We're all here to learn

When I was little and couldn't sleep
But wasn't allowed to creep or peep
Downstairs to see the adult folks
To join in the laughter and the jokes
But had to stay in bed instead
While fun sounds echoed in my head
I learned to hug my gray bear tight
To deal with the sorrows of the night
To hear him agree with all I said
To follow my thoughts wherever they led,
The promises whispered to the bear
That we would vow never to share
With adults on the floor below
Because they had no right to know.

As time has flown, some other bears
Have suffered through my list of cares
And shared the secrets of my heart
And whatever else I might impart
To furry ears knowing full well
The secret's safe: they'd never tell.

In retrospect a downside, too,
A countervailing point of view:
By "bearying" my secret life
I made it harder for my wife
To understand some of my acts
Which did not tally with the facts.
For buttons pushed should not result
In instant rage in an adult.
Those buttons labeled "DISAPPROVE"
When pushed are antidotes to love
And, pushed enough, the bonds will break
And love is something you can't fake.

The sad thing is, it's taken years
To learn the Secret of the Bears:
That there are other buttons, too
And most of us have quite a few.
Some are labeled "Love" and "Truth"
(Though they were there all through my youth
They seemed difficult to find
Much moreso than the other kind).

Now ones marked "Listen" and "Understand"
Are closer to my outstretched hand,
And since they know I've found the cure,
The bears are happier, I'm sure.

Growing pains

The Old Guy has many memories of a childhood spent as a younger sibling. Some of them are more enjoyable than others, for competition between unequals is always a painful thing to watch. One that springs to mind is a kind of paradigm for all the others: The Incident of the Bookcase.

Being five years older than I, the Older Brother was naturally a more capable person in most many respects. Nevertheless, he generally tolerated the ability gap quite well and we shared our living quarters with only sporadic difficulty.

During one summer vacation, however, he decided to build a kind of bookcase/utility shelf for the area beside his bed. He found some 1-by-2 inch lumber strips from somewhere in the basement, and collected a number of identical empty cardboard boxes which I think had been used in some school Christmas-card fundraiser to hold the merchandise.

The 1-by-2s he nailed together so as to form an open vertical frame into which he dropped the empty cartons on their sides with their flaps cut off. Thus he constructed a series of five enclosed shelves. The whole unit stood about six feet tall when finished.

Placing it beside his bed, he filled it with various treasures that had hitherto occupied the floor.

Up to that time I cannot recollect having felt so visceral a pang of jealousy, but I could not help myself. I was transfixed by envy. I vowed to build a better unit than his.

For all my obsessive efforts at discovery, I could not locate similar, let alone superior pieces of wood. What proved most devastating,- the matched set of cardboard cartons had been depleted. There was only one left, which I assume he elected not to use because of his intuitive awareness of the principle of "center of gravity". (Understand, dear reader, that this was in the Jurassic Era, long before Red Green and The Handyman's Secret Weapon -- Duct Tape).

Many years later, in going through the attic, I discovered that same cupboard. This time, however, my feelings were quite different. I admired the ingenuity of its construction: light, strong, capacious and dirt cheap.

There were several other achievements by the Older Brother, appropriate to his scientific engineering curiosity and mathematical aptitude. For example, I have a picture of him standing on a ladder helping me to put rafters on a shed in Thunder Bay. He calculated the exact angles for the pitch of the roof using trigonometry. I probably would have wasted several dozen pieces of 2-by-4 in an attempt to cut matching angles by eyeball.

It's all in the perspective. A talent that once provoked jealousy now evokes admiration. Could this be a sign that I'm growing up? We can always hope.