LETTERS FROM HOME: THE BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED YEARS

Aug. 8, 1996

Dear Pat,

One summer many many years ago I was going to band camp, trying to learn how to wiggle my fingers on a saxophone in such a way that the sound wasn't offensive. Fortunately, when you're in the fifth grade everybody's trying to accomplish the same feat.

One morning while waiting for my mother to pick me up after a session, a girl named Bonnie started talking to me. And talking to me. I think she was enjoying how uncomfortable all this attention from a pretty girl was making me.

She wouldn't leave me alone no matter how hard I tried to ignore her. Finally I determined that the best course of action would be to hoist up my saxophone case and walk home.

She followed, of course.

Fortunately, Bonnie gave up after half a block. Probably because she was smart enough to realize her own mother would soon arrive back at the school and get angry at her for not being there.

Which is precisely what happened to me since I couldn't go back. My mother's eyes flashed from inside when the car finally pulled alongside.

If it hadn't been for a nice little girl named Bonnie who told her where I'd gone, my mother complained, she might never have found me.

The point of this story is to illustrate the gap that exists between what's sometimes brewing inside a child's head and the becalmed face an adult may see.

My mother probably just thought I'd become impatient because she was a few minutes late. You can be sure I wasn't going to tell her the truth -- that I simply was afraid of girls.

So if one day Alan does something out of character, consider the possibility that a girl named Bonnie/Jennifer/Ashley may have tried to flush him from the safety of his boyhood. Smile knowingly and review all that is likely to happen once he isn't afraid of girls anymore.

My mom certainly should have no memory of this minuscule flutter in a life customized to meeting her children's needs. My own memory of not being understood and not wanting to be understood is unambiguous.

That duality, this non-parent theorizes, is an enduring dilemma for both parent and child.

Because DC and I don't have children, perhaps, our nieces and nephews aren't quite sure how we fit into the Grownups category. We have squirt-gun fights and bunking parties. They confide in us that their grandparents never have any food in the house. Which, further questioning reveals, is only true if your most important food groups are pretzels and bananas.

DC takes the girl nieces for moonlight skinny dips. The boys come golfing with me (his dad, the eldest told me, doesn't like to play golf with his low-handicap son).

Of course, sometimes the wavelength fades. DC mistakenly let them rent "Money Train" for the bunking party and was so red-faced at all the four-letter words and appalled by the brutality that she quietly retired for the evening. I did, too.

We are, during visits, at once surrogate parents and cronies. They grant us safe passage into their world but only so far. Inside jokes go unexplained, and you have the feeling that they think we're hobnobbing outside our own species.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.