The last time I graced these pages I wrote of how to communicate with a teenager. Since then I have rediscovered two powers that all teens have. I say rediscovered because, looking back, I once also possessed these powers. Teenagers are invulnerable and all-knowing. They wear the armor of invincibility and the helmet of omniscience.
I remember the headiness of those powers. I was young, strong, and nothing could harm me as I climbed rocks and trees, roller skated with abandon, and threw things in the air to watch them come down.
I grew up where it snowed in the winter and loved to gaze up as the snow came down. If you stood still long enough, you suddenly felt as if the snow was standing still and you were moving upward. When snow was not falling, say in the summer, I loved tossing a gold-colored ball Mom had bought me high into the air, watching it fall, catching it, and repeating ad infinitum. That was my thing.
One day on the playground after school, lacking my softer, air-filled ball, I found a fist-sized piece of granite that was perfect for tossing and catching. I amazed myself with how high I could throw that stone. This is when I learned what keeping your eye on the ball, or in this case the rock, really meant.
I tossed my granite plaything so high that, for a second, it seemed to disappear against the gray sky. I never saw it coming down, like a Howitzer missile, and I almost ended up with my eye literally on the ball, I mean rock, when it hit me hard on my left brow. What followed, as I recall, was the gushing of blood and gnashing of teeth. I bear the scar to this day as a reminder that the law of gravity should never be taken for granite!
A few years later while living in Arizona, at age 16, I had my first car, and those wheels gave me speed and freedom. My friends and I would cruise Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix or take in a movie followed by burgers and sodas at the local McDonald’s. I was a lady about town!
One particular evening found my friend Annette and I leaving a showing of Funny Girl and feeling like funny girls—giddy and high on Coke, which we had consumed in large cups along with a large tub of popcorn (What did you think I meant?). We exited the theater that was located in a shopping mall and found two shopping carts. The parking lot was large and mostly empty at 10 p.m., so Annette and I summoned our youthful superpowers of invincibility and had a cart race. Woo hoo!
Then my power of omniscience kicked in and I said, “Hey! I have an idea! You climb in the cart and I’ll push you!” Annette was a tiny teen and jumped right in. I pushed her all over the lot as we shrieked with laughter. Then I said those fateful words—“It’s my turn!”—and got in the cart.
I was taller than Annette, and the cart was smaller than I remember it being when I was 3. But I managed to wedge myself in and away we went. Woo hoo!
Suddenly, we heard woo-woo-woo—the unmistakable sound of a police siren. Annette panicked and gave the shopping cart, with me still in it, a hard shove as she bolted away into the shadows.
The cart continued down an incline, picking up speed, and I looked over my shoulder to see an Arizona State trooper following me, lights flashing and siren woo-wooing. God help me, I wanted to stop! I did not want to break the law, but that darned law of gravity takes no prisoners and my cart continued to careen through the lot, with the police in pursuit.
What stopped me, with a jolt, was a light post. The patrol car stopped and out came an officer who, I swear to God, looked like Barney Fife. He was slightly built, compact and wiry, wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses (at 10 o’clock at night?) beneath a state trooper hat. He walked up, arms folded, and stared at me.
“I wasn’t speeding was I, Officer?” I smiled and asked politely as a means to break the ice.
He simply shook his head slowly and asked, “Just what might you be doing out here at this hour in that shopping cart, Miss?” Oh my God, he sounded like Deputy Fife, too!
“My friend and I got out of the movies, and we thought it would be fun to race the carts,” I explained foolishly.
“Friend? What friend?” he inquired with a cynical tone. That’s when I realized my “friend” had vanished. I forced her to show herself, and, after some serious pleading, he let us go and followed us home to make sure we stayed out of mischief—kind of like an avenging guardian angel.
Now a grandparent raising a teen boy, I find that I cannot judge him too harshly. When he begged us for a skateboard my British husband and I insisted, “They are too dangerous.”
“Granddad, Grandma, I’ll be really careful,” our Briteen persisted, deploying his pleading, big, brown-eyed gaze, an extra-superpower I never could master because Mom had an extra-superlative power that trumped mine—the basilisk stare.
The Briteen wore us down, and he and his buddy skateboarded with abandon on the large basketball court near our home. That is, he did until last Friday when his friend breathlessly told us he had fallen off his skateboard while trying to do an ollie and was hurt. We came running and found him lying face up on the grass, a large ball-shaped lump jutting out of the side of his ankle.
The emergency room doctor at Arroyo Grande Community Hospital was terrific. “He’s dislocated his ankle,” he smiled and deftly popped it back in after mildly sedating the Briteen, then put his ankle in a splint. X-rays subsequently revealed he broke his fibula. We have a follow-up visit with an orthopedic doctor.
Once home, I gently set my Briteen’s new crutches against the wall, pealed away his clothes, his armor of invulnerability, and his helmet of omniscience. I put him to bed and explained, yet again, that there are consequences when we make unwise decisions, like trying to do an ollie after he had been told no tricks while skateboarding.
I told him we still loved him nonetheless, and he told me he loved us more. Then he smiled and added, “Hey, now you’ve got your next column!” He was right, and here it is!
Ariel Waterman fondly remembers Deputy Fife, but who the heck is Ollie? Please send her a golden ball to throw in the air via her editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 2, 2015.