Day 126 - Innocence of Childhood

image by peter pearson, via Flickr

Mom and Dad didn't buy a lake home like so many others, but they did make sure we spent a week each summer at a lake. We spent several summers at the same resort where there was an island in the middle of the lake. One summer, my brother Wayne and I decided we would row out to the island. We didn't make it, not because we couldn't -- we were convinced we could -- but because the adults back on shore assumed we were in trouble because we were so far away from shore. I was so disappointed when Dad showed up with another boat and motor in order to tow us back to shore.

My 11-year-old niece's favorite TV programs include Law and Order Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds.  And that made me recall my first encounter with such concepts, the book To Kill a Mockingbird.  When we were at Cotton Lake for our annual week of vacation, Mom read the book and decided it was a good one for me to read, I guess because the story was told from the young tomboy Scout's point of view.  When I got to the point where Tom Robinson was accused of rape, I asked Mom what the word rape meant. She told me to look it up in the dictionary. Our dictionary defined rape as forcible carnal knowledge. That didn't help much so I looked up carnal and read that it was of the flesh. The dictionary was no help at all. I realized only that rape was something bad, but that was enough for me to get the message of the story.

Dad felt strongly about not going to the drive-in theaters to watch movies. When a dusk-to-dawn showing of kids movies was announced, Dad took us kids. The next day I recall him telling Mom that he was never going to take us again because of what went on in the cars around us. I never saw anything going on around us. I watched the movies.

For years I didn't understand why Mom told people when she was buying something as a present. I had heard a clerk in Melberg's Book Store tell her that you always pay more for a present. So if she just didn't tell the clerk it was a present, the price should be less, right?