Name: Richard
Ages: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18+
Current Age: 60
Secret Places
How many others growing up had a secret place where they felt safe and
could go hide from others or from parents even for a short time?
I had an old tree house I found as a young boy, way up in a old weeping
willow tree.
It was my safe place, it was my land where dragons could fly, and no
one cared how I was dressed or if I was wet or not.
It was my place to go do home work, or listen to the ball game on a
transistor radio. It was away from the house where others could not see
me but I could still hear the whistle if it was blown looking for me
and I could look out from the branches and see my front door.
It was safe from other kids as they did not want to deal with the mean
framer that owned the land, and would shoot that them with a shoot gun
with rock salt.
Part of the problem for me was I lived next to the bully in the area,
and back then no one cared. The police would not do anything as his dad
was on the city board and they acted rich.
It was a place where I could take off my outside pants and just do
school work or listen to the ball game in my underpants. As a rule I
had old one up there that I could wet in.
For me it was different than others as I was supposed to be in diapers
and I hated them. The only thing I wanted was to be like the other
kids, even they wet their pants many times out playing. And unless John
was around, no one cared.
The farmer really was not that bad once I got to know him, and he did
teach me a lot of things over the years.
And I could tell from the floor back then I was not the first one to
wet my pants up there. I think it had belonged to his kids when they
were younger.
He taught me how to shoot and shoot right, he taught me how to fight
like no other kids could.
He help me get my first bike running and I think he help behind the
picture get my first job at 10 years old working in the gas station
there.
Others did not get along with him as there were still a lot of feelings
about World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He tried to teach me other things that seemed strange them but now I
wish I could go back and learn.
He tried to teach me about something called bosheto code I spent many hours just watching him as I got older working steel,
and making knives and swords. He was a sword master, I found out years
later.
Many times I would be soaking wet and not even know it as I watched him
work the metal, and watch out it curved and shapes as he worked it as I
watch the fire dance from the stuff he used on the metal.
A few years later as the bully moved to a new housing tract, another
family moved in that also had a child that was a bedwetter and often
wet his pants and we became friends, and I took him to my fort we spent
many summer days just talking or reading in the tree house most of the
time in very wet underpants but we were safe from others and we just
had to change pants and put our outside pants back on and go home. At
that time I would sneak my wet underpants home and wash them then take
them back there.
A few years after that, we moved to a new house that still backed his
land, but these trees had no tree house.
Once we had a run-in with the bully and he came to our rescue from him
and his friends then he went to see them and we never had any more open
problems with the group.
We did have a few run-ins in high school but they were on the football
field or after a football came with his school but by then I was no
longer afraid to fight, and few others could stand against me and win
and I saw no problem with fighting to protect myself and others in the
way he taught me. I had no problems with the names called for fighting
like that.
Once he did pull a knife on me and a friend. It was that last time he
did on me, the cops came to where I worked and I told them what
happened, and nothing more happened a few years later he did pull a
knife on a different kid and hurt the kid and went to juvie for a year.
The best gift he ever came me I lost in Vietnam after I was hurt. I
watched him for a long time making a new type of knife after work and
it turned out it was for me, it was a great bowie knife thing and it
never went dull in the 7 months I was in country prior to the plane
crash. I never knew what happened to it after the crash as not of the
stuff I had on or with me made it to hospital. I hope the knife was as
good to who had it as it was to me then.