“What a strange thing to happen to a little boy” *A south side kid looks back)

The Old Coot back then

I’m Looking at a picture of a little boy, not quite a year old, gazing into the camera lens in innocent curiosity. He’s wearing a sailor hat and showing off his new step-climbing skill. The playpen he escaped from is behind him as is his mother’s deluxe, folding clothes dryer. A single cloth diaper flaps in the breeze.

I stare at him and wonder what he’s thinking. Does he have the slightest inkling of the life that lies ahead? Certainly not. But, I do, for I am that little boy, fast forwarded seventy some years. An old man trying to figure out this thing we call life. It’s unnerving, the two of us staring at each through the distance of time. One, gazing ahead. One, jealously looking back.

That, in a nutshell, is the puzzle of old age. A paradox for sure. A store of wisdom because I know what the little boy doesn’t know. His future! Playing in the woods on South Mountain, crawling through the drainage system under Ross Park. His first day of school. His time spent in the corner, the cloak room, the principal’s office, learning the behavioral side of education. His encounters with bullies, his skill at adapting to life as it is, not as he thought it should be. Oh, the education he got at that old brick building on Pennsylvania Ave (Longfellow Elementary), not just the three R’s, but life skills too. It prepared him well when he left schooling on Binghamton’s south side and entered junior high across the river and then Central High downtown. Foreign lands at the time, when homeland for him was defined as the south side, and bicycle expeditions to the West Side, the 1^st Ward, the East and North Sides were daring adventures.  

Along came life’s passages: girlfriends, sports (mostly sandlot, but some organized), knowledge of the good sort and the bad: Marlboro cigarettes, nine ball in the pool hall, blood brother rituals, cub scouts and driving dad’s car without a license. Broome Tech launched him into the work world in good stead with a job at GE and provided the meeting ground for his first wife, Jackie. Then marriage and kids (when they were just kids themselves). First a daughter, Wendy. A second career start, this time at NYSEG, a transfer to Elmira, a second daughter, Kelly, a third, Kathy and a degree from Elmira College night school.

More transfers and a fourth daughter, Amy, born in Putnam County. On and on life went, many, many highs and some real lows. His dad died, then his wife. Time heals all wounds? Not really, but they do scab over and life goes on. Eventually a new wife, Marcia, a lucky man to have yet another soul mate on the journey through time. Then a son, Zachary. College graduations, weddings and his mother’s passing all moved him along the river of life, calm waters and rapids alike. Life flew by and retirement came in a rush followed by the birth of the “Old Coot,” a little premature, but eventually the “old” part became a reality. Now, here he is, here I am, looking back at this little boy in a sailor hat and marveling at how swift the space of time between us disappeared. “What a strange thing to happen to a little boy!” *

* (A comment on getting old, made by poet George Oppen to author, Paul Auster.)

The Old Coot today