Born out of time

If ever there was a child born out of time, it would have to be my oldest. I came to this conclusion while sitting on my grandmother’s back porch watching my tenacious four-year old son, tirelessly trying to perfect his spiral. The sun was going down; he’d been outside all day, and we could barely see the football shimmying across the yard, but there he was. Determined to get it right before he called it a day.

It struck me at that moment how out of place he seemed. He could have been sitting indoors in the comfort of his climate-controlled home. He could have been eating popcorn prepared in a microwave oven. He could have been watching cartoons played on a machine that didn’t even exist 15 years ago. But not my boy. Not while there’s daylight to burn.

This day for him was not unlike most others. My child, born near the turn of the century, has spent most of his life outside. He’s out the door at dawn and begging for just one more inning after the sun goes down. Whether he’s working in the heat or playing in the freezing rain, he’s got a plan for something and a mind to make it happen. There’ll be no wasting daylight.

I’ve watched him out the back window, throwing rocks into the air and hitting them with a stick. I’ve seen him swing a fake bat and run, as his pretend ball goes sailing over the outfield wall, rounding every base while announcing to his invisible audience the outs, the inning, and the score.

I’ve seen him walk along the creek bed, stick in hand, poking in the mud and looking for some new discovery he can store away in his mind to reenact during his next big adventure. He doesn’t need to be entertained. He’s a boy on the loose among nature.

I’ve listened to him give play by play for the greatest imaginary game of baseball between the two biggest rivals of our day, just as I suppose young boys have done for years.
“Jeter’s at second. Damon’s on first. Teixeira’s at the plate. He swings! It’s a long fly ball!! It’s…It’s…a homerun!”

I know he would have fit in perfectly with the sons of decades ago. Playing stickball in the streets. Putting baseball cards in the spokes of his tires and making the perfect crease in the middle of his favorite Yankee cap so it would fit in his back pocket just right. That’s who he is. I think it’s in his blood.

There are a million and one distractions for kids these days; it’s a wonder our children ever learn how to play. But this boy of ours seems to have figured it out on his own. He’s already spent most of his young years building with Lincoln logs and shunting boxcars. And since he was old enough to hold one in his hand, he’s been driving those matchbox cars all over the imaginary dirt roads and race tracks in his head.

He’s perfectly content to sit by the radio and listen to a ballgame, even when there are a dozen more modern conveniences by which he could sit, being passively massaged. But not this child. It’s “tag, you’re it” or hide and seek, and I suspect cowboys and Indians is next to come.

Whether he’s perfecting his spiral or throwing himself pop flies, this boy could not be more at home if he were playing a pick up game in a vacant lot with a group of neighborhood boys, or sitting at the soda fountain sipping a bottle of five cent pop. I can almost see him trading marbles and baseball cards on the front stoop with his best pal who, just like him, lives and dies by the reading of his comics and the numbers in the box scores. Seems all he needs now is a Secret Agent spy toy and a Red Rider BB gun to make his descent back in time complete.

With his little red wagon, and his little blue View Master, this boy out of time is well on his way to being right out of the pages of Stand By Me, or probably more accurately, A Christmas Story. Now if he could just get his hands on that Secret Society Decoder Pin.

And that’s All in a day’s work!