A tale of Two Scenes

One of the more liberating things over the last 5 or so years of my life has been to be honest and acknowledge my woundedness and to revisit various crime scenes in my life. I grieve a bit over how long this has taken me but am thankful that it has arrived nonetheless.
I wonder, Why so long? You know, I write that off in part to the craziness of how I have done maleness. It has been shaped by lots of things...mainly by my unique, learned biases along with my interpretations and homemade remedies to life's events. (Caveat: Of course, my journey as a guy is certainly not going to be universally applicable to all men. Today's blog is simply submitted as a hunk of catharsis intended for me and my life processing).

Never let them see you sweat! I confess that has been operative in my life, born out of the fierce competition on/in fields, rinks, classrooms, social mazes and the ultimate battleground of corporate America. Oh yes, no chink must be shown less you provide an advantage for the many opponents, visible and invisible, that are ever close by.
For whatever reason, that bucket is done carrying water for me. Maybe the timing of this recalibration is just part of getting physically older or gaining more spiritual maturity or just the effect of a lifetime of loving Cheetos...I don't know and for now it's not pertinent.
There are two scenes that I am going to drag out of closeted darkness and into the searing white light of day and fresh perspective. (Passing observation: Although willing to do this, I'm aware of a significant level of hesitancy at actually doing so.)

MURDER BY KETCHUP:
I was about 11 and we were on a family summer vacation heading up to Duluth and the North Shore. Very exciting for me, loved it up there with all the rock climbing a boy could want, the mystery of the largest freshwater lake in the entire world, the fancy white tablecloths of the Pickwick and their delectable, hot, Popovers and the funky little cabins of the North Shore low-tech "resorts". It was heaven I tell you!

We were riding in my Dad's shiny new 1957 Chevy with 3 on the tree and a Blueflame 6 banger power plant. Man he was proud of that car! Turns out it was the first brand new car he had ever purchased thus his pride was so very understandable. I still remember that on these kinds of vacations, my Mom would always seem to get my brother (4yrs younger) and me brand new bluejeans. They were the dark blue variety which, I believe, were really the only style around then. The main reason I think of those jeans is how incredibly stiff and uncomfortable they were. Like strapping two planks on your legs complete with that scratchy unbroken-in denim to boot. They also invariably were too long and I ended up with 4" or 5" cuffs which would eventually fill with acorns, twigs and other assorted detritus. But I digress on this Levis rabbit trail.....

So we pull into a little drive-in along Hwy 61, the only real route then available up North (way pre-35W). Ah yes, time for an all-American lunch of burgers and fries, the best meal ever invented in my 11 year estimation. At last the carhop brings the tray, connects it to the partially rolled-up driver's side door window and Dad distributes the goods. But then things turned decidedly ugly....
My brother and I sat in the back and started fighting over who got to use the red plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup first. In the ensuing battle we squeezed the bottle hard and ketchup squirted all over the ceiling and seats of this brand spanking new 1957 Chevy. My Dad went directly over the edge into a rage that had to have been pent up over a million things for a very long time because when it was released it rivaled the fierceness of Vesuvius!

He grabbed the ketchup bottle from us, shook for a second with unbridled anger and then proceeded to point the bottle at me while unloading it's entire contents all over my face, my chest, my arms.... In addition to the ketchup it was the hatred in his eyes that ultimately devastated me to my core. My reaction of hurt and unbelief quickly turned to anger. I bolted out of the car, dripping with ketchup, eyes stinging from tomatoes and tears, and headed out to Hwy 61 to walk the 60 or 70 miles home. Eventually, Dad pulled up alongside of my determined, angry walk down the shoulder of the road yelling at me to get back into the #^%$&% car! I ignored him totally and set my eyes like flint toward the south and away from my murderer. I was determined and intended to never get back into that car again! I had been shot and killed by my own Dad!

ORDER OF THE ARROW:
I loved Boy Scouts, especially the camping. Summers always included a number of weekend camping trips to Willow River, Rum River and O'Brien State Park complete with tinfoil dinners, campfires, hikes and scary stories at night. But the mother of all camping experiences was Camp Tomahawk. One full week of camping bliss with aquatic merit badge opportunities, freedom, the great food of the dining hall, freedom, all kinds of contests and sleeping in big tents with cots. Man it was the Ritz!
Every year the week culminated with a sacred Indian-type bonfire ceremony. The counselors morphed into Indian braves with bare chests, leather loin clothes, moccasins and war paint. This was guaranteed to get the heart of any 1950's-era boy racing.

The ultimate moment came at these culminating ceremonies where the "braves" would go into the audience (seated on logs circling the 10' high fire), roughly grab a scout and forceably drag him from the crowd and throw him to the ground by the fire. This would be repeated several times until there were maybe 15-20 guys. They would then be solemnly initiated into the Order of the Arrow as part of an elite team of scouts who had been secretly elected by their peers. The evening would end with those new initiates being loaded into trucks, taken out deep into the woods and one by one, thrown off into the mosquito-infested forest to spend the night alone with no food, water or flashlight. Then, the next day, they would be assigned to work on very difficult projects out in the hot sun under a covenant of complete silence. I tell ya, that was legendary stuff, highly esteemed and I could only dream that one day that could be me.

Well, one year it appeared that my time had finally arrived. After the secret ballots were counted, I had several of my 'insider' buddies tell me that I was the guy and this was my year! That night at the sacred ceremony my heart was racing with the anticipation of being dragged down to the fire, made to kneel, then being hit hard on each shoulder with the 'sacred stick' and whisked away into the inky darkness, alone in the woods. Me, about to become part of the lore I had observed over the years. Fantastic!

In waded the braves with their angry demeanor looking for the anointed ones. More and more boys were grabbed as I waited with baited breath. And then that part of the ceremony was over and I was still sitting on my log, unidentified and uninitiated. Subsequent tries at joining the group at the trucks were sharply rebuffed..."You must have already been intitiated at the fire in order to proceed on the journey...no exceptions! And all because of a scoutmaster who didn't understand that it was his job to stand up behind the elected boy and point him out to the roving braves. An opportunity for masculine initiation forever lost....


Of course there is vulnerability that comes along with throwing out two such examples of wounds in my life. I can just hear that accuser in my mind:
"You call those wounds? Hell, that ain't nothin'. What a pussy!"
And to those voices I say just 4 words, 3 of which are printable "Shut the @&$% up!"
Somebody else may have experienced these very things and it may well have run off like water off the proverbial duck's back. For me, they carried messages that I accommodated. I believed their lies wholeheartedly. I swallowed their poison. These combined with other woundings and ministered this to me....
"You were a pain to your Dad. You were nothing special and you certainly don't have what it takes. Things available to other guys aren't going to be for you. Your yearning for initiation and inclusion into the fellowship of men is just not meant to be. You will perpetually be a day late and a dollar short. You have been weighed and found lacking in worth. Best you can do is just fake it cause you sure don't have it. Good luck Bub, you're going to need it!"
Allow me to speak of healing and resolution another time...for now I'm just going to pluck out some arrows that found their mark and leave them to quiver in the heat of the noonday sun.

You didn't really see this kind of blog comin' did you Santiago? Couldn't have or you would have never shown up in the first place....