Childhood Truths of the Past... (My Past)

By G. E. Shuman

The following are a few childhood truths. They are lessons I learned as a youth… a few of them, the hard way.

They CAN make calendars ahead of time, and sell them the summer before the new year, even if you are baffled by the idea that anyone can know which days will have what numbers next year.

Electricity will not leak out of the light fixture in your closet, wasting all that energy, even if ’someone’ smashed the bulb with a baseball bat while it was turned on, to see what would happen. I asked my dad if that hypothetical situation would waste power. He wanted to know why I was asking.

I was once very sure that a vegetable peeler would do a great job of smoothing the sharp corners of the woodwork of our kitchen and dining room doorways. I was right.

Stretching out on the three side chairs pushed in under the dining room table is a great way to take a secluded Sunday afternoon nap, especially if the table cloth comes down and hides you, and more especially if you want to have the whole neighborhood searching the woods for you.

A pot of gasoline placed under a pile of dry leaves you’re getting ready to burn makes a wonderful airborne projectile. I just knew it would.

Swallowing a bottle of nose drops, thinking it was cough syrup, can help a five year old sleep very soundly for two or three days straight, and help his mom get that nice gray hair she always wanted.

Snow banks also make great places to take naps. I love naps.

If you are a boy, and dress up as a witch, (rubber mask required,) on Halloween night, after all your friends have gone home, no one in the neighborhood will ever know you went around trick-or-treating twice. And, all the old ladies who have run out of candy will feel sorry for you and give you cookies… and money.

If you shovel a snow-maze all over your front lawn, from the driveway to the house, the mailman really will follow it to get to your front door. It’s great, until your mother sees you watching him do it.

If your least-favorite fifth grade teacher leaves his car’s convertible top down on a sunny fall day, that’s not your fault. It’s also not your fault that it requires only a few minutes after school for five boys to fill that convertible, level, with dry leaves. I’m sorry, Mr. Oullette. (It’s only taken me forty-six years to say that.)

Nothing tastes better than a stolen watermelon.

Old guys at the American Legion Hall will share their Halloween party with young kids who sneak in the back door. They will also share their punch.

If you wire an old car antenna onto your walkie-talkie, you can make your friend’s mother think aliens are in her TV.

If your five foot tall model rocket with the letters U.S. Govt. stenciled on it lands in your neighbor-lady’s tree, she will not give it back to you.

Don’t be deceived. Your first grade teacher is not in the next room for a VERY important conference with another teacher, and she really can’t see you through the walls. She went out for a smoke. (Shame on you, Mrs. Jones, wherever you are.)

When your pastor comes for a Sunday afternoon visit, sticking fireworks up his car’s tail pipe probably won‘t impress him, or your dad.

Old neighbor-ladies with clean floors have no sense of humor when it comes to mud.

If you’re about eight years old, and you notice two neighborhood dogs that seem to be, mysteriously, stuck together, just walk away. It isn’t worth it.

It’s better to go to Sunday School than to fake a side ache and go to the hospital.

If you own a small pet monkey, and your new girlfriend’s mother stops by for a visit, don’t let him sit on her shoulder… not even for a minute.

Water rockets, when launched with Dad’s air compressor, will never be seen again.

If Mom tells you to go clean your room, covering the junk on your floor with a throw-rug will not work.

Your sister’s cat can be neither bathed nor baptized, no matter how much it needs both.

Chat

By G. E. Shuman

Okay. Here’s the question of the day. Do any of you remember something called party lines? If you do, please raise your hand. Now, please, NOBODY tell me if some people actually just raised their hands. That would be a bit disconcerting. If you are one of the few, or many, who may have raised their hands right now, my advice is to not tell a lot of people about that. I can’t actually see your hands, you know. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that you exist at all. For all I know, I could well be chatting with only myself right now. It would not be the first time.

In any case, including the possible case of my being in a conversation with only me, I do, vaguely, remember party lines. (If you don’t know what they were, please look the term up. I’ll wait for you.) This is mostly due to the fact that a Christian summer camp I attended as a youth was a bit behind the times, technologically, although no one I knew used the word ‘technologically’ back then. The only telephone on the campground, (Yes, we said ’tele’ with phone.) was the one in the ‘office’, and that one was on the aforementioned party line, with about six parties on it, as I remember. I believe we also had a party line at our home when I was very young, but I’m not sure of that. You can call my mother in Florida and ask her. What I am sure of is that, if you had a party line, it could provide very readily-available entertainment. All you had to do was to, as silently as possible, pick up the phone receiver. (I’m not quite sure everyone even knows what a receiver is now, either. Good grief.) As you lifted the receiver you crossed your fingers, in the hope that someone who shared the line with you was already chatting with someone else when you did so, and that they did not hear the ‘click‘ as you picked up. (Come on, seniors. You KNOW you did this, at least once.) This way you could hear all the gossip immediately, right from the source, as it was produced… at the speed of light, in fact. The only way the people who were chatting would know you were there was if you sneezed or produced some other strange bodily sound.

“Mabel! Is that you, listening in on the line? I can hear you breathing. We’re having a private conversation here, sharing prayer requests with each other.” -Click- (They had no way of knowing it was you listening, not Mabel, or just how many of their ‘prayer requests’ you had heard before they discovered you were there.) What could be more fun than that?

When private phone lines came along, things got better, for a time. Or, maybe they just got less interesting. People still chatted, but it took longer for the ‘news’ to get around; you know, one call at a time. And, in all of modern history, it had never been any fun having some fast-breaking excitement on your mind and then having to write it down in a letter to someone. Licking a stamp and then staring at your mailbox for weeks, in hopes of a reply, got to be a bit tedious.

It is an inalterable truth that we humans have always invented ways of advancing, developing, and improving our conveniences, communications, and sin. To me, our present electronic age is proof of all of that. Coincidentally, (not), the Bible says that, in the last days, men will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and that knowledge will increase. The Bible has a habit of making understatements like that.

Now I need, or want, to make my usual case against facebook. The case is that I don’t really believe it is bad, although I have sworn to be the last person in the country to have an account with those folks. Part of my problem with it, personally, is the number of people I know who have said that I HAVE to go on facebook. “Um. No, I don’t have to.” That’s my usual reply. I am quite allergic to any new bandwagon that everyone is jumping on, and will usually avoid it for that reason alone. (I’m not the least bit stubborn. I’m just determined, and I‘m determined that there is a difference.) Another aversion to facebook is that I have seen people hurt by this new, world-wide party line. Facebook, as with any other of mankind’s modern tools, can be used for good, or for evil. Maybe it’s just too convenient a communications tool, and too easily used for that evil option. I will say that if it has caused you or your family any hurt, remember that your computer has a switch to turn it off, and you are free to use that switch, at your discretion. This action is remarkably electronically similar to hanging up that old telephone receiver. A third, but probably not final reason I avoid facebook is the fact that it consumes so much time, which adds to my general apathy toward the whole thing. If I want to waste time I will watch the news.

I leave you today with a simple note of caution in the practice of any and all manner of chat, be it through a person, phone, or pc. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.” (1 Corr. 15:33. The Bible. KJV)