So, this guy told me some guy told him that he wanted to share some stories with the general public about some secret adventures he did when he was quite young, but nevertheless, over many years, he never told his parents about. Sadly, his beloved parents are deceased now, and this guy now wanted to release this top-secret information about his childhood. Kind of like the 100-year rule in certain government secrets, I guess.  It’s not clear why he chose now to release it — perhaps to get it off his chest because the burden was becoming too heavy, or maybe because he wanted the world to know that sometimes you can be extremely stupid and careless and still survive in the world if God chooses to protect you from yourself.  Although as I listened to his ancient pre-adolescent stories, I wonder if the guy was following what he perceived was a more spiritual path, that is, maybe he thought the souls of his deceased parents were somehow able to read the print on a world-famous blog post?

What is clear to me though, was that this guy certainly missed his parents, despite what he perceived was their lack of knowledge of what he did.   It sounds like they were good people who raised him well and I wish for them blessed peace and happiness up in heaven.

But here’s the thing: I think everyone harbors secrets from their childhood, or younger years that haven’t been released, and I really don’t think this guy is any different than anyone else in that regard. In fact, I’ve heard there may have been young ladies who have ridden horses naked with their friends, in the dark of night — enjoying the wild freedom and danger, but satisfied that they were alone on the trails in the woods in back of the stables.  On the other hand, I wonder if they really were alone, because after all, back then, boy scouts frequently camped out in the woods and were trained to be quiet, not making a sound, especially if they were in the elite sub-organization Order of the Arrow. 

I guess it’s time now to publish this information about this guy, because after all, I’m a writer and that is what I do.  The first story has to do with swimming. He wasn’t a very good swimmer and nearly drowned several times but eventually overcame his fears and learned to swim. So, with his newly acquired skill, he decided to test it, and apparently would walk alone to a small lake in the woods, and swim laps around the mucky lake during the summers when his parents were at work. It’s not clear if he brought his bathing suit or not, or whether he was “au naturel” but nevertheless he apparently seemed to enjoy the freedom of being alone, swimming in a lake full of snapping turtles with no one around, during the sweltering summer days.  After I heard that, I thought that was a stupid thing for that kid to do.

In those same woods, he would also apparently take his father’s .22 Rifle into the same woods and act like he was hunting squirrels or something, even though he had no safety training, and never shot squirrel, just beer cans, and thankfully, he narrowly missed shooting the foot of his friend when the safety was off.  I figured at the age of 11 or 12, same age as the lake swimming, he was lucky to have avoided death and disaster again.

And then there was the time, around the same age, possibly younger like 9 or so, he relates that he and his friend would run around all the neighborhoods and mistakenly ran through the back yard of a man who had kennels of some kind of prized dogs. The owner ran out of the house and pointed his .357 magnum snub-nosed pistol at the boys and forced them at gun-point into his house, accusing them of trying to steal his prized dogs or something. The guy told them to tell the truth about who stole his dogs, because if they lied, he would tell their parents! So of course, they made sure parents never knew about this because they would be in even deeper trouble, he thought, or they would potentially call the police and put the kids in jail.

I had hoped that was the last of his stories, but he blurted out a couple more at me, so I felt obligated to write it down.  One day after a little league baseball game, his friend Cliff said, lets ride our bike to my house, for lunch.  It’s only about 4 or 5 miles away.  Sure thing, he said, and they rode their bikes to his house, which happened to be the massive State Prison facility.  The guards let them inside the minimum – security section, actually saluting the kid, because in fact, the kid was the son of the Stage Prison warden. Yeah, they apparently had lunch, prepared by an inmate and details event have been written elsewhere.

I was hoping his stories would end soon, and he told me one more.  He was even younger perhaps 9 or 10 at the time, and he and his friends would sometimes climb up the gas-line pipes to the top of their elementary school roof and then play stick-ball with sticks and the rocks that were on the roof, hitting them across the street as if they were home-runs.  And again, apparently no one ever knew, and they were never arrested.

That’s really all I have time for at this time, and it seems to me, I have a feeling that this kid was blessed by God to grow up and be successful and not dead or maimed, and yet I imagine he has a lot more stories over the ensuing years that he has decided not to share.  Thankfully

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