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The older we got, the more dangerous our fun became. We raced on wobbly plastic skateboards down smooth, fast Devon Drive. We crafted jumps from boards and bricks and caught premium air on our Schwinn Sting-Rays — which we also sent sailing off alone on comically reckless “ghost rides.” At one point or another, just about everyone took the plunge from the top of the train bridge into the mouth of Catfish Creek. And while I never had the guts to join the BB-gun wars over in the Southgate neighborhood, I deeply admired them.
But even at our most delinquent — swilling bottles of altar wine stolen from the sacristy or passing around fiery “suicide” concoctions siphoned from our parents’ liquor cabinets — we were learning.
Much of my very worst behavior flooded me with wild, unfamiliar feelings — feelings that, in lasting ways, mapped the outer limits of my ethics. In sixth grade, a shoplifting contest in a convenience store thrilled me to the point of nausea. It was an experience I never wished to repeat. And I still shudder to recall the hair-raising afternoon when three of us, armed with 7- and 9-irons, chipped a bucket of golf balls off a cliff, over four lanes of highway traffic and into the Regal 8 swimming pool. That night I couldn’t sleep for all my fear and regret.
A key component of all this fun, from the wholesome to the ugly, was that we sought it out on our own. Many parents (like mine) were actually quite strict and culturally conservative, but their prohibitions only inspired us to find rowdier and more independent diversions. But many other parents — most, it seemed — were just checked out; they were either exhausted by broods of seven to 12 kids (at one point we counted five such clans in a one-block radius from our house) or simply invisible.
There was one notorious kid with invisible parents who, when he was an eighth grader, already wore the blond bristles of a beard. He was supernaturally tough and athletic — every boy in two schools feared and revered him. But what made him godlike (to me) was his absolute freedom: He didn’t fear crime, thugs or drugs; he was indifferent to grown-ups, whether priests or police; and yet he was cool enough to be sweet to friends and brutal with enemies.
During the summer after my sixth-grade year, on the thrilling afternoons when, for mysterious reasons, he let my friends hang out with his circle, I saw a Bottle Caps wrapper filled with cocaine, sat for a few minutes in a hot-wired car and held a loaded handgun. My parents were off in a different galaxy, and I felt it.
By making things, breaking things and taking real risks, by becoming citizens in our ad hoc community, we used the fallow days of summer to put our Catholic-school education, and our parents’ parenting, to the test. Trial and error often proved that they were right. But in discovering what we enjoyed most — not what we were taught to enjoy — we also discovered new parts of ourselves: artists, engineers, combatants, daredevils, explorers, criminals, comedians and more. Our summer fun was a field study in life, which is the last thing we would have thought at the time.
But even at our most delinquent — swilling bottles of altar wine stolen from the sacristy or passing around fiery “suicide” concoctions siphoned from our parents’ liquor cabinets — we were learning.
Much of my very worst behavior flooded me with wild, unfamiliar feelings — feelings that, in lasting ways, mapped the outer limits of my ethics. In sixth grade, a shoplifting contest in a convenience store thrilled me to the point of nausea. It was an experience I never wished to repeat. And I still shudder to recall the hair-raising afternoon when three of us, armed with 7- and 9-irons, chipped a bucket of golf balls off a cliff, over four lanes of highway traffic and into the Regal 8 swimming pool. That night I couldn’t sleep for all my fear and regret.
A key component of all this fun, from the wholesome to the ugly, was that we sought it out on our own. Many parents (like mine) were actually quite strict and culturally conservative, but their prohibitions only inspired us to find rowdier and more independent diversions. But many other parents — most, it seemed — were just checked out; they were either exhausted by broods of seven to 12 kids (at one point we counted five such clans in a one-block radius from our house) or simply invisible.
There was one notorious kid with invisible parents who, when he was an eighth grader, already wore the blond bristles of a beard. He was supernaturally tough and athletic — every boy in two schools feared and revered him. But what made him godlike (to me) was his absolute freedom: He didn’t fear crime, thugs or drugs; he was indifferent to grown-ups, whether priests or police; and yet he was cool enough to be sweet to friends and brutal with enemies.
During the summer after my sixth-grade year, on the thrilling afternoons when, for mysterious reasons, he let my friends hang out with his circle, I saw a Bottle Caps wrapper filled with cocaine, sat for a few minutes in a hot-wired car and held a loaded handgun. My parents were off in a different galaxy, and I felt it.
By making things, breaking things and taking real risks, by becoming citizens in our ad hoc community, we used the fallow days of summer to put our Catholic-school education, and our parents’ parenting, to the test. Trial and error often proved that they were right. But in discovering what we enjoyed most — not what we were taught to enjoy — we also discovered new parts of ourselves: artists, engineers, combatants, daredevils, explorers, criminals, comedians and more. Our summer fun was a field study in life, which is the last thing we would have thought at the time.
My godlike (to me) hero was also fearless and feared but also loved by everyone, especially girls. He was Irish, Catholic, knew more about the world than any of us, read seemingly everything Balzac, Beckett and Myles na Gopaleen ever wrote before he was old enough to drive. I think about the night he lead us out onto the railroad bridge over the Potomac River to paint the small shed above the bridge, half way out, every time I drive by, which I still do frequently. Those were the days.
