One of the best parts about growing up is you never know you’re doing it. It just happens, whether you like it or not. And that’s a good thing. Unless you really, really don’t like it, but that’s a different story and a whole ‘nother issue.
Growing up happens in a lot of ways. Take social situations. When you’re a kid, you often say some very immature, really stupid things during them. You can’t help it, you’re just a kid. But, without doing anything but living, you grow up. You gain experience, knowledge even. Just by living your life, day by day. With your eyes open. And your brain functioning. Most of the time.
And then over time, something changes in you. You find confidence. You gain maturity. You become an adult. And you find yourself, while mingling among other adults at social gatherings, uttering some very mature … but really stupid things.
Oops, seems I may have gone a little on the high side in the “Guess How Much I Weigh” contest.
This is called growing up.
And that’s just one example. You gather up lots of them during the course of your life. So many that you eventually create a big, steaming pile of them. And they’re all crammed inside your full-grown, adult mind.
And before you know it, you’ve grown up so much, and for so long … that you overload your circuits. You contract Alzheimer’s, forget whether your pants’ zipper goes in the front or the back, your right from your wrong, even how to chew with your mouth closed. And you end up sitting on a park bench all day, yelling at every poor fool that walks by, “Who the hell are you, … and dammit it all, that’s KING Charles when you’re addressing me! Off with your freaking head!”
But I’m getting ahead of my point. Let’s get back to the growing-up part. Let’s find a good part about growing up. Let’s go back to the summer of 1973. My summer of 1973, to be more specific.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
And that’s MISTER Dickens when you’re addressing me, dammit.
I was 15 at that time. A really lousy age to be. Especially when you live in a rural area, far from the center of town and most of your friends. You’re not old enough to drive a car to hang out with them, which pisses you off. Yet you’re too old to be seen having your mother drive you to them, which pisses you off.
So, as you can imagine, you spend most of your days of 15 being pissed off. Especially during the summer when you have a lot of time on your hands and nothing to do with it. So what’s a pissed-off, not-full-grown man to do?
You work. For your grandfather. On his dairy farm. As I’ve mentioned before, dairy farms consist of a lot of cows. Can’t make milk without them. And cows can’t make milk without a lot of … hay.
Hay is a very interesting thing, actually. It’s made out of grass, which is very supple, very light and grows up very high and fast in large fields during the summer. When it gets to that point, dairy farmers come along, cut it down, let it dry out in the hot sun and then bundle it up in large lumps, called bales.
Reader, meet hay bale. Hay bale … reader. Great, we’re all acquainted now.
Here’s the interesting part. What once was light and supple, is now very stick-like, scratchy and heavy. Which is good for cows, because that’s the way they like to eat it. So much so, they eat lots of it. Which is good for the farmer, because the cows are happy, full and make lots of milk.
But … in order for all of this to work, all of this hay has to be brought to the farm and be put away in barns. Hay can’t get wet, don’t you know. Well, now you know.
And this is where the pissed-off 15-year-old comes in. Along with his only-slightly-less-pissed-off 14-year-old brother.
“Son, this is how it works. You go in the barn. Your brother here, he gets up in the hay wagon. He picks up a bale of hay, passes it to you, and you take it and stack it in the barn. But here’s the fun part. When you get them stacked up really high, all the way to the roof, then you two get to use this nice conveyor belt and the bales will come right up to you. Nice and neat, nice and easy.”
A photographer’s rendition of the “fun, nice and easy” part.
“How much do those things weigh?”
“About 75 pounds.”
“My brother weighs 75 pounds.”
“Good, then just imagine your brother has pissed you off, so much so you pick him up and throw him in the barn. Ought to be easy for a constantly-pissed-off 15-year-old boy like you. Okay, I’m going to get another wagon full of hay. Let’s see if you two can empty this one before I get back.”
I threw my brother in the barn a hell of lot of times that summer. Over and over. And my grandfather was wrong. It wasn’t easy. After more than a dozen of brothers, I mean bales, everything from my fingertips to my cell membranes hurt. Ached. Screamed at me, enough already!
But fortunately, my grandfather was right about one thing. I was 15 and constantly pissed off. And that meant I wasn’t fully grown up yet. Which also was good for him and the cows that summer.
Because the more it hurt, the more it pissed me off. And the more brothers I threw in the barn. Right up to the roof. And on to the next wagon, and the next barn. After a while, it didn’t hurt as much. But by then it was too late.
And by then, the summer was over. I was back at school, back in town, back among my friends. And back standing in front of my locker, when one of them came up to say … hey. Sort of.
“Holy crap, what the hell happened to you?!”
“Whatdaya mean, what happened to me.”
“I mean, wow, you’re really different.”
“And you’re really retarded.”
“No, I mean it, look at yourself. You don’t notice it?”
So I did. I went to the boy’s room and looked in the mirror. Really looked in the mirror. That’s when I realized that all those bales, the aches, all that pain … had paid off.
Me, circa May 1973.
Me, circa September 1973. Well, sort of. I wasn’t wearing a hat.
I went back to my locker.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?”
“Why, hello there Sally. How was your summer?”
“Not as good as my fall …”
That’s when I realized the second time my grandfather was wrong about lifting and throwing all of those bales of hay, all summer long.
This was the fun part.
