The Difference Being

I was a dirty young boy.

No, I wasn’t peeping into women’s windows as they changed; I was a rural kid (damn it) living on the outskirts of Ogdensburg, at the place you know now as The Stonefence Motel..

I was dirty in the literal sense—dirt all over me. Every night, I had to take a bath because I played outside all day long. Playing with my Tonka trucks in the dirt, climbing a tree, running all over on my bike, working up a sweat playing hide-and-seek—I was a kid on the move and was never inside unless it was bad weather, time to eat or go to bed. Outside was where the fun was; there was very little in the way of electronics to keep us sitting on our butts, amused for hours.

Being outside and in the country, I learned early about Poison Ivy’s talent; it was basically the viral video of the plant world. Usually, I would only get it in only one area -such as my calf or foot. One time, I contracted a particularly bad case - it was all over my body - all over. The only exception was my face. Mom, being an RN, did what she could with the over-the-counter ointments of the time, but it was just a matter of letting it run its course. She literally cut up bed sheets to wrap my limbs in, as the poison ivy pustules would weep…it was just awful. I was a mummy by my mommy. You paid this price for being a kid out in the country and exploring the vast wilderness behind my house (in reality, it was only about 2 acres). If it wasn’t the poison ivy glomming on to you, it was burdocks, or “burrs” as we called them. You’d get them attached to your socks, pants - just about anything. God forbid you got them in your hair.

In another instance of getting out there and experiencing life, Ed and I, along with another kid, Mike, decided to spend the night out in a 2 man pup tent in my backyard - which was mostly thick brush, lilac bushes, burr bushes, and such. If nature had a motley group of foilage, my backyard was it. We would have this imagined wild adventure in the rugged northwest - in the safety of my backyard. There we were, three boys and Ed’s golden lab, Teddy, all tucked in the tent at night, up, talking about scary stuff - like Bigfoot. I was relating a made-up story about the famous cryptid when we heard something - brush snapping and moving. We looked at each other, scared out of our minds, as we shushed each other to listen! God, was it Bigfoot? No, it couldn’t be! Teddy the dog perked up his ears, Ed doing his best to keep him quiet, so he wouldn’t give away our location. My mind tried to search for a logical explanation - I thought it might be my older brother Mike coming down to scare us because, yeah, he was like that. He was the pain in the butt teasing brother we all know and love, and this would be just like him. There was more brush cracking; then, we saw traces of a flashlight beam falling on our tent, more brush snapping, more rustling of bushes much closer, and someone - or something - coming closer. Well, if it was Bigfoot, I reasoned, at least he was the intelligent kind, flashlight and all, and we shouldn’t worry about being taken back to his lair and eaten. Suddenly, the tent flaps part and shines the flashlight on our faces, blinding us like a cop pulling over a driver at night. I was relieved it wasn’t Bigfoot and yelled, “Mike, you frigger!” - only I didn’t say frigger; no, it was the big one, the atom bomb of words. A word boys my age would get in trouble for saying if an adult heard us. It was the word kids should never be heard using.

It was Ed’s father coming to check up on Ed.

His father. An adult. And I’m sure he heard me. That was it; he’d tell my mother, and I be grounded like corn in a grist mill.

“Eddy, you ok?” he growled in his baritone, ignoring the practical death warrant I had essentially sworn out on myself.

After that heart attack he’d given all of us, he left, having done his fatherly duty, and there we were alone again. No more stories; we were tired, and it was time for some shut-eye. We maneuvered for space in the tent in our sleeping bags, the poor dog angling for whatever he could get. The bumpy ground under us was so comforting. We fell asleep briefly, but me, being the pain in the butt on how and where I sleep, mentioned something to Ed about leaving and going up to the house. He craned his head around to look at his glow-in-the-dark windup Timex travel clock and said it was like 5 am and would be morning soon. I thought, wow, that had been a quick night - it turns out he had the clock upside down.

Not long after, as those guys were sleeping and I was actually starting to drift off, it started to rain. Of course. Now, we didn’t know a darn thing about tent camping and what would be a good place to pitch a tent, should it rain. Well, the rain started coming at the end of the tent where my feet were and into my sleeping bag. It was at that point in life I started hating camping. What did people see in this?! I’m out here in a too-hot sleeping bag lying on what must have been a rock quarry, with two other guys in a too-small tent with a smelly dog above my head, risking abduction from Bigfoot. More rain; now the other guys are starting to understand a dike had broken somewhere, and they, too, are getting wet. As we moved to try to inch back from the wet, we started cramping the dog, Teddy, and now he’s up around trying to find a place to bed down. We decided to jump ship (as it were), run up to the house, and spend the night - probably 150 feet. Off we went dog in tow, leaving all our camping gear behind. We got into the house, and I would have Ed and Mike sleep on our sectional couch; I was going to the comfort of my own bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard a shriek - my mother yelling there’s a dog in her room! Mom would tolerate dogs but liked to have them at arm’s length, and God forbid if they licked her. Ed gets the dog, and after I explain to my mother what happened, we go back to bed. Not much later, the sun starts coming up. What a night.

My how times have changed. I rarely see a kid out on a bike or playing outside in general, let alone tent camping or climbing a tree. You’ll see kids looking down at an iPad as their parents are having dinner or shopping through the supermarket - God forbid they get bored or look around and see the real world - but I don’t see them engaging the world I used to - and probably YOU used to.

I asked my twenty-something daughter if they even have dance clubs anymore, and apparently not so much; it’s just not what kids do anymore. I think that’s missing out on a lot of fun (and exercise) and, maybe most importantly, meeting a special someone. “How do you meet people?” I asked. Of course, the damn phone. I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible way to meet people. You need to see the person in the flesh the first time to get a fairly accurate impression of whether you’re attracted to them physically. Online, women use a tightly cropped photo of them in a bridesmaid gown from a wedding twenty years ago, and guys will be holding up a fish they caught while wearing big sunglasses and a hat. The upshot is you don’t really know who the hell this person is, appearance-wise, and whatever their bio says, well, that’s a crapshoot.

When we got in trouble - or were doing sketchy/illegal/stuff-our-parents-would-kill-us-if-they-found-out things, we sure as hell didn’t record it and put it out for the whole world to see. We had more brains than that. We didn’t want others to know - unless it was for bragging purposes. Today, it’s almost a badge of honor - or to get those coveted clicks on your Instagram account, TikTok, or whatever social platform you choose. When we did crap, it was pretty much done and forgotten; you put that stuff up on the Internet, and it’s out there forever, which will be a great asset once you try to get a serious job or when a prospective partner researches you.

If I had a magic wand and could go back in time to then, well, I’d probably recall long-forgotten things that were irksome, even painful. But thank God I grew up in a time when people still met in person, did things together, and took chances to experience life.