There are some things you can't use your teeth for

Once again, this picture has nothing to do with this post

"Uptown got it's hustlers 
The bowery got it's bums"   

- Jim Croce, You Don't Mess Around With Jim, 1972 

 

As I was thinking about my life and my search for my past "greatness", I was torn with where to start.  Many times we talk about what we remember from our youth and I wonder sometimes if I remember something because there was a picture or it was something the family talked about.  I will be honest, my early years are a blur at times. 

 

I was trying to think back to my earliest memory, but it truly is difficult.  I do think I remember an incident that left me with two scars just on the inside of my bottom lip.  One Christmas when I was extremely young (maybe 5), I remember trying to unplug the Christmas tree from the extension cord.  Being the kid I was, I put the cord in my mouth and pulled.  The prongs hit my lip while still making contact inside the extension cord and lights-out! 

 

I don't remember the hospital or any aftermath, just the time right before.  My mother was yelling that I better not be playing with the Christmas tree, putting the extension cord in my mouth, and then, the best I can explain it, TV static.  There was definitely nothing great about that experience, but I survived it and that was good. 

 

As I really worked at remembering things from my past and not injecting what I was told, but moreover what I really experienced, it was hard to decipher between memory, personal folk tales, or things that just never actually happened (we all have those things we think we remember, but aren't really sure they happened).  I could quote all the research, but memory is a tricky thing so when we are searching for greatness, we need to be willing to admit the times we bit the extension cord. 

 

When it came right down to it, the first real memory I can muster is learning to ride a bike.  Actually, the exact moment that I was riding without training wheels or help.  We were living on Sun Valley Drive along with a lot of folks I ended up in junior high and high school with, but we didn't live on that street long.  I remember my father holding the back seat of the bike pushing me and letting me go.  I was wearing a Mets cap (not much has changed there), I was 4 years old, and it was my first experience with freedom.  It was great!  To a kid, bicycles are freedom aren't they?  Your first ability to get somewhere, anywhere, without the help of anyone else.  Beyond this vivid memory, I remember little tidbits of information like riding my bike on the nicely paved road of the retirement trailer park that lies adjacent to Sun Valley Drive.  We weren't supposed to be there and I am pretty certain that those older folks had a lot of "get off my lawn" moments with all those kids moving in on that newly created street (note: they were all brand new homes). 

 

As I try to remember this part of my childhood, I can see pictures, and I mean pictures because we looked at them all the time.  Pictures make us remember or think that we remember.  Pictures also, at least back then as we didn't have thousands of pictures from our phone documenting every moment of our life, relayed, generally, a time when things were good.  Other than maybe a funeral or a professional photographer, people didn't run around wasting film on times when things were bad.   As I filter, I don't necessarily remember what was a picture and what was a memory.  I don't have a memory of swimming in a pool, but I have a picture of me and my siblings in one.  It's an old Polaroid instant, faded and aged, but a testament to my parents desire to give us a good and fun life. 

 

I remember, from our time on Sun Valley Drive, my brother falling and impaling his hand on a stone rake (maybe we were putting in that pool?).  I remember him having the cast on his right hand as he had to use his left hand for everything.  I wish I had talked to my brother more.  He had some issues and I struggled with his weakness at the time not understanding that we all have weakness and the purpose of our strength is to help others where we have strength or resolve, and to accept help where we have weakness (more about this much later).  Lastly, we have to admit that we have weakness and blind spots.  See, you can't be great unless you admit there are things that aren't great and then work on them.  

At this early time in my life, I was too young and naïve to be great.  Honestly, I have no idea how things were going for anyone else around me back then.  I guess I figured if I was having fun, everyone was having fun.  I am certain my parents were struggling (many kids, new house, etc...).  However, in typical human fashion, If things were great for me, they must have been great for everyone at that time.  I won't get into what was going on in the world in the very early 1970s, but seriously things were not "great" and I wasn't definitely not "great".   

- JJ