Growing Up
How little guys become big guys without our noticing it
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Concentration
“Ouch.”
“Ouch?”
“Ouch!”
“Oh. Ouch.”
Little Randy sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor. I lay sprawled across the sofa reading “The Deeper meaning of Metaphysical Experience.”
“Ouch cha doin’,” I frowned.
Randy had been pouring all the energy of his six-year-old focus into the severing of several wire coat hangers into various length pieces, doing so with a pair of wire cutters.
“I nicked my finger,” he slurped, this message managing to get through a mouth full of offending finger as Randy sucked his Ouch.
“Let me see,” I offered, setting my book aside and sitting up.
The lean youngster extended his hand for my inspection. His deep, blue eyes looked hopeful. The nick was just that; a snip from the end of the wire cutters that had simply clipped a tiny slit in the side of the finger. A touch of blood oozed out but no more than an eyedropper full.
“I think you’ll live.” I was somber.
“I know that!” The youngster was impishly impetuous. “But it’s still an Ouch.”
“Of course it is. Want a Band-Aid?”
“For this?” He held up his finger and scrutinized it in detail. His face screwed in a sort of a wondering frown that inferred, ‘Are you crazy?
“Just thought I’d offer.”
“Thank you.” Randy’s frown turned to a broad smile.
“You’re welcome,” I smiled back.
I watched for a moment as Randy fell back to his snipping of wire coat hangers then sprawled back across the sofa and reentered the world of “The Deeper Meaning of Metaphysical Experience.” But somehow, the hidden world of metaphysical experience had lost its luster. I read one line two times and was going for the third when I realized that I had lost interest in the volume.
I set the book on my stomach and watched Randy for a moment. A sheen of dark hair fell like a waterfall from his forehead as he bent over his task. Small muscles beneath tan skin flexed as mightily as a small boy’s muscles might flex as he squeezed and twisted, his young lips set, a timid tongue sneaking through, working as he worked the wire back and forth.
The totally focused concentration of a youngster intent on whatever project took his fancy has always intrigued me. ‘Blessed are the children...’ for they show us so much about ourselves.
Randy was not my son. I was long past the years of child rearing. No, he was a neighbor’s son, a youngster who, one day while I was cleaning my garage, happened by and started asking the questions like, “What’s this?” and “Why do you have that?”
Patiently, I answered each response. As I answered it, I would tag the statement with, “Why don’t you put it there,” pointing to the place where I had intended to keep the object.
It was a delightful way to clean the garage, little Randy keeping me alert to just exactly why I had this or that. He actually convinced me to dispense with various objects that I honestly had to answer his ever persistent questioning with, “I really don’t know, why don’t you put it in the trash?”
Some of those objects did find their way to the trash can. Others moved from my possession to Randy’s. And quite a collection it turned out to be; a broken clock, many bits of wires, a hand full of nails, scraps of wood, and a small, multi-colored rock I had pocketed in some rural excursion and, finding it attractive, brought it home with about as much reason as Randy had for collecting bits of things from my garage.
Preparedness
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Softcover
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Book Details
Language :
English
Publication Date :
11/30/2005
Format :
Softcover
Dimensions :
5x8
Page Count :
224
ISBN :
9781420892147
About the Book
Little guys become bigger guys through the universal process called Growing Up. We all go through it. There are the big events; the first day of school, confirmation or bar mitzvah, winning a major football game, or being able to drive a car. But this is not a book about those times.
This book is a collection of stories about the little incidents we too often miss in the development of the youngster. They involve discovering concepts such as being open to new ideas by taking one’s first music lesson, realizing the value of heritage by witnessing a real, live, steam locomotive, learning acceptance by visiting an unknown neighbor. They are subtle lessons learned in the areas of preparedness, compassion, and even intuition that help mold the boy into the man without his realizing it.
This collection follows boys from ages six to twenty, highlighting those kinds of unnoticed events. When sewn together, they illustrate how these seemingly infinitesimal incidents create a miracle—the ordinary, day-by-day part of Growing Up.
Now be advised that this collection consists entirely of boys growing up. This choice was made largely because the author is a Geriatric Teenage Boy at heart. He has known and dealt with boys all his life. After all, boys are rough and tumble, the kind of souls that, as the author’s mother used to say, ‘wouldn’t know a brick hurt until it fell on them!’ So, for these pages, enjoy this particular slant on the process of Growing Up.
About the Author
Tom started writing in junior high school. This was literary writing; short stores, novels, stage plays, radio dramas, poems and the like. This he did out of his love of writing and it has actually been his favorite form of expression ever since. Over a lifetime of writing—evenings, weekends, and off moments, whenever he got time, just for the sheer fun of it—gigabytes of literary writings have come to fill his PC hard drive. They are reflections of his wide experiences while growing up, being a family man, and raising three children while following a career that included the entertainment industry and corporate communications, as well as finding time for civic music and theatre groups, community affairs and church, often involving mentoring and counseling youth, traveling widely, and pursuing a lifelong study of human behavior.
Now Tom has written professionally; business proposals, training systems, Television shows, screenplays, but that was work, a part of his career. His love has always been creating the joys, sorrows, and lessons of life through the drama and description of words on paper.
Overall, there is probably no form of writing that has escaped Tom’s typing fingers at one time or another. It makes sense for Tom is, to the core of his very being, a writer. As he puts it, “It doesn’t matter what you do in life, everything starts with writing something.”
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Little guys become bigger guys through the universal process called Growing Up. We all go through it. There are the big events; the first day of school, confirmation or bar mitzvah, winning a major football game, or being able to drive a car. But this is not a book about those times.
This book is a collection of stories about the little incidents we too often miss in the development of the youngster. They involve discovering concepts such as being open to new ideas by taking one’s first music lesson, realizing the value of heritage by witnessing a real, live, steam locomotive, learning acceptance by visiting an unknown neighbor. They are subtle lessons learned in the areas of preparedness, compassion, and even intuition that help mold the boy into the man without his realizing it.
This collection follows boys from ages six to twenty, highlighting those kinds of unnoticed events. When sewn together, they illustrate how these seemingly infinitesimal incidents create a miracle—the ordinary, day-by-day part of Growing Up.
About the Author
Tom started writing in junior high school. This was literary writing; short stores, novels, stage plays, radio dramas, poems and the like. This he did out of his love of writing and it has actually been his favorite form of expression ever since. Over a lifetime of writing—evenings, weekends, and off moments, whenever he got time, just for the sheer fun of it—gigabytes of literary writings have come to fill his PC hard drive. They are reflections of his wide experiences while growing up, being a family man, and raising three children while following a career that included the entertainment industry and corporate communications, as well as finding time for civic music and theatre groups, community affairs and church, often involving mentoring and counseling youth, traveling widely, and pursuing a lifelong study of human behavior.
Now Tom has written professionally; business proposals, training systems, Television shows, screenplays, but that was work, a part of his career. His love has always been creating the joys, sorrows, and lessons of life through the drama and description of words on paper.
Overall, there is probably no form of writing that has escaped Tom’s typing fingers at one time or another. It makes sense for Tom is, to the core of his very being, a writer. As he puts it, “It doesn’t matter what you do in life, everything starts with writing something.”