When I was in the first grade I experienced my first broken bone. It all started out innocently, enough, but isn’t that usually the case. A group of us kids from the street were at my next door neighbor’s house playing Cannon Ball. Cannon Ball is a simple, imaginative game. One person, usually a bigger one in the group, lays down with his back on the ground to be the Cannon. He draws his legs up to his chest, with feet positioned for the Ball. The Ball is a lighter kid who simply sits on the feet of the Cannon. The Cannon then launches the Ball for a squealing flight in the air, landing safely several feet away.
Of course there are interesting variables in this game that we might not always think about, such as, if the Cannon has one leg stronger than the other, or if the ball is not sitting squarely. The Ball might also be sitting leaning back a little, and when the launch happens, the Ball is splayed out in a back bending pose. Too bad we didn’t have video cameras. Anyway, after one particularly high and amazing launch I came down from the stratosphere to catch myself in an awkward way. After going home I complained that my arm hurt and I just knew it was broken. My mom checked it out and saw no evidence of a break, so she gave me some sympathy and said we’d keep an eye on it. When a week went by and I was still complaining, she finally took me to the doctor. Hair-line fracture was the diagnosis. It had actually started healing. No need for a cast, but I got to wear a sling for a few days. That was good for some sympathy at school for about the first couple hours. I don’t recall that I played Cannon Ball much after that, but there were plenty of other ways to exercise my imagination.
Our rental house stood near a creek (perhaps a man-made creek, doubling as a drainage ditch). I would spend hours down at the water, watching the tadpoles (my grandmother called them “polliwogs” but that didn’t seem to be a proper name for such fascinating creatures). Tadpoles are baby frogs. They are clearly water dwellers, with no legs, a tail that propels them in their environment. I would watch in fascination as they began to sprout little legs, first toward the back of their torpedo bodies, then little legs toward the front. At the same time, the tail began to shrink. With amazement and wonder I witnessed the transformation of the tadpole into an adult frog. Is there anything in creation as marvelous as that?
But the creek was not just the place that I studied tadpoles and minnows, it was also the source of one of my earliest adventures. You see, I didn’t come to understand that this waterway was a drainage ditch until I was much older. For me, this was a mighty river, ranking with the Mississippi, or even the Amazon. One day, out of simple curiosity (and possibly, boredom), I began to explore. I walked along the bank, sometimes in the water. On the side where my home was, the houses were all somewhat similar to mine, smaller, lower income homes. The other side was different. The other side had marvelous, neatly kept, lawns stretching toward the nice middle-class sized homes. For me, I was exploring unknown territory, looking out for hostile natives, pausing to look up, ever so carefully, over the bank to study the habitats of strange races of “natives”. Eventually I came out to a bridge, a road crossing between the two world. It was a road familiar to me from travels with my family, or walks to the store. At that point I began my trek back home. Continuing to explore.
When I learned about Spanish Conquistadors I thought back to my own explorations and adventures. Later, during a training for chaplains called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) my supervisor pressed me about an encounter I was discussing and he asked, “So, what makes your curious about this?” I slowly began to realized that my natural instinct to be curious and even adventurous, had been tamed by way too many adult experiences in life. Maybe that is why I still love to read “Calvin and Hobbes” comics. Maybe I can recapture some of that innocent imaginative curiosity and sense of adventure. “I know you are still in there. Come on out! Let’s play!”
Of course there are interesting variables in this game that we might not always think about, such as, if the Cannon has one leg stronger than the other, or if the ball is not sitting squarely. The Ball might also be sitting leaning back a little, and when the launch happens, the Ball is splayed out in a back bending pose. Too bad we didn’t have video cameras. Anyway, after one particularly high and amazing launch I came down from the stratosphere to catch myself in an awkward way. After going home I complained that my arm hurt and I just knew it was broken. My mom checked it out and saw no evidence of a break, so she gave me some sympathy and said we’d keep an eye on it. When a week went by and I was still complaining, she finally took me to the doctor. Hair-line fracture was the diagnosis. It had actually started healing. No need for a cast, but I got to wear a sling for a few days. That was good for some sympathy at school for about the first couple hours. I don’t recall that I played Cannon Ball much after that, but there were plenty of other ways to exercise my imagination.
Our rental house stood near a creek (perhaps a man-made creek, doubling as a drainage ditch). I would spend hours down at the water, watching the tadpoles (my grandmother called them “polliwogs” but that didn’t seem to be a proper name for such fascinating creatures). Tadpoles are baby frogs. They are clearly water dwellers, with no legs, a tail that propels them in their environment. I would watch in fascination as they began to sprout little legs, first toward the back of their torpedo bodies, then little legs toward the front. At the same time, the tail began to shrink. With amazement and wonder I witnessed the transformation of the tadpole into an adult frog. Is there anything in creation as marvelous as that?
But the creek was not just the place that I studied tadpoles and minnows, it was also the source of one of my earliest adventures. You see, I didn’t come to understand that this waterway was a drainage ditch until I was much older. For me, this was a mighty river, ranking with the Mississippi, or even the Amazon. One day, out of simple curiosity (and possibly, boredom), I began to explore. I walked along the bank, sometimes in the water. On the side where my home was, the houses were all somewhat similar to mine, smaller, lower income homes. The other side was different. The other side had marvelous, neatly kept, lawns stretching toward the nice middle-class sized homes. For me, I was exploring unknown territory, looking out for hostile natives, pausing to look up, ever so carefully, over the bank to study the habitats of strange races of “natives”. Eventually I came out to a bridge, a road crossing between the two world. It was a road familiar to me from travels with my family, or walks to the store. At that point I began my trek back home. Continuing to explore.
When I learned about Spanish Conquistadors I thought back to my own explorations and adventures. Later, during a training for chaplains called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) my supervisor pressed me about an encounter I was discussing and he asked, “So, what makes your curious about this?” I slowly began to realized that my natural instinct to be curious and even adventurous, had been tamed by way too many adult experiences in life. Maybe that is why I still love to read “Calvin and Hobbes” comics. Maybe I can recapture some of that innocent imaginative curiosity and sense of adventure. “I know you are still in there. Come on out! Let’s play!”
No comments:
Post a Comment