Twenty Things I had Learned by the Time I was Ten

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

          Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the times of my youth.  You know, back when rocks were soft and dinosaurs roamed the earth. It has often been said that life is a learning process, although lately mine seems to be more of a ‘forgetting’ process than anything else. I do believe that much of what I know now I learned by the time I was ten.  

Looking back, I don’t think I was the good little boy my mother remembers me being. I was also probably not too bright, based on some things I remember doing. Why do I remember them? I haven’t a clue.  Why do I feel that I should share them with you today? I haven’t a clue about that, either.  Anyway, here goes.

Twenty things I had learned by the time I was ten:

Number one:

Never be the first one on the playground slide if it rained last night. (That, as with many other things, I learned the hard way. In this case the wet way. I got a lot of attention in school the rest of the day.)

Number two:

Do NOT fight with your older brother on your parent’s brand-new       couch. You might end up waiting in the cellar for your dad to get home from work. (He was a softie, but we wouldn’t learn that for several more years.)

Number three:

Sticking a butter knife into a wall socket is not the smartest thing you could do to entertain yourself.  (Somewhat self-explanatory.)

Number four:

If you put a fever thermometer on the bathroom heater, your mother will still make you go to school.

Number five:

Never try to give your cat a bath. (Also, self-explanatory.)

Number six:

Don’t call your friend a sissy if he’s bigger than you. (Tried it. Didn’t like what happened next.)

Number seven:

Molasses and grasshopper poop look EXACTLY the same, and that is where the similarity ends.

Number eight:

Never play marbles for ‘keepsies’ with my friend Alan. After all, that is where the term ‘losing your marbles’ came from.

Number nine:

You should never shove a raw potato onto the pastor’s car’s tail pipe before church. (After church is better because by the time he tries to start his car you will have already gone home.)

Number ten:

It’s okay to help your friends fill your teacher’s convertible with dry leaves after school; just don’t get caught. (It did look pretty cool that way, though.)

Number eleven:

If you and your friends mistakenly trick-or-treat at the Elk’s Club Halloween party you probably shouldn’t drink the punch!

Number twelve:

An old pot filled with lawnmower gas and put under that pile of dry leaves you’re going to burn doesn’t qualify as autumn fireworks, but almost.

Number thirteen:

If you spill a gallon of milk on the back seat of your family’s new car, not telling your parents about it will catch up with you, in about two days.

Number fourteen:

Girls don’t really have cooties. At least the pretty ones don’t.

Number fifteen:

Never (even by mistake) step on a potato somehow left on the top cellar stair. Your butt will end up sorer than that time you fought with your brother on the new couch.

Number sixteen:

Taking a nap when you’re 7 or 8, across the chairs pushed under the dining room table is fun and can provide your family and neighbors an afternoon of healthy exercise looking for you in the woods.

Number seventeen:

Don’t drink children’s nose drops, (They used to make those.) unless you want to terrify your mother and sleep for two days.

Number eighteen:

UFOs are real.  (Ask me how I know this, later.)

Number nineteen:

If you wear a snow suit you can take a very comfortable nap in a snowbank.  This I learned WAYYY before I was ten.

Number twenty: 

If the pigs (somehow) get out of the pen your mom will let you skip school to catch them.  (A good thing to know on test day.)

Number twenty-one: (I thought there were only twenty. Oh well.)

A ten-year-old really can drive a car, providing it’s an old column-shift Rambler and you take it up into the family field when Dad’s at work.

Number twenty-two: (My Favorite)

Nothing tastes better than a stolen watermelon.

 

So, as a child, maybe especially as a child, but I’m not sure about that, we all want to be good. We’re just not very good AT it.

Have fun and behave yourself. (At least try.)

 

 

On Being Thankful

 By G. E. Shuman        

 

November is a month, here in the north, of settling in, of staying put, and of thinking thoughts of the soon-coming winter. For me, any spare time in October was spent doing the chores which make November’s settling in possible, like getting air conditioners put away, leaky doors fixed, and windows locked up tight in this hundred-plus year-old home of ours.

Leaves from our two huge maples are faithful to cover the lawn each autumn, and always get raked away, just before the rakes, themselves, get put away and replaced by snow shovels under the carport. Each year I spend some time making sure the snow blower still starts, and is greased up, fueled up, and ready for the weather to come. I don’t mind doing these chores that make my home as efficient and comfortable as possible when the harsh weather really hits.

          I always get a bit contemplative at this tucked-in holiday season, especially, it seems, in the past few years. This old house is not full of family and their belongings as it once was. Sometimes that is a difficult thing for me to think about.

I tend to be something of a night owl and am thankful for the chance to fill some late evening hours with writing to you, dear readers. So, thank you for easing those hours, and for the chance to express a few thoughts that many of us ‘northerners,’ even though we may be strangers, likely still share.

Even now, as I sit here in silence, it is cold outside the windows of this house on the hill, and it is very dark out there. The winds of one more late fall evening beat against the aging glass panes, but fortunately, those winds have always stayed on the outside of this place. For this I am thankful. Indeed, it is quite warm in here, and cozy, tonight. The furnace works well, and there is enough fuel, although, sometimes, I still light the fireplace as I did when the kids were young, just because.

           All this contemplation is not a sad thing to me, but is, sometimes, a chance for reflection on the things my wife and I have done this year, and, reaching back further, the things we have done throughout all the years that we have lived in this place. (Obviously, without her, there would be no ‘we,’ and likely, by now, not even a ‘me.’) We were so blessed to raise five tremendously talented children in this old place, for which I am, truly, thankful. Those five amazing people are as diverse as any five children could ever be, and I would still do anything at all for any one of them.

I have been, truly and unquestionably, very blessed. Having a beautiful, faithful, Christian wife, wonderful children and grandchildren, and a warm home to share with them all makes for quite a life. What more could a man ask for?

            I am not at all sure why the words that have assembled on my computer screen this evening have done so as they have. When I write, that is often the case. I think, tonight, it is just because I cannot help but tell you that I am very thankful for my life, and for the people in it; for what I have, and for what I have had. I hope you feel the same way about your life, too.

Unless you are a member of my family, or of my small group of friends, I do not know anything about your beliefs. In any case, I will let you know mine. I believe very much in God, in His Son Jesus, in our nation, and in family. I also believe it is important to recognize and to be grateful for, all that we have in the cornucopia of a country that we share, especially in this contemplative, settled-in time of year.

 I hope you will take a few minutes, as the holidays approach, not to stop and smell the roses, as there are few roses outside right now, but to stop and sense the fullness of what your life is, and of what you have experienced, so far. And, in a word, to be thankful.

            Happy Thanksgiving!

(Note: The author invites you to view his novels, “A Corner Café” and the second edition of “The Smoke and Mirrors Effect” at Amazon.com. Both books are available on Kindle, in paperback, and soon will be in hard cover. “George’s World” is also now in paperback.)