Fear, ignorance and prejudice are all poor advisors

“Put on a jersey or you’ll catch a cold.”

Some people are so afraid of death that they neglect life. Mothers (most of them) can't kelp themselves from transferring their own life experience, or often lack thereof, to their offspring by proxy, so I was not particularly old when I realised that other kids were often allowed to do things I wasn’t.

Victorian culture dies hard everywhere, but more so in the colonies, so my parents' generation still (felt they) could use the passepartout "because I say so" - try that on the kids of today!

Having survived to nearly 50, I can attest that none of the activities were particularly life threatening, although I somehow instinctively knew that doing them would give me a life experience I’d be richer with than without.

I must have been about 7 when the teachers at the Jewish Day School – refreshingly progressive for the 1960s – got my mother to take me to a child therapist because I had a “lack of coordination’. Well of course my development in ball skills was slow. My Dad was – commensurate with his age of 57 - discussing Descartes and telling me about Frederik the Great while my peers were learning eye-hand coordination and ball skills by playing catch with their fathers of 27 to 37.

Tired of the meshugas, Dad moved me to a government school, where, unless you were asthmatic or severely spastic, playing rugby was compulsory. My height was sometimes an asset, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall. The benefits of working with others in a team – alien to most “only children” were quickly thumped, bumped and tackled home to me and in the rough and tumble of grass, gravel and mud, I quickly made up any deficit I had in bruises, sprains and black eyes that my peers had already had from siblings.

Several years of Boy Scouts and the resulting summer camps – away from the fearful eye of Mother and the elderly disapproval of Father – made sure that I quickly made up any “only child” deficit in learning to cooperate with others when it suited me; learning which boys to listen to and emulate; and learning which bullies to placate by making them think you are cooperating. Machiavelli can be dangerous in teenage hands…

My ball skills would never be better than average. In my mother’s mind, the stigma of my “lack of coordination” persisted, probably because it gave her an emotional justification for “saying no” to things she herself was scared of. But by the time I left High School where - away from parental eyes - I also learned to centre clay and throw pots on a wheel, survived my army service which included 18 months in the Angolan warzone, and arrived at Stellenbosch University, my peers who were now hearing of Descartes and Frederik the Great for the first time could hardly accuse the twice South African Universities Sabre Champion of having a “lack of coordination”. One did. I met up with him again about 30 years later and he showed me his schläger.

Through it all, my early learned penchant for seeking out the limits, and occasionally encountering one, has afforded me my fair share of bumps and scrapes, each one a reminder of a hard-learned lesson. I rode (and come off) motorcyles, jumped out of perfectly servicable aircraft and sailed in the South Atlantic.  But I haven't just "survivied". I have LIVED!

So, at those times when your life flashes before your eyes (if you don't have them, you need to get out more), make sure you've got something worthwhile to watch.  – AMB

 

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