The boy inside the man

When I was a young boy, I was not much like other young boys. I could read at five, and we're not talking kid's books. I could regale adults with my encyclopedic knowledge of astronomy, and they would get a kick out of it.

On the other hand, I had very few social skills, especially when it came to playing with other kids. I was awkward, and I was often confounded when trying to talk and play with other kids. I had very few close friends – my next door neighbour, and my brother. I was too shy, too socially awkward, too confused by the complex interpersonal social web that underlies all interactions, even those of young people. My parents understood me and knew of my misery, but I think there was little they could do but anxiously observe it from the sidelines, and reassure me once in a while.

I was bullied, regularly, but by different bullies over the course of my childhood – I think the kind of predator instinct within a bully instinctively knows what kids to go after. But what is a more painful memory for me – sharp enough that I feel it physically to recall it here – is just being left out. At swim class, in school, whenever an instructor told us to pair up in groups, I was always, always the one left out, left behind.

In the years since, I have worked hard at breaking out of this shell. I recognized that the challenge of understanding and participating in human interaction was in some part an intellectual challenge; so I studied others, and how they interacted. I learned to make eye contact. I made myself become interested in other people, and worked hard at either having, or being able to accurately simulate, the many social graces that distinguish "weird" people from "normal" people.

And I had a lot of help – compassionate people who recognized things in me that they liked, and were willing to let my missteps slide as they welcomed me into their friendships.

Why am I telling all of this? Because most people have been on journeys of self-improvement, and probably recognize my story in some part as their own. But for all the self-improvement work that has been done on my journey by myself and others helping me, the anxious little boy is still the soul at the core of my being.

Last week, my church's Christmas CD came out. Everyone on the disk, myself included, was thrilled to participate. It means making our music ministry more visible than it has ever been before. And everyone who has heard it has been impressed.

Tomorrow morning, most of the lead musicians on the disc are going to be recreating some of the songs on a local TV station's breakfast show. I found out about this last night at choir, and following choir, some of the musicians participating showed up for practice. I was not invited to participate.

Intellectually, I know well enough that in no way was this meant as a slight. They probably just picked some of the songs that I wasn't on, so there was no need for me to be there. There is the fact that my rendition of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" needs little short of a full rhythm section to perform, and that would not have been feasible in a small broadcast studio on such short notice. And I wasn't the only one left out – nobody from the 11 AM choir is involved in the morning show, as far as I know.

Still, the reaction I had as I put on my coat to go, and my colleague stuck around to get rehearsing was once again that of the little boy left out. No matter how far the distance you travel, some part of you has never left the starting line.

And that, I think, is why I write this. Not to have you feel sorry for me. I don't feel sorry for me – if I feel sorry for anyone, I feel sorry for the little boy from Frazier Park road who lived in Orleans decades ago. I am not him, not really. Not anymore. A small part of me is, of course, or I could not have had the reaction I had last night.

But if God preserves a piece of us at that starting line, it may be for a couple of reasons: to allow us to see, first of all, how far we have come. And secondly, I think, to remind us that we don't die. Our bodies may replace themselves every seven years. And we may reshape our personalities to such an extent that we extinguish all visible sign of our earlier incarnations. But God loves, even still, the young child that every person once was. "For to Him", Jesus once said, "All are alive."

Yes, even that cliché of clichés – the inner child. :-)