Deviant Child II

I was much older in my second memory that exposes me-I was probably 12 years old (not that I was never “a bad girl” before then). On my mothers side of the family I have dozens of cousins, of which I am in the “younger” bunch. Most of my cousins close to my age were boys, but I had one female partner in crime, Janice. Where I grew up in a city setting, she grew up in the country close to my grandparents-Henryetta, OK. So, whenever I went to visit my grandparent I had a chance to bond with Janice.

Janice and I had developed quite a bond because of the mini ongoing conflict we had with our male cousins. The conflict wasn’t because of any particular experience; but somehow it was understood that girls were suppose to be against the boys and vice versa. Now, at the same time this conflict had been brewing, I had received a shinny new Daisy BB gun for Christmas. Going to my grandparents was the perfect opportunity to break in my gun with the help of Janice. We decided that we would build a fort that we could use for shooting and sleeping. My grandfather’s truck was the perfect location. It was an old green rusty truck that has racks for ladders, so we could hang blankets and sheets around the bed of the truck, thus creating a tent teepee. From inside this tent we had been shooting cans.

The problem was that our cousins kept invading our territory and we were getting angry. Well, as I recall, Janice and I had had enough. We tried tattling several times and it wasn’t working. So we decided to take matters into our own hands. I don’t remember what the last straw was, and I don’t remember who pulled the trigger-but I do remember that we meant to pull the trigger (note: I was aware that it shouldn’t do much harm). We shot my cousin Joey...I am pretty sure it hurt.

As you can guess he was screaming and running. He didn’t run to us, as I would have expected. He ran to tell my Granddad, hoping that we would get more than a talking to. My Granddad has been gone for a long time now, but I still remember the smell of chewing tobacco and coffee on him. June Allison was born in a small town in the south and had never ventured far. He was a country boy who lived through the Great Depression. We had a farm and worked in the smelter factory until he was diagnosed with emphysema. As you would guess, he was bigoted against everything that not like him-including women. So when my screaming, recently BB shot cousin came running into him I expected to be in huge trouble.

It went differently than both Joey and I expected. My Granddad proceeded to explain to Joey that girls can not shot straight. If we hit him with the BB, then we must have been aiming at something else because if we were aiming at him we would have missed. I didn’t realize what my Granddad had done at the time. And it didn’t surprise me that a man would have that type of opinion of girls. It surprised me that a bias against me would work to my advantage.

Somehow in life I have learned that the barriers in my life can be a way to catapult me forward in life...could this have been the first step of that process.

❑ For help developing these thoughts read “Failing Forward” by John Maxwell