Remembering seeing the world as an eight year old is a spotty act of creativity. Some things are blurry. Others are very clear. When I was eight, I loved combinations. Sporks? Spoon and fork appearing as one? Amazing. A door that’s also a jar? Unbelievable.
The greatest combo in the eyes of my eight year old self was definitely the Chevy El Camino. Some might say that the el Camino is for an indecisive, person whose life compromises destroy the best that anything or anyone has to offer.
I have a different take. I believe the El Camino to be the ultimate car? truck? for those with ADHD - especially the fiery, rebellious oppositional defiant types. Having an el Camino is like having a mullet, face tattoos and those odd stretched ear things where kids try to fit hockey pucks in their earlobes or lower lips and dressing entirely in clothes from the LL Bean catalogue.
Rugged woodland urban weirdo?
Young people can be strange that way. The lip stretchy ones. The only place I want to see a hockey puck squeezed is in a net. And they also make great work bench spacers. But skin stretching isn’t my jam.
I’m glad that I was eight at the time I was eight. It was the beginning of the eighties. Regan was about to sweep into the White house.
And the teenagers?
They didn’t stretch their earlobes.
They had dirt bikes and motor boats.
Teens back then had adventures.
Thinking back to the teen in the boat of my dreams from when I was eight, I’m struck by the level of freedom he had.
Here was this kid in a fourteen foot long aluminium boat trusted to take it anywhere on the lake.
The lake is twelve miles long. there’s a lot of fetch for the wind to kick up a lot of chop on the surface. That young man likely had some hairy situations that he was happy to have made it through without being vaulted from his boat.
Twelve miles long, extending deep in the wilderness, this kid had the freedom to venture into places home to only risk and wildlife. There were no cell phones to be rescued. Nothing. Up there, there’s no cell coverage to this very day.
Back then, a teen boy had a chance to really get lost to really be alone
Back then, a teen boy had a lot of opportunities to explore the kind of good, moderatly dangerous trouble that makes life worth living. .
This kid, who at the age of 8 had dreams of becoming, was equipped with the means to explore this vast back woods by boat and better yet, he was trusted to do so. No cell phone. No accountability. This young man was offered freedom. He took it as he ventured into the wilderness, with it he assumed the responsibility of getting his arse home.
None of this might be true. But this is how my eight year old self saw things.
The only issue when it comes to my picture of this young man on the lake?
His motor was wrong. He had an Evinrude 9.9 from the 70’s. I wanted to do this with my granddad’s green 9.9 from the early sixties. Though his was newer, my granddad’s looked space aged. It was an item from the past that had the look of being from the future, my future.
He didn’t have my granddad’s lil green 9.9 johnson on the back of his boat.
When was the last time you were completely out of contact? When was the last time that people couldn’t have a clear idea of where you were?
What do we lose from never being lost?
When you were a teen, how did you get lost? What was it like? What are you most proud of when it comes to your own teenage adventures, whether wilderness, suburb or shopping centre shuffle in the back of a bus, have you lived with the privlidge and freedom of being able to go places without people being able to contact you?
When could you schedule time to go lights out, off gird and disappear?
Please, do your self a favor and get lost somewhere.
Once you do, you’ll likely be surprised by what you find.
I still want an El Camino. Love that car truck.