That 10 Year Old

Looking back through life’s lens at that 10-year-old boy of 1957, he is still recognizable.  Perhaps a combination of Nordic genes, first-born male and insulated small town life - or just fate produces this archetype.   What do you think the problem is, dad?  Heredity or environment?  

His basic characteristics remain;  introverted, and at age 10, truly shy, but over time, with great effort and some trembling, transformable into a temporary extrovert, as later Myers-Briggs results confirm.  (It has always seemed unfair to be so fated. Extroverts suck the life-blood from you and flourish, and we, with no obvious recourse, go into seclusion to restore our depleted batteries. It is some small consolation to know that the commissions of those future sales reps were largely dependent on the skills of we future engineers.  It’s not all bad - see Susan Cain’s Ted Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts)

Handicapped by his high myopia, he is somewhat timid and destined to always attempt to achieve, driven by fear of failure or disapproval.  (I think if I could rewind, I would study less, work less and enjoy moments more.  I hope for time to put those tenets into practice.  I’m working on it.  I’ve got the “work less” covered.)

But at age 10, future trials were out-of-sight, out-of-mind.  Life was good and the world was not a scary place.  That skinny, socially awkward 10 year old was not at all out-of-place in the little town of Lowry.  This profile was the norm, albeit most not so frail, and life was happily predictable.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in my youth I was a gang member.   

gang n [M.E. ; A.S.] an organized group of youths from the same neighborhood banded together for social reasons.

a.k.a.  a bunch of hoodlums up to no good. At least in our own minds, that sounded right.

We never thought of ourselves as “organized” however.  We did have an undisputed leader but he just emerged because he had the talent for it and we were a bunch of willing followers.  He was an impressive idea man, throwing out a good mix of mischievous schemes to keep the troops energized. But his great talent was assigning “handles” to gang members.

We called them nicknames and our leader was the dispenser of these tags, except for his own. We affectionately tagged him “Tubba”.  Tubba liked his food. The gang had Mucka, Utta, Tonto, King, Dubshay, Engie, Speed, Butch and Big Time. I was “Hoppy” (after Hopalong Cassidy - the cowboy, not the Lion.  This perhaps stemmed from a picture of me, dressed up in a cowboy outfit, complete with hat, six gun and a fringed shirt - see episode 1).  I felt rooked with such a common handle, but it surely could have been worse - luckily, no one saw the bathtub pictures. Our handles gave us freedom to create a new and separate identity for ourselves, and made us more sinister and exciting – or so we thought.  Sinister was nothing to be sneezed at in Lowry.

In Lowry, nicknames were common, and not just for kids.  Or maybe they just persisted into adulthood.  But it seemed to be only a guy thing.  No woman I knew had a nickname, other than the unimaginative standards – Maggie, Sally, Dort, Tina ...  I always thought a nickname would have been welcomed by all the Leonas, Mabels, Esthers and Hilmas we had in town. But not so.  There were some classics on the male side: Wimpy who never uttered a spoken word that I ever heard; Fluke & Spook who liked their beer; Slim, who was not; Bumpy, who earned that nickname honestly; Bubby, no clue on where that came from; Goose; an assortment of Buds, Punkys and Juniors.  

The gang’s sole purpose was entertainment.  We had our staples of course – baseball, basketball, football and hockey.  But the true reason we cherished gang membership was the group mischievous activities (more on this in a later episode).  The gang members were a cross-section of the community and I don’t think any of us thought about status, religion, or ethnic background.  We just wanted to have fun.

I suppose there was some parallel universe where the girls in town lived, but I only collided with it at church or in the schoolroom.  Their lives were as mysterious and foreign to me as Angkor Wat.