Sept. 19, 1996

Dear Ken,

The season probably already has changed up there but it's just happening here. The big rainstorm that usually hits the district fair came the day the men in full-body tattoos left. DC and I took our niece Casey out to see teen heartthrob Bryan White. Most of the other girls spent at least part of the concert screaming at him, but Casey was ready for the carnival rides after just a few songs. Guess the Bryan White years are still to come for a 9-year-old.

DC, who likes scary movies about natural phenomena like tornadoes and earthquakes, does not enjoy actual fear. But there was a niece to consider. "I'll probably throw up," she said. "So," I said.

So there we were, Casey, DC and I, holding onto the black lap bar that kept us from free-falling out of a machine called Pharoah's Fury. Though shaped like a slave ship, Pharoah's Fury seemed rather tame as terror-inducing devices go, especially when the view off our right shoulders was of people bungee jumping.

Pharoah's Fury just swung back and forth like a big pendulum. It was the forth part that dropped the bottom out of your stomach.

Three people seemed to have three different experiences of the same event. Casey threw her head back and laughed, DC clenched her teeth and I wished I hadn't just eaten those greasy french fries. "So."

After finally setting us free, the operator produced a hose and washed out one of the slave galleys. It wasn't ours.

Children must have a sixth sense about when the adults have exceeded their fun limit. Casey instantaneously made friends with a little girl who loved Pharoah's Fury as much as she did, and they laughed and threw their hands in the air as they rode. And they rode some more as I ate an apple and banana and caramel and pecan ice cream sundae to settle my stomach.

DC gladly gave the little girl some of our ride tickets. We used up all of ours bungee jumping, the little girl's mother confided. The thought of this mere child jumping from the top of a crane to almost certain death horrified DC. No, the mother said. She didn't jump. I did. Three times.

Some adults have different fun limits than others.

At 45, I have to own up to glimpsing the autumn of my life. Some of the joys of youth no longer thrill me, but different things do. Like talking to a close friend, someone you have a history with.

If you've lived any, that history is chock a block with little cesspools and moments of exhilaration and great expanses of time from which little is recalled. In your friend's eyes you see only acceptance of who you are. An acceptance hard to grant to ourselves.

One of my golf buddies stops keeping score mid-round when he is playing badly. I think it's valuable to know how bad you can be. Then you have something to measure your goodness against. Everybody who has not yet been canonized is some combination of good and bad. Owning up to your flaws, whether that's a faulty putting stroke or greed or vanity or insensitivity, allows some kind of magic to occur.

One of my faults is an unwillingness to express anger. Guess I spent too much time as a child trying to be only a good boy, not a boy who sometimes was good and sometimes bad. So lately I've been allowing anger to surface every time it bubbles up. Takes people and myself by surprise sometimes, but getting angry rather than holding it in feels very good.

Not as good as disembarking from Pharoah's Fury, but good.

Love, Sam

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