An Overdo Chat with Me and You
Monday: How do you (inner child) see me (adult self)?
First of all I want to thank Diana for the most delightful swim among amazing swims I have had lately. When I read the prompt I immediately got a couple ideas that I wanted to write about, I hope one or two make the article. After my original thoughts I felt I needed to look at my childhood to be able to speak for it. This is when the amazing vivid memories kept rolling in. Many so vivid that they could have been in my dreams, but I was swimming lengths.
I thought about baseball games in the street, wondering how we never broke a window. We eventually got too big for that and went over to the park to play. I thought about touch football (American) games in the same street. Tackle football would be in the same park as baseball. We played so often that talk part of the park had no grass left for many years after we all moved on. There was boot hockey in the winter because the plows would not get down to the pavement and the cars would pack it all down so you could slide in those old buckle boots worn over tennis shoes.
After dinner it might be a game of tag, capture the flag, or hide and seek. Maybe a another game of street football if the weather was nice, but never too far away so that when the street lights came on we couldn’t all run home before our mom’s got angry and called for us. The other thought that came into my mind was although those people were so important to me back then. I still identify houses on our street when talking to my brother or Gerry by the friend who lived there back then. It will always be their house to me. Only Gerry is still in my life from all of those close relationships of my youth. I have to admit that if only one remains that it would be Gerry. Not one of the other people that lived on my street is even a Facebook friend now.
I can remember all of the games all of the fun but I can’t remember who won or lost. I know we all played to win but we chose up sides each time and played for love of the game and for our friendships. We were very competitive but we played so often that everyone won enough. Later in our teens tennis and golf were added to the games we played. That was the first big separation of our group because it involved less people to play. What I remember from those days was playing. Doing things for the fun of it.
One of the things that got instilled in me from those days was my highly competitive spirit. I am not a gifted athlete. I don’t even have the physical body to be a gifted athlete. If I did this competitive spirit might have made me a star. I was not a bad loser, I just hated to lose. I was a very gracious winner, not the type to rub it in but winning was like a drug. Even teams I follow as a spectator I am that way. I coached athletics for about two-thirds of the time I taught. If the team I was coaching lost I would be very positive in from of my athletes, but despondent when I got home.
When I started teaching I put all of my energy into that. Coaching was a part of teaching and involved time outside to the normal day and the normal school year. I dove into that also. I have written about putting teaching first and even second in my life. What was on the bottom was my inner child. Thinking back if it hadn’t been for Gerry, that inner child might have been lost. We lived an eight hour drive apart but Gerry would encourage me to be part of adventures he would do.
Gerry and I have talked about how proud we are of the other person, me giving back by becoming a teacher and coach. Me by the example he set. Like the Universe Gerry would be ready when I was. He was always involved in sports, he still plays ice hockey at age sixty-six. He runs, bowls, and golfs. With all of these he gives back. Gerry has raised money for the Leukemia Foundation, cancer research, and dozens of other causes. He is part of a Guinness Book of World Records continuous ice hockey game that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research and lasted over ten days of him playing and resting. He is one of the best humans I know. He has also made sure the inner child never left me.
No matter how many times Gerry would hear me say no, I can’t take days off from teaching, Gerry would keep asking and find things for us to do when it was my short summer break because of coaching. When Gerry and I would play golf we would of course keep score until one of us would get too far ahead or one of us would have a bad day. The score would stop being taken and we would congratulate each other on good shots the rest of the round. It is not that Gerry and I don’t get on each other’s nerves from time to time. We do often but we let things go. Sixty years of a friendship can do that.
Okay, I know, it is time to get to the prompt. I have for a number of years worked on not being competitive even with myself. It is one of the reasons I have the enough mantra. I don’t swim for time and don’t walk for time. I play games to challenge my mind and do compete a bit there but when I feel the need to win, I put it down for a while. I do adventures, often with Gerry, but with other people too. I travel, I make snow angels when conditions are right.
I have learned to love nature and beauty again. I am back when I do play for love of the game and the fellowship. I am back having the creativity of my youth, expressed in different ways of course. I am feeling younger than I have in a long, long time. I think that if my inner child saw me right now my inner child would say, Bobby lets go play. There were many years when he would have shaken his head and asked what happened. I know he is glad I am back for the second round of childhood. But now I have the time and money for toys I only dreamed of back then.
