My cousin and I have a philosophical argument over what maturation in a human means. Her opinion is that maturation is growth into something new, better, and different while I opine that maturation is a deepening of what you already are. People do not become someone ‘new’ but refine who they always have been through the growing up process, or else we would call the process metamorphosis.
This idea surfaced in my mind this week when I ran into an old friend from when I was in Middle School that I knew in Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts is potentially the lamest, most useless endeavors I have ever embarked upon because I am not sure anyone learned what we were intended to be taught and the debate still rages, “should I have slept on my back or my stomach?” When I was a boy scout I was a pretty bad kid, I was a troublemaker but almost exclusively during that time period and almost always in that setting.
Sure, on an overnight school trip I kidnapped my German teacher’s toupee - I will admit to that now – and I was involved with the usual revolts against substitute teachers, fist fights, and my name keeps popping up in discussions about two teachers who had nervous breakdowns but I think I was only as bad or good as anyone else.
I was not really a troublemaker in scouts. My scoutmaster did not like me because he did not like my father who as a board member for the troop was no always cooperative. My father, even though he is a soldier, is not one to roll over and bend rules for people. As a result, I was branded a troublemaker, even though I was a pretty docile child. This experience prompted me to start acting out since I was being blamed for everything I might as well get in on the action.
We reached a nadir where my parents stopped believing the accusations and I really let myself go. Conversely, during this time my behavior was exemplary in school because I was shaking my mischievous jones at scouts and had no need to act out at school, church, or anywhere else. I was the honor student, altar boy that your mother told you to be more like unless you knew me at scouts. Where my scoutmaster had billed me as a pariah; my parents were billed as irresponsible morons. We were twice “Family of the Year,” much to his chagrin and in no small part to the utter fantastic Eddie Haskell mojo I was working. I really was a good kid, just not there.
What I learned, above all else, in boy scouts was the art of politics in the worst Machiavellian sense. If ever I achieve my dreams of evil genius it will be undoubtedly be their fault. I learned that I had to cultivate my own reputation and not let someone else do it for me.
This is not to say that I had everyone fooled. I was in the weird situation of having family overseas near us when most people did not. My Grandfather and my aunt were on to me and on more than one occasion were the ones who had to retrieve me from outings because I am smart enough to feign that my parents were out of town as well and I was supposed to be retrieved by a relative. On one such occasion, during the winter, my aunt arrived wearing her fur coat and Cossack styled fur hat to which I quipped to the scoutmaster in question, “Be careful, she’s as fierce as the original occupant.” I have countless short stories written about this woman. Certainly, I hope they are published before she realizes it and kills me.
Now there came a point, and there is always this point, where accusations are thrown around, people point fingers, and reputations are at stake – which I had nothing to do with the imbroglio that was brewing I was yanked (and I mean physically yanked) from that troop and placed in another before I insinuated myself into it for the fun of it because there is nothing more fun than an imbroglio or a good old white-trash brouhaha. The next day I was placed in another troop, one associated with my church, and was smart enough to know that I had better clean up my act.
It is always fun to run into people from that time because their opinion of me is pretty low and most people who know me in person have a very different opinion of me. They are aghast to find out that I am a teacher and I make sure (for the comedy) that they get the picture of me in my clerical vestments. I like to think that I am a decent human being, I was not then, and I enjoyed that a great deal.
I still enjoy pandemonium and I can still shoot you in the eye (or genitals) with a kinder egg yolk from twenty feet but as fun as it was to be bad life is a lot easier now that I have grown up and out of that and into a pretty stable adult personality. My cousin’s confusion with the whole maturation/metamorphosis issue is forgetting that we try on a few hats while we are adolescents but more often than not, we leave wearing the one we came into it with. I was Alex P. Keeton when I was in Kindergarten and I am Alex P. Keeton today. I know she would like to think that she was a different person than she was back then, and she is, but the core of who she is – her work ethic and her idealism, that center and drive her – is still the same even as we swap around our adjectives and honorifics in early adulthood.
Its also nice to know that Stan is still a quicker wit and funnier than I am.
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