About the same time that our granddaughter Amy learned to walk, she began to play hide-and-seek. Kids of all ages love the game but 2-year-olds play it with giggling glee.
Born with a double scoop of cute, it wasn’t unusual that she’d hide in exactly the same spot as the one she’d just been! I had no desire to enforce the obvious, though, so would go along with it and pretend to not notice. It was a special kind of grandfather’s fun to complain aloud to grandma, “WHERE did Amy go?” — just to hear her laugh and proudly proclaim, “Here I is!”
Plenty of things are intentionally hidden in this world that are absurdly ridiculous. Why not embrace an innocent exception?
Her great-grandfather (my dad) does not see well for different reasons. The eyes of a 90-year-old get justifiably tired and physical “de-generation” is hard-pressed to counter the boisterous sights of exuberantly younger generations. Their visions are instantly available and, at will, flaunt laser focus. Speed isn’t always a reliable indicator of what’s keen, though. Dad’s ophthalmologist said his glasses are fine and also approved the use of a hand-held magnifying glass (with a mini-light) to help him read fine print. The “eye of Providence” appears on the back of dollar bills, and dad mimics a similar intensity when his concentration requires it. He ain’t wrong. As Andy Rooney once said, “Nothing in fine print is ever good news.”
My wife and I like to watch college sports together and frequently complain loudly when game officials do not see flagrant infractions that appear to be right in their field of vision. Broadcasters note this, too, but pretty quickly defer to the crews in zebra camo to make the right call.
Unlike professional sports, the NCAA relies on conferences, not the organization itself, to ensure fair sportsmanship. This largess can complicate crucial controversial calls that emotional fans very bitterly, but impotently, protest loudly about. Athletes in elementary school feel the same stings when underqualified or distracted monitors lose sight of violations. It’s OK to groan along with other adult fans when that happens. You need to portray a stoic calm, though, when a youngster in tears looks in dismay for explanations after a clumsily handled game-enabled defeat.
Rough outcomes are part of life. Unseeing is a significantly harder assignment.
My parents were married for 66 years and were friends in high school before that. She rode on the handlebars of his bike when he delivered newspapers. They call that foreshadowing. He truly steered the direction their life took as the primary wage earner, and mom made it workable as only a loving, perceptive and gracious life partner can finesse. It’s amazing how sparsely a journey can start out: living in a cramped mobile home with three crying kids, two of them in cloth (yes, cloth) diapers, and a young mother biting her lip hard to not cry in exhaustion herself.
Life wasn’t always “peaches and cream,” for sure, and your children unwittingly witness/piece together aspects that parents can’t totally partition off. In our home, what to do next in challenging situations was debated in whispers around small ears and with gusto behind closed doors. Of course, a pragmatic response plan soon emerged.
When I was in my 20s, I met a captivating young woman who agreed to marry me. I was outmatched in numerous ways and the full effects are still emerging. Her parents treated me like one of their own, and her dad, Don, and I shared the same work ethic. We “weren’t afraid to get our hands dirty,” so we gardened together, remodeled houses together, and talked about life a lot without different ages getting in the way.
When Don was 18, he was a Staff Sergeant in General Patton’s Big Red One. A “bro” decades before it was pal slang. Despite our friendship, he wouldn’t talk about his experiences during WWII at all, saying only: “What I saw was unbelievable.” It was said in a very reserved manner, unlike his daily fun banter.
I wonder what he would say now about “Operation Paperclip,” when over 1,600 “enemy” German inventors and engineers were brought to the USA with apparent immunity from any Nazi ties? I wonder what he would say about current events, too, with groups of people brazenly and publicly boasting about being “not-sees”?
“Not see” doesn’t mean it’s invisible.
Ed Bronson became a wood shop teacher for exceptional middle school students at age 40. He wonders what became of them as well as thousands of high school students who graduated from a Career & Technical Education campus where he was principal until his retirement in 2015. He has a B.A. in Cultural Studies: Religion and a M.S. in Instructional Development.