22: A Life Lesion
I owe a lot of who I am to the things I have learned over my lifetime. As obvious as that statement might be, sometimes you honestly have to look back at the choices you made that have shaped who you are so that you can confidently move forward.
This memory of mind is not a pleasant one, but not for the reasons you might expect. I think that when you truly learn something, it leaves an impression that never goes away. These impressions are not so much happy or sad, they just turn out to be a fact of life that you have to come to terms with, and over time you see how learning that particular thing has benefited you.
This lesion of mine started with a lot but not all of my family was gathered at my aunt and uncle’s house. It was a weekend in the early 90’s, and that meant there were plenty of cousins around my age to hang out with.
The house had a second floor, and being a kid you were either outside or upstairs. Well, I am not sure how everything started, all I know is that I came in from being outside and headed up the stairs, I heard some noise from one of the bedrooms and naturly went to see what was going on.
What I saw in the room puzzled the hell out of me. Cousin #1 (A boy) and my brother were standing on a waterbed (the ones that were essentially water in a giant plastic bag) swinging wire hangers at each other as if they were fighting with swords.
After witnessing to a few clashes of the wire frame swords my brother fell off the platform where battle was taking place, also known as the waterbed. I cannot tell you for certain why my ten-year-old self took the sword from my brother, stepped into the battle arena (waterbed), and entered combat with cousin #1, but I am sure you can guise.
I will say that I told my brother leave, but he stayed around to watch until cousin #1 and I somehow lost our swords, fell off the waterbed (Battle arena), and continued our epic combat with our bare hands.
Please keep in mind, that the two of us were not so much fighting as we were showing off our best WWF or WCW moves. We slammed each other into the walls, the floor, and even jumped off the corner of the waterbed as if it were the top rope of an oddly shaped wrestling ring.
All this preteen chaos suddenly magnified when cousin #2 (another boy) entered the room, and somehow the one-on-one battle became a free-for-all match. By this point, body slams, flying tackles, and the occasional Irish-whip were used on whoever you could find, and none of us even looked like we wanted to stop the all-out war we had committed ourselves to. Our heroic battle to the finish came to a shocking end as soon as we heard my dad shout, “What the hell is going on here?”
Needless to say, we all got in trouble. You can interpret it however you want, but if your interpretation does not include a belt or a hand to someone’s backside, then your childhood was not like mine.
As bad as my punishment was after all of that, the part that hit the hardest had not come just yet. Somewhere between two to three years later, cousin #1, #2, and I were hanging out at #2’s house and I asked them if they remember that time when we were all fighting and my dad caught us, and the conversation when like this:
Cousin #2: “I remember that, my dad was so mad at me. I can’t forget the whipping I got that day.”
Me: “Same here, even my brother got whipped that day.”
Cousin #1: “I don’t remember any of this.”
Cousin #2: “That’s because you didn’t get whipped by your dad. Hey, why did your brother get whipped?”
Me: “My dad whipped my brother for running away, and I got it for not winning.”
Cousin #2: “I got whipped for not making y’all stop fighting.”
After that, I stayed quiet the rest of the night. I had been provided with three different examples of fatherly parenting, and up until this point in my life, I thought what my dad was trying to teach me was what every father taught their sons.
Sure, other things helped form my conclusion, but that brief conversation tipped the scale in one fateful direction. I knew that who my dad wanted me to be was not who I was interested in becoming.
Do not get me wrong, my dad did possess qualities that I admired, but they were tinged with anger, haunted by his past, and fueled with fear. My dad summed up any disagreements from that point on as me just being a rebellious teen, he could not understand that my thoughts, opinions, and actions were in fact conscious reaction on my part to find a better way, and not influenced by those who he referred to as everyone-else.
I cannot say it was easy because it was not; I cannot say it was hard because it was simply how my life was at the time, but I can say it was worth every trying moment it took to define who I wanted to be.
You may never see me because I do not walk down the easiest of roads. I create the paths that get me to where I am going, and I do not hate, intimidate, or insult to do it. I am far from perfect, and I have the scars to prove it, but there is nothing better than knowing that you can weather what comes your way.
The ability to be strong has nothing to do with pride, muscle, or the beliefs you hold, and everything to do with the choices you make. The light you emit illuminates the options before you; make sure you know how you want to shine before stepping into the darkness because fear casts shadows in all directions. Until next time, I am Nolan… Ex Tenebris.
