Sooner or Later…

I got straight A’s in high school” – Lie.  Math was very difficult for me. We moved in gradeschool during the great *New Math* and I never really caught up. I always got A/B grades in math but never really understood the reasoning. Not understanding the reasoning makes classes such as chemistry & physics extremely difficult – at least the math portions. Ever wonder why my major changed from astrophysics to biology? Math.

“I rode a motorcycle on someone’s shoulders” – True. I was somewhere between 5-7 years old and sat on my dad’s shoulders. We rode in a friend’s backyard in Illinois. That backyard had a pretty good slope or maybe even a steepish hill, that ended at a Kankakee River canal. One wrong sway or speed burst and we could either slide down the hill or swim in the canal. The ride was great fun with lots of squealing & laughing. This was during the early 1970′s before the world moved on. I was the oldest child and my parents were young. A great combination, mostly. First borns get raised too strict in some areas and easy going in others – exact opposite of what younger siblings endure. Young parents are fun in someways and hell in others. That ride is one of my favorite memories.

“I jumped off a cliff” – True. I was in fourth or fifth grade,  the cliff was about 20-25 feet high. Dad & his boss had decided to take a day off to fish with the kids. That day the fishing spot was the strip mines of Illinois back when the sites were considered junk land & not valuable waterfront property. The four of us – his two sons plus my sister and I-  had gotten bored leaving the dads to fish while we played team tag. The teams consisted of oldest against youngest. The youngest had us trapped at the top of a narrow steep hillcut - or at least they thought. We both jumped. It wasn’t that tall. Jumping is easy. Feeling trapped with no way out – the chest tightness, feeling squeezed & desperate. It’s so hard to describe the feeling of not losing, not being caught, not whimping out…maybe there are no words. Landing is hard. At least I didn’t land on the rock at the bottom.

Nobody at the shower guessed correctly.