Age Crimination

When you're 67, 3 or 4 years difference in age between friends and relatives is a yawn, but when you're 6 or 7 it's a yawning class gulf. Caste lines are obvious and sometimes rigid when you're a kid. My social environment was like that and consisted of same age peers, mostly schoolmates; slightly elder mentors; younger mentorees and "the big kids." You might want to read "The Body", aka "Stand By Me", to get Stephen King's take on "big kids." This is part of mine.

The most relevant big kids in my life were my older brothers, Jim and Tiny. In many ways we lived completely separate lives both at home and out in the world. Some of the older fellows all over Kennydale, for whatever reason, seemed to devolve into a rougher crowd in the mid-fifties, the era that invented "juvenile delinquency", and Jim, Tiny, Jack Rogers, Paul Stark, Dick Madsen and others around here were caught up in that. Several of them even became semi-career criminals with multiple stays in various institutions. Our local guys were getting busted for shoplifting, car theft, bank robbery, various scams (including one having to do with ripping off paper route customers) and burglary. No murder, though. As far as you know. There was a boatload of criminal activity. It almost seemed like someone was getting caught for something new every week. Though most of them grew out of this errant behavior as they grew older, some didn't live long enough;others suffered opportunity lost in their lives.

My reaction to this state of affairs was very like the epiphany I had re smoking. It just seemed stupid and was causing a lot of grief and I decided I wasn't gonna do any of that. Pretty much became a goody two shoes, if you can imagine. No. I know you can't . Forget I said that.