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Fragments From the Memory Log, Entry Ten

I don’t think the adults around me comprehended that as a child among other children in the comparatively vast and irregular geometry of our neighborhood, one constituting approximately twenty tireless young bodies, a dozen bare backyards, and the late twentieth century equivalent of a Midwestern wilderness, the only important rule of property was the one that outlined the four-lane county road at the northern edge of our roaming lands, which cut off capricious access to both the Dairy Queen and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Yet even this rule simply stated: no crossing without looking both ways.

I can still draw a map of the outer edge of our world. The border to the east was ill defined and stretched varyingly depending on if school was open or a plan in the works to storm the library or take in a movie at the cinema with its total of one screen! To the west lay brush covered fencing protecting undiscovered mysteries (strangely holding little interest to us). The north as mentioned was traced by semi-trucks and other voyaging craft moving moderately quickly from important place [A] to location of consequence [B]. The southern margin was more complicated: along the south-west a naturally defined edge was drawn by the banks of the Wabash river and incorporated the fields where we play Little League ball each summer; to the south-east lay a train yard. What lay beyond this circumscription was foreign, visited for trade or familial purposes, but rarely known well. Anything inside this childrens’ province was our stomping ground, and we stomped on it until the earth turned dusty. It became as familiar to us as the back of our dirty little hands.

The unstated objective during the day in our domain was to fill every minute with vibrant and tiring physical activity; unless something involved television it demanded constant movement. My family’s backyard, or more accurately ours and the semi attached and semi-livable one next door, was the central hub or meeting place for nearly all social interaction while daylight ruled. Here is where we’d play kickball or baseball or dodgeball or football or basketball, as well as the rare game not involving a ball. There were plays and musicals produced in the garage and spontaneously arranged parades up and down the front walk. Olympic-style events taking days of planning and preparation were conducted, with prizes awarded to the winners. One-page newspapers were published and quickly put out of business by subscription rate hikes, rain-derived public works designed and manipulated by devious business tycoons, towering snow kingdoms built and destroyed by invading Eskimo hordes.

At night we and so the world grew somewhat more peaceful in our pursuits. When the siren call of TV didn’t ring in our ears, we might be found standing along the curb of our northern frontier where we’d wordlessly contemplate the outer world waiting some years ahead of us, or just fill a few hours time begging semi drivers to honk their horns, our arms cranking up in down in mock attempt to punch the air above us; each successful return was guaranteed a reply of joyful hoots, hollers and waves. Sometimes we’d test the mettle of the local bat species by tossing gallon milk jugs into the air while calculating their rate of swoop as they flew out from trees at them. Mostly though we’d mimic in small the behavior of our parents, sitting on a random porch or stoop where we’d discuss the happenings of the passing day, plan for the next, or figure out the following chess move or card choice in a game of war or go fish or old maid. All the while never considering that the porch or stoop or street under us was not our own.

Children work at a close, more animalistic level with the ground under them than adults do. Their behavior may be less instinctual and gut-driven as that which drives territorial shoot-outs between lion prides and hyena packs, but it’s more that than what passes for it in the adult human counterpart. Lines are drawn around a sense of immediate turf and not through misconstrued understandings of tenuous property rights and ownership. It’s not that children lack the intellectual tools for grasping the basic features of such legally complicated concepts; “mine mine mine!” is a common enough outburst.

In youth we unconsciously choose ignorance at critical times about things like this, because it’s to our benefit to do so. Adults can usually understand this part of a child’s mind set.