It Takes a Village - or at least a small town

Apparently it takes a village to raise a child. Raising a child would then include a lot of life lessons taught by a great many different members of the village. It is a marvel that the lessons taught by that village (in my case it was a small town, Port Alberni to be exact) seemed to contain a great amount of common sense, and relied on the implicit judgement of those teaching the lessons. Not everything we learned was through our parents, or even family members. Some of the lessons came from around the corner or right next door.

Village Lesson Example 1 - age 8:

While showing my next door neighbour the finer points of the game of football, including how to tackle safely, my next door neighbour's dad came roaring out of the house yelling and kicking me on my bottom while I scrambled over the fence to get away. His son did his best to explain that his neighbour was not assaulting him, but that we were playing football and football included tackling and pulling people to the ground. He was ignored. I was told to stay out of the yard. What lesson did I learn?

1. Mr R is a raging alcoholic crazy man who needed to be avoided at all times
2. Some people do not understand sports, in particular football.
3. Parents can be very protective of their kids.
4. Big people get to kick little people if they want to.
5. All of the above

Village Lesson Example 2 - age 8:

What kid hasn't broken a window or two? I have. There is one incident I remember well, thanks to the Village.

Right around the corner from our house about seven or eight boys had gathered, all about the same age, to watch two boys. One was a resident of the house(let's call him D), the other was the boy from next door. They had a baseball and a bat and were trying to practice the skill of bunting. One boy pitched the ball underhanded while the other belatedly chopped at it, missed, turned to retrieve the ball, tossed it back to his friend and the futility would begin again; pitch, chop, retrieve, toss, repeat.

The audience, including yours truly, helpfully shouted out suggestions; throw overhand, stand still, choke up on the bat all to no avail: pitch, chop, retrieve, toss, repeat.

"Joe, you show him," said one of my friends. By the age of eight I figured I'd pretty much mastered the basics of the sacrifice bunt and was well on my way towards becoming adept at the drag bunt, the squeeze bunt, and the slap bunt, which really isn't a bunt at all but a fake bunt to draw the infielders in and then at the last moment slap the ball hard into a space they vacate. The Chip Hilton books helped motivate me.

I showed my friend the proper left hand grip, slid my right hand well up the barrel but fingers safely protected behind the bat, squared around to face the pitcher and told him to imagine trying to catch the ball with the bat, in effect deadening the flight and having the ball drop in front of him.

.

It took time, and the substitution of a consistent pitcher, but he started to get it. Before long everyone wanted a turn, so, to prevent boredom or horseplay, I designed a game where we rotated through the spots of batter, pitcher, and a line of fielders that moved every three pitches.

My turn at bat meant T's turn to pitch. T was a lot of things, but he was not predictable. He lived right across the street and down two houses, and knew the S family well. Pitch one was a heater - a baseball term for a fast hard pitch. I bunted it down and told him to slow it down which he did for pitch two. As he began releasing pitch three he called out, "Here comes a hard one!"

It takes milliseconds to calculate a baseball velocity and milliseconds to react. I did not have enough milliseconds to prevent what happened next.

The baseball skimmed off the top of my bat and before it hit the window behind me most of the boys had jumped on bikes or run away - including D who lived at the house. My stomach felt funny, my legs couldn't move. I stood rooted in the lawn until Mr S came out of the house, stood on the steps, looked at the broken window, looked at my pleading face and said,"You the only one left?"

I nodded.

"I guess we better fix this before it starts to rain."

I had no idea what he meant.

In the hours that followed I was his assistant as we did the following:

• Measured the window (luckily it was the smaller of the front windows)
• Drove to the lumber store to get a new window pane cut
• Removed all the broken pieces of the old window and trashed them
• Removed all the glazier points
• Reset the new glass with new points and new putty
• Stood back and admired our work
• Went to Dairy Queen for a sundae
• Went home (where Mr S explained what had happened to my dad. He included the part where I was the only one who stuck around, and how I had helped him reset the new glass, and that was why I hadn't been home for a few hours).Dad nodded, pressed his lips together, said something to Mr S and went back to his puttering.

What lesson did I learn?

1. In 1963 Port Alberni everyone in the neighbourhood kind of knew each other.
2. Refitting glass is a valuable skill.
3. Baseball isn't a front lawn activity.
4. Friends don't always have your back.
5. All the above.

I can't help but reflect on how much has changed by 2014. In the first example above Mr R would have been questioned by police and / or social workers. Perhaps a lawyer or two would be involved. In the second example, questions would be raised about what motivated this man to spend a good part of a day with a boy not his own without first informing the parents.

Regardless, it was a memorable lesson for me - I got a sundae.