My Leap of Faith
``Look before you leap.''
Introduction
I learned two valuable lessons one day when I was not quite four years old.
- Make your own decisions.
- Actions lead to consequences.
Pretty heady stuff for a three year old. (You may wish to skip ahead to the section titled The Incident Report.)
Background History
I am the youngest of four children. I have a sister two years older than me, a brother four years older than me, and another sister who is a good deal older than my brother. (I never have quite figured out how old she is.)
Around the early to mid 1950s we lived on Rose Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My father taught in the business school at Western Michigan College (later WMU). A few years later my mother became an elementary school teacher, and we moved from the Rose Street house.
My parents had met at a small church related college in Kansas. My mother had been a music major. (She played the cello, piano, and sang.) My father was a business major. (This was during the depression.) After college my father attempted to run a gas station, but no one needed much gas in rural Oklahoma during the depression, and my father wasn't a mechanic, so he couldn't repair cars or tractors. My father failed as a gas station owner.
While my father was in Oklahoma, I believe my mother was in Iowa living with her parents. After failing as a gas station owner in rural SW Oklahoma, my father moved to Iowa, and married my mother. (I am sure he had planned on her moving to Oklahoma. And, at some point early on in their marriage, my mother's cello was sold.)
My mother found work. My father went back to college, and got his Masters' degree in business. With the second degree in hand, my father was able to get high school teaching jobs. My father had several high school teaching jobs during World War II (slowly progressing from Iowa to Michigan). My father obtained the job with WMC, his first and only college job, just as WW II was ending. My father enjoyed the work at WMC, but it did not pay well. My mother wanted to teach, to help supplement the family income, and enhance her sense of self-worth, so she went back to school to get her teaching certificate. Initially my mother only took classes on the weekends, but eventually she took a full schedule of classes. When I was in kindergarten, my mother was a student teacher. And when I was in first grade, she began her career as a first grade teacher.
Prime Suspects
My parents had an arrangement with a female college student to watch us kids, when my parents were away from home.
On the day of the incident, that young woman was apparently up in her room working on schoolwork, rather than supervising the children under her charge.
At the time of the incident, there was only one other sibling at home, my five year old sister. In this story, I will call this sister Sis.
The Incident Report
This childhood recollection begins the way most of my early childhood recollections begin. I was alone, and looking for trouble.
No one seemed to be in the house, but I heard a bunch of kids shouting and screaming in the front yard, so I went out the front door onto the porch.
``Shut the door! Jack's trying to jump," Sis shouted at me.
I shut the door, and looked around. One of the neighborhood boys jumped off the end of the porch, as soon as I shut the door.
``What are you doing?" I asked.
``Oh, never mind. You're too much of a baby to do what we're doing," Sis said.
``I can do it!" I declared.
``No you can't," the whole group of boys and girls responded.
At that point my five year old sister explained the rules of the game. The contestant would stand at the edge of the porch, and pretend to dive headfirst into the concrete sidewalk six feet below. The winner would be the person whose head came the closest to the sidewalk below before he or she swung his or her feet around and landed on the grass, which was on the other side of the sidewalk.
``I can do that," I declared.
``No you can't," they all responded.
Right then I immediately jumped off the porch.
The other kids all laughed.
Sis said, ``All you did was jump straight across to the grass. You're a sissy."
``I can do it right," I insisted. ``I'll do it better than anyone."
I then walked back up onto the porch, and positioned my shoes so my toes hung off the edge of the porch. I leaned forward, and focused on the sidewalk.
``You're a sissy! You can't do it! You're a sissy! You can't do it!" the crowd of kids shouted at me.
I dove.
When I woke, I was laying on the living room sofa. I had been covered with a blanket, and there was a pillow under my head. The young college student was wiping my forehead with a wet wash cloth.
The sofa was surrounded by the neighborhood kids who had been jeering me earlier. As soon as I opened my eyes, they shouted, ``He's awake!"
Lessons Learned
I do believe I learned a couple lessons that day.
- The cheering crowd may not have my best interest in mind, when they shout, ``Go, Man, Go!"
- Leaps of faith can be dangerous, because there may be a concrete sidewalk waiting.
— Stocker Null
Loose-Leaf Living
© 2008 TSNull
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