So I am finishing up this book called Boys Life by Robert McCammon. This is the second or third time I have read this book and I would recommend it to anyone. It is a very exciting and dramatic story of just what the title suggests. The author, who undoubtedly retrieved information from his own childhood and who has a very keen sense of a childs thought, weaves a tale of murder, childhood joy and fear, and loss all from the perspective of a young boy and his friends. With the biggest holiday of the year approaching, I thought about some of the things that mattered as a child and some of the things that as an adult, I wish that I could have held on to. So the following is a list of my own childhood memories that only a boy could have and that all of us adults wish we could retain in reality. Please feel free to leave your thoughts on past memories in the comments and please NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!!!(just kidding)
1.Your house was always a lot smaller than you thought. I lived the first ten years of my life in a mobile home and I thought the place was huge at times. When I discovered places like the empty space underneath the little pseudo-stairs leading up to my sisters room, I thought I was in Buckingham Palace!
2. Time moves incredibly slow. Especially when you are waiting for a holiday like Christmas or a birthday. This is really true on the eve of any of those events. I can remember staying up till 12am waiting for Christmas to come and then waking up at 4am just to get a head start.
3. No matter how many bullets you shoot or how many arrows you let fly, there will always be unlimited people and animals to shoot.
4.My parents may have been stressed out, but I either didn’t know or wouldn’t care, because I had bigger problems like trying to figure out how to get my spaceship made of tomato wire baskets and leftover aluminum up into the air and off the ground. Very difficult even if you did have as many tools from the shed as possible and a car battery.
5.Tornadoes are really scary at any point in your life but they provide a good excuse to stay up late and be outside in the woods in a ditch well past your bedtime. When I was about 8 I think, there was a warning nearby for a tornado and my Mom took us out of our trailer into a ditch nearby. I am not sure if that was the smartest thing but it sure left an impression on me. I was waiting for that tornado to land and pick the trailer up and carry it away.
6. That big kid on the other baseball team really does have a cannon for an arm. I remember several times through the course of my storied little league career, being scared sh#*-less by Brad Cobb and another kid who I can’t remember, but who died that year in a jeep accident. These guys could throw a baseball at least 60 mph and for an 11-14 year old, that was fast…especially if it hit you.
7. Underneath every rock is a whole bunch of treasures waiting to be found or at least a whole nest of crazy insects that could mame you. My sister and I believed that there was pirate treasure at the top of our little hill outside Sand Springs, OK. We must have dug about a dozen holes, all about 8 inches deep.
8. Everyone has a neighbor that is especially creepy and or mysterious. Mr Clay lived up the road from us and I think he must have been shell-schocked from Vietnam(literally). He was a nice man but was definitely part of the mysterious contingent around our house. Also the Jamisons that lived a little further up was part of the creepy neighbors mainly due to their van with the porthole window in the back and the crazy orange painting of something on driver side of the van.
9. Your father never looks so tough as when he has a knife in one hand and a blood earnest look in his eye. When I was younger, I was chased by a wild hog. This single event was probably the crowning achievement of my young childhood since I happened to outrun this ferocious monster while saving my Converse that happened to fall off as I rounded the final turn on the way to my back door. When my dad came home, my memory is of him grabbing his hunting knife with its home-made sheath, and going out into the woods to try and find this bacon-carrier. I believe we made a pen for it as well although I am not sure what the purpose of it would have been. Surely we wouldn’t keep it as a pet and didn’t fattening of an animal take like years?
10. This is the last one and honestly I didn’t save it for last in some kind of artistic flare. I just thought of it, and when I did, I started to tear up a bit because it was such a important moment in my life and one that I am a ashamed to admit, I had forgotten about in the recesses of my brain.
Hell and grace are never so clear and terrifying as when you are sitting on your swingset on a Sunday afternoon after hearing a Baptist sermon from Thom Smith. I can remember the tears streaming down my cheeks into the greyish Oklahoma clay as I contemplated the depths of my sin and the almost certain destruction I would experience if I didn’t come to Jesus. Thankfully, I did see the grace of the cross and also the depths of my sin up to that point.
So those are the memories that only a boy can have. Some of the memories may have become a little cloudy, I’m sure that my parents can confirm some of these memories or give a little bit of a clearer idea of how things might have happened. Of course, those memories would come from an adults perspective which may or may not be the most accurate!
December 18, 2008 at 8:55 am
Well, I have to say I teared up, too, on the last one. God had already done His work that Sunday morning before you prayed with me in our bedroom to receive Jesus. Thank you for sharing that side of it, Micah. You wrote that excellently–when are you going to write a book? I think we were hoping to capture the hog in order to eventually butcher the thing. And, your legs were a blur as you ran away from that creature. We were all frightened that day.
June 10, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Reading that was really a joy. Yes, I know I’m not a boy, but it make me think about things in my own childhood I haven’t been so vividly reminded of in a long while … It is funny as I’ve read a little or communicated some with other people we grew up with that shared many common childhood threads and see their lives now as adults . . .including yours, I am amazed at how much much we share in our perspectives about the world around us, family, the church, and God . . . basically I think on this side of eternity if a bunch of us from the Tanglewood days met in a coffee shop with our spouses we’d have a lot to talk about . . .I think we would laugh and cry in the same places . . .if it isn’t until the other side of eternity . . . we’ll enjoy it even more . . .anyway, thanks for writing!