but that’s another story…

Of War, and Peace, and Sandwich bags

It was a cold, wet, December day. Saturday I think. For my father’s regular Saturday afternoon drive, he decided to drop in on Alex, one of his customers. My father was and is a landscaper, and in Alex’s case he took care of not only his house, but also his nearby factory and warehouse. I don’t remember the exact purpose of the visit, but it was probably to collect a check or give an estimate or some such. What I do remember clearly is my dad’s stern warning on the drive over.

“Listen,” he said “Alex walks with a cane, all hunched over. And his wife has a limp. When we get there DON’T SAY ANYTHING and DON’T ask him about it.”

I said I wouldn’t , but I was instantly curious. When we arrived, Alex and his wife invited us in welcoming us in mixture of broken English and Russian. He did indeed use a cane, and when he walked, hunched over considerably, though not as much as I had imagined. His wife didn’t limp so much as she slid one foot across the floor, dragging it behind her as she moved about.

I followed my dad’s instructions and did not say anything but my mind was swimming with questions. Sitting at their kitchen table with my mother and father, eating sweet cake I couldn’t help but notice a calendar on wall indicating that Christmas was January 7^th. This was just too much for my young mind to fathom. How on earth could ANYONE celebrate Christmas on January 7^th when EVERYONE knew that Christmas was December 25^th. Against my better judgment, I sheepishly said:

“Um, why does that calendar say that Christmas is January 7^th? Christmas is in December.”

My question was received pleasantly enough, and it was explained to me that Alex and his wife were Russian Orthodox and they used a different calendar. So for them, Christmas was January 7^th. I didn’t really get it, but it was enough of an explanation, so I let it rest.

After a while we said our goodbyes and headed home. Back in the car, I couldn’t help myself.

“So, why does he walk so hunched over? Why does she limp like that?” I asked my dad.

“Well” he said, “That’s kind of a long story…”

As a teenager, Alex fought for the Czar in World War I and in the Russian Revolution. On the eastern front, the fighting was a bizarre mix of old and new. While they had modern weaponry, the cavalry was still an important element of the Russian army and hand to hand fighting often involved swords and sabers.

During one battle, Alex was run through with a sword and left for dead on the battlefield.. But he was a tough old boy and he patched himself up and made it back to his unit. This then, is why he used a cane and was so hunched over. Years later, he would find out that the saber passed within and inch of his heart. As a result of his actions in battle, he was awarded what my dad described as “the equivalent of the Medal of Honor” given to him by Czar Nicholas himself.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917 resulted in the abdication and murder of the Royal family, the Bolsheviks seized power and began executing those loyal to the Czar. Alex’s future wife was shot in the leg as she ran into the forest to escape the turmoil.

Their small band, including Alex and his wife and at least one of Alex’s brothers, made it into the mountains and managed to avoid Bolshevik forces, living, as my dad tells it, on snow and the occasional rabbit. Eventually, they made it to Yugoslavia, and settled into a relatively peaceful and successful life. Alex and his brother got into the steel business, and eventually owned a steel mill. They lived there until 1941, when they managed to escape to the United States just as the Nazi’s invaded.

Their steel mill was destroyed in the war, and after the defeat of the Third Reich, Alex and his brother received substantial reparations from the German government due to the loss of their property.

They invested their money wisely and, in a chain of events that is still unclear to me, in the 1950’s invented the re-closable plastic bag. This is what was manufactured at Alex’s nearby factory. The one my dad did the landscaping for. According to my father, at the time, in the ‘80’s they were the sole patent holder and so made all the bags for Ziploc and other companies.

I am starting a research project to find out more details about this man, his life and times. As I always say, I can’t make this stuff up.