When I was young, I was very adventurous. I did things inspired by natural curiosity, and a sense of excitement that only a child can really enjoy. Without the hinderance of experience, I was free to find things out for myself, and I set about doing so in a style of my own.
I learned a lot from my parents, but parents never seem to be able to pass on more than the essentials early in a child's life. It must have been difficult enough teaching me to walk, and talk, and to appreciate the basic doctrine of obedience and respect.
For example, nobody ever bothered to tell me that I couldn't believe everything that I saw on television, or in the movies. That was a lesson that I had to learn on my own. Of course, I never questioned the matter either. I just naturally assumed that everything was as it seemed. Movies were absolutely factual as far as I was concerned. I remember seeing the movie Mary Poppins. In that movie, there was a woman who actually flew using nothing more complicated than an umbrella. Now that impressed me! I couldn’t wait to get home and try that one out myself.
We had an umbrella barrel near the front door that contained all kinds of umbrellas. Of course, I didn't want everyone to know about my ambition to fly, so I waited for the right time. I was master of choosing the right time. The most popular right time was more than likely to be when my parents were not at home.
I had a secret means of climbing onto the roof of our house, and I had spent considerable time up on the rooftop before seeing Mary Poppins, but I had never contemplated the significance of my own rooftop as a launching area for my first flight.
I picked out the largest of the umbrellas, which belonged to my father, and decided that it would do just fine for my inaugural flight. I climbed my special tree and leaped to the shingled surface of the roof with delirious recklessness, and nearly tumbled to an early crash landing. The umbrella was a handicap in climbing.
Our house was a split-level, built on a hill, and what was only a ten or twelve foot drop in the front became a two-story plunge in the rear. I don't have to tell you which I chose. Why would I have anything to worry about? I had my umbrella, so I was set.
Standing near the eave, I boldly opened the umbrella and held it high above my head. Nothing happened right away. I didn’t magically lift off or feel anything grand. So I decided that I would need to get a running start. After all, I knew that planes had to speed down a runway before taking off. So maybe I had to do the same thing.
I must throw in a word of hindsight at this point. As a child, I had faith. Faith in everything I saw, heard, felt, or believed. My adventure with the umbrella was just an extreme exhibition of that faith. I truly believed that I could fly just like Mary Poppins, and I learned an important lesson.
I climbed up toward the peak of the roof with the assurance that when I launched myself out into empty space, that I was not going to fall, but instead, I was going to fly! I ran to the edge with complete confidence.
It was very exhilarating! My feet continued to run as I left the relative safety of the roof, and I held onto the umbrella for dear life, waiting for that magical lift into the air that I was sure would happen any second.
Later in life, I learned that a falling object accelerates at a set rate in feet per second. But… I remember my umbrella flight in slow motion, and at the time, it seemed like it took forever to get to the ground. The umbrella collapsed about halfway down, but I still had it in my hands when I landed.
There was quite a bit of pain, and I was lucky not to have broken any bones, but I escaped comparably intact. I had sprained my ankles, and I bumped my knees pretty good, but I was too angry to even feel the pain.
I had been deceived, tricked, misled, and a few other words that I didn't even have in my vocabulary at that age. Mary Poppins was a total fraud! Movies were no longer to be trusted, and that brought about a whole series of questions in my childish mind.
I was familiar with make-believe, but I had innocently assumed that I could believe the things around me, but now I knew that make-believe was not real. Figuring out just what indeed was real was a scary proposition. There was a good side to my thoughts also. If Mary Poppins was no more than a farce, then maybe monsters were not real either.
I know now that my skepticism was not always a good thing, but I sure did have a lot of fun, and some hair-raising adventures throughout the rest of my childhood examining reality, and finding out for myself what was consistent, and what was not to be trusted.