October 23, 2014
It's a sobering thought to reflect on how different my life might have been. When I was a kid, we lived in a new housing tract in Greece, NY. A right then a left turn at the end of our street took me down Rumsey Drive which ended in a wooded area transversed by a footpath opening out into another housing tract on the other end of the path. My friends and I would ride our bikes down to the woods where we played to our hearts' content. Midway down the path off to the right there was a storm sewer that emptied out into a small creek that meandered through the woodlot. We would climb into the sewer and crouch-walk our way back till we got to the manhole under the street. It was, to use a Superman analogy, our "Fortress of Solitude." It was also where I learned to smoke.
One of my friends had pilfered a couple packs of his parents' Winstons, secreting them in a niche in the manhole. One Saturday afternoon, we crouched our way along the sewer to the manhole where he showed me his treasure store. "Here, wanna try one?" he taunted. It was a challenge no red-blooded twelve-year-old could resist; at least not this twelve-year-old. I lit one up, puff-coughed my way through it, and reached for another. I don't know how many I managed to cough my way through that day or the week following, but it only took about two packs for me to realize that I was craving them. I also realized that if I didn't stop then and there, these things would get a hold on me that I couldn't break. I couldn't have put words to it back then, but it was my first inkling that I had an addictive personality.
I graduated from high school in 1967. VietNam was in full swing; the British Invasion had taken the US by storm, and Woodstock set the tone for a cultural revolution that sent shock waves throughout the world. In our corner of suburbia, the drug scene that flowed from these seismic changes was as yet only a trickle; it wouldn't turn into the torrent that it became for another couple years. I remember the one or two kids in my class who smoked marijuana; back then, they were really on the edge! I'm glad I grew up when I did. Had I grown up in the full flower of the psychedelic scene, I don't know if I would have lived through it. I do believe that had I started down that road, I never would have made it back.
How is it I knew the hold tobacco would have had over me? How is it I was born at just the right time, coming to maturity just before the tidal wave of drugs washed over the nation? How did I manage to escape the traps and dead ends that have ensnared so many? I wasn't and still am not any smarter than anyone else. I don't understand it, but I know beyond a shadow of doubt that my life has been hedged in by grace. Why me and not some of the poor souls who find themselves facing the tragic consequences of poor decisions often made in the flush of emotion? I don't know. But I do know that God has treated me far better than I deserve, and for that, I am deeply grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment