Over Here: 3 – A Period Of Unsettled Settling
“Time would pass, of course, as it has a way of doing, and the mysteries of both girls’ breasts and my curious churnings would become, if not completely understood, at least temporarily tolerated,’’ recalls Ron Pataky.
“Looking back, it was a period of very unsettled settling, and I, in the company of my smelly, runny-nosed, peach-fuzzed male associates, dullards to the last, marked time in a condition perhaps best described as anticipatory. We knew full well that something was afoot; we just didn't know what! There were, of course, rumors.’’
It would take perhaps another year for the smoke to finally be recognizable as smoke, beyond which, we would discover with major chagrin, lay the utterly bewildering smoke screen of a thing called puberty! It was the kind of Oriental puzzle in which you knew something was wrong long, long before you had the slightest idea what that something was ... or, for that matter, were even sure you actually wanted to know!
Crap sake, a guy couldn't seek out a bloody answer to a riddle until he'd first figured out something of the meaning and purpose of the riddle itself, could he? I mean, if a tree falls in a toilet and no one bothers to flush, does the thing even SEE its shadow?
There you have it! Who in hell at that age is yet capable of coping with such galaxy-throbbing philosophicals? We'd been told things like a bird in the hand is worth two if by sea, and other goony stuff like that, but no kid I knew was anywhere near to being ready for the Big Time (whatever in hell that was!).
The question of whether or not a boy would dare go through such a thing again is purely academic, even today. I have, for example, heard remarks to the general effect that the male speaker at the time, "Sure wouldn't want to go through that period of my life again!!"
At such times, I have looked (altogether stunned!) at various paunch-laden, Budweiser-belching JollyFellas, and thought to myself, "No worries there, Cap'n Andy! The splendor of youth done passed you by, you ex-snazzy dazzler you!"
No, the real question is, "Does any boy have a choice in the first place?" And the eternal answer is a resounding "no." Like death, taxes, and a few years of testosterone prosperity followed by several decades of its cataclysmic dwindling, puberty is a condition that each male child born to the species is utterly doomed to face! Girls have their peskiness, too, of course, highlighted (or low-lighted?) by a condition we at the time referred to as "The Curse," or simply, as its more delicate alternative, "on the rag."
It always has been my first-hand opinion, both at the time and now, that the various extraordinary changes during the time in question were and are much, much tougher on the mystified, thoroughly out-of-place boy-child of the species than on his initially spindlier, eventually more curvaceous counterpart. I would learn to my utter chagrin at the time that carpe-ing ANY diem, for this young explorer at least, would require the nominal (if necessary, even perfunctory) cooperation of at least one unmarried, age-matched lady, preferably, a 12-year-old tartette in training towards eventually blossoming as a full-fledged Varsity tart - rouge, eye-shadow, lip goo, bazooms and all.
What I did not know at the time was that I was, and would remain for some years to come, hormonally-challenged. This, of course, led to lengthy, periodic tours in and through a shell-pocked no-man's-land called denial, which simply meant that I was learning not to necessarily believe everything I knew full well to be true (or, of course, vice versa).
Life itched where I couldn't for the life of me scratch, and I spent long days and much longer nights generally feeling more out-of-place than a fish-dipped Bobolink at an all-cat picnic. Woe, oh woe, oh woe indeed, was me! Could the Hardy Boys possibly have gone through this same physical and mental blasphemy?? No. It was me, all right! And - squash my noogies and call me twerp - me alone!
In any event, young fellows, there is one message concerning girls and the unnerving, absolutely intolerable effect they can have on males that should be made clear to pre-pubescent boys everywhere: Get used to not fully understanding very much of anything, guys. It's a condition that's going to accompany and torture your pathetic male bones at least into your sixties! Maybe longer!
Don't say that Uncle Ron didn't warn you! Be advised that you are hearing it from a dude who's been around the block a time or two. (And I am, after all, getting "up there." As I write these very words, I'm damned near 3,000 years old, if, like many of us, you measure in California Redwood years!).
But take heart, ye of little faith. While there is nothing necessarily neat and tidy about this diversion we all come to know as life, our days all life long are a bit like disposable sketch pads. We generally get a brand new sheet each and every morning (occasionally even late at night!), along with all manner of interesting props, brainstorms, wild hairs, itches, detours, deviations, and other curious utensils, after which point we are that day free as desert dust to make of it whatever time, space, and imagination might allow.
If you are a lad on such a journey, I wish you Bon Voyage. Shoot, guy, if I made it, anyone can!
