I have learned over the course of living my life that depending on what stage of life you are in when you recall a memory, those different life stages can cause you to change your interpretation of what was really happening during the event that caused the memory. Some may describe this process as maturing.

I think we all can agree that a person matures at a different rate than they age. I know young people who are very mature for their age and I also know older people who are very immature for their age. One really has nothing to do with the other, but often is compared to each other in an attempt to try to validate if a person is legit or not. Is there such a thing as a perfect balance of age and maturity? I need to think about that one. Regardless, maturing changes your interpretation.

Different interpretations are derived from either gaining future life experiences or by finally understanding who had control of your life at the time, or perhaps both. I have to believe that others struggle with memories during periods of their life that they were not in control of. Don’t get me wrong, you are always responsible for your choices once you are old enough to be held accountable, but you were not in control of being placed in the situations nor did you control the circumstances that you were faced with when you made your choices. Yet those choices, (decisions) can affect you for many, many years. Your youth is an example of not having control, yet being held accountable.

One memory I have is from when I was eight years old. I was told to go outside and play. It was a nice summer morning so I went out to the backyard. We lived on a farm a few miles outside the City. Although we didn’t have any animals or do farming, we still referred to it as “The Farm”. Imagine a big grassy backyard with huge Oak trees towering above the roofline of a two-story little country home. One of the trees had the rope swing and others simply provided shade. There was a swing set in the backyard, the frame of it made of solid iron, and it had two swings. It was difficult to tip that swing set over.

There was plenty of room to run and play as the Oak trees formed a perimeter around the yard with the rope swing tree at one end and the swing set at the other end. After I had been playing on the rope swing for a while, my Dad comes out of the house with a football and said, “Let’s play some catch”. Already in this story there are two instances of me making choices based on others that controlled the circumstances: First I had to find something to do when I was “told” to go outside and second I chose to play catch when my dad “suggested it”. I could have said no to both or either and dealt with whatever consequences I would have faced. In 1972, that probably meant the belt and not a timeout for disobeying my Mother when she told me to go outside and of course I wanted to play catch with my Dad.

The game of catch with my Dad eventually turned into Dad playing quarterback and me being the receiver. I wasn’t a very tall kid, but I was quick and athletic. The first route was usually a simple 5 yard, across the middle pass. From there, the routes would get more complicated and the passes would get longer with the final pass usually being the “go deep” or “fly” route. We’ve played this game many times. On this particular day, we did it a little different. The first play was the 5 yard across the middle pass. Lining up on the right side of my Dad, he said “hike”, I ran up field 5 yards, cut to my left and caught the pass. The second pass however was the “go deep” pass play. I lined up on the right side of my dad and as he said “hike”, I took off running straight up the side of the backyard as fast as my legs could carry me. I had counted to four and looked over my left shoulder. The four count was our timing to know when Dad would throw the ball and when I should turn and look for the ball. I saw the ball in the air, high above me floating in a nice spiral. I was very good with depth perception and I knew I was gonna catch that ball! As I ran faster and faster looking back over my left shoulder stretching out my arms in front of me, the ball floated over my head and landed right into my hands. As I pulled the ball into my body and took another step, I turned my head just in time to run face-first into the iron swing set pole. The impact knocked me out and broke my two front teeth as well. Pretty vicious hit. I’ll add to this story later, but the choice I made to play catch that day impacted my life for 39 years and counting.

Some of you may be saying, wow, what a bad accident. Eventually, through life experiences I understood it to be an accident but because I was young at the time and didn’t have many life experiences, I blamed my parents. The biggest question that came to me time after time was why my Dad hadn’t yelled something to warn me? I don’t for one minute believe he did it intentionally, but there was no warning from him that I was running into harm’s way. I blamed my Dad for not warning me that I was going to run into the post. I blamed myself for not watching where I was going. I blamed my mother for telling me to go outside and play. Later, I learn to understand it was just an accident. I learned this through gaining future life experiences and being a parent and playing catch with my own kids. Regardless of how careful I was, I couldn’t always protect my children and accidents happened.

As a memory, the impact of this one won’t ever be forgotten. It was definitely one of those major things in life that shaped who I grew up to be. My interpretation of this memory definitely changed based on my future life experiences. That doesn’t discount that I wrestled with the memory for years and that my interpretation of that memory was always different depending on When I remembered What I remembered. Today I continue tackling memories 1 by 1.