I am not very smart in the classical sense. Oh sure, I have a PhD in something or other, but that is not where life is lived. Life must be outside the mind. It is getting dirty after a rain shower by taking a swim in your neighbor's freshly dug rose bed complete with footers. It is lying on the steps of the playground after a summer shower and have the warm water flowing off the solar heated asphalt and cascading off those steps to warm and delight you. It is pinching your 14 month old sister during church and offering to take her across the street to a lake to catch green turtles instead of listening to a sermon you can't understand when she gets fussy. It is spending time lying with your big dog on the front porch as you both take a nap when it is too hot to move around and play.
It is riding your bike fast down the hills in the local cemetery and crashing and laughing when you find to your amazement that it didn't hurt. It is loving the black woman who took care of you when your parents were off fighting, loving or what ever parents did when you were growing up. It is lying on the floor of your grandmother's Cadillac
automobile in the back to eek out any warmth from the hump in the middle that the drive shaft runs through. It is exploring the swamps and seeing many wonderful animals, carp, alligator gar, bream, bass, snakes, turtles, and frogs. It is swimming at the lake and being called out to shore every time a turtle swims across the cove by the woman who has a deathly fear of snakes. Then having to feign sincere gratitude for her saving your life for the fifth time that day.
It is sailing on a Star class sailboat with a father who drinks whiskey all day and has the good sense to let you drive the VW bug home at night while he naps when you are only 10 yrs old. He taught us to drive when we were six because he, being ahead of his time, knew he would need designated drivers before it became fashionable. Father's only weaknesses were whiskey and the ladies. Mother never got comfortable with that side of him. I am fond of saying that "My father was irresistible, and that is where I get my charm and good looks."
It is swimming with your siblings and father in that cove on a hot summer's afternoon, sliding your feet along the cool muddy bottom to find sharp muscles and then digging them up by the scores and looking for freshwater pearls and finding two in one day and giving them to a delighted mother.
It is also waking up to find the box turtle collection you had in the back yard in half a burn barrel destroyed when the surrogate baby sitter took the trash out at dusk, threw it on the turtles and dropped a match on it and burned them alive. It is the disappointment in chasing a baby sparrow too young to fly, around the playground and stepping on it with your big old five yr old feet and killing it, knowing you had broken a commandment and were going to hell. Only some kind words and counseling from the black babysitter saved that day and got me off my death bed.
Life is funny that way.
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
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