The Land of the Definitely Maybes

I had a flashback to my youth a few months ago. I was remembering a trip I took with some family friends and relatives when I was about 12 or 13. It was the last day of our camping trip to Mexico. We were all packed and ready to go. We just had to make one last stop at the beach so our dads could clean the fish they caught before we started our long drive back home. So all of us kids poured out of our station wagons and motor homes to while away some time. I don't know who spotted it, but there was this great sand bar just off shore. The water was slightly more than ankle deep so a few of us kicked off our shoes and waded across. One side of the sand bar had a nice, steep incline so we started building not just a sand castle, but a sand community. After a while, my cousin Daphne (who is a far better writer than I and blogs here) decided that the community must have a name. So we called it the Land of the Definitely Maybes and began inventing stories about the people who lived in the community. I don't know why Definitely Maybes. Probably something about the indecisiveness marking our tweener years. Anyway, I guess we must have gotten carried away with our little kingdom (and the dads must have gotten carried away with fish-cleaning) because when we heard our mothers calling, we looked up to see that the cute ankle-deep channel we waded across to get to the sand bar had grown with the rising tide to become a waist-deep channel. No way about it. We all had to swim fully clothed across to the beach. Boy were the moms mad. All of our clothes were packed already so we all had to begin the journey back home in sopping wet clothes.

I don't blame the moms for getting mad. It wasn't the first time that I had dragged my younger cousins into some kind of trouble. I hide it pretty well now, but when I was younger, I had a habit of doing things without thinking about the consequences. Funny thing is, so many of those crazy events involved Daphne. There was the time we thought it would be fun to create "igloos" out of soap bubbles to house the little caterpillars that occasionally tracked across their back porch. A few hours later, we realized that caterpillars and soap bubbles are not compatible and that if you let caterpillars keep moving across the porch unharmed, you don't end up with dozens and dozens of foaming and exploding caterpillar carcasses on your aunt's back porch. Then there was the time Daphne's mom took me to visit a friend of hers. They had two daughters about our age. They had just had their house painted and it kinda reeked. One of the girls had been showing off her new felt-tip markers, which had lovely fruit scents associated with them. I thought it might reduce the stink of the room if I waved the most fragrant of the markers around (I think it was the grape and the blueberry). We noticed the improvement in the odor about the same time that we noticed the growing number of purple and blue dots on the freshly-painted walls of the room. That's when I learned that markers and centrifugal force aren't really compatible either.

So most of my thoughtless adventures weren't harmful. But there were other poorly thought out decisions that resulted in someone getting hurt. Like the time my brother and I "built" a "go-kart" out of a scooter, a skateboard, a piece of wood, and some rope. My poor 6-year old cousin had nothing to hold onto but the bottom of the board as we cruised down the street. And when the scooter and the skateboard went in opposite directions, her own weight brought the board smashing down on her fingers. Or the time I created a seesaw out of a sawhorse and a plank and challenged my neighbor to hold on while I tried to bounce her off. Since I was heavier and stronger, she did indeed bounce off...actually, she flew off, folding over on her stomach on the sawhorse. Or the time I created a slip-and-slide on the plastic sheet covering our backyard slope, not thinking about the fact that we might slide into the wooden stakes holding the plastic down (I still have a scar from that paticular adventure). Foolish choices, poorly thought out.

This week, I started thinking about the Land of the Definitely Maybes again. Something I received in the mail prompted my memories. It was a voter's information guide about Proposition 85, which "requires that a physician notify in writing a parent or guardian at least 48 hours before performing an abortion on a minor girl." I remember this Proposition not passing in the Special Election last year and it really grieved me. See, I can think back on my childhood and remember stupid decisions that I made. Some of them caused no harm, but others did result in someone getting hurt. And honestly, sometimes I had an inkling that there may be bad consequences. But the moment mattered more than the consequences. And I think about young girls who make decisions in the heat of the moment and don't think about the consequences. I do believe that they need to have the wisdom and guidance of their parents to help them deal with the consequences. Because sometimes it's like my experience in the Land of the Definitely Maybes. So caught up in their worlds of uncertainty, so wrapped up in fantasy that they don't see the tide coming in, don't understand the consequences.

So if you can vote, please vote yes on Prop 85 this coming Tuesday.

Clarice