Missing Link

 Looking back, I wonder if my life would have been radically different if I had participated in either the Boy Scouts or Little League. Certainly for many young men, these were rites of passage when I was coming of age. But not for me. 

The Boy Scouts were deemed unnecessary by me because of my participation in Y Indian Guides. This group was founded on the father-son bond, which was very strong in my family. My dad was invested enough to take all three of his sons with different tribes through this experience, and eventually became a big chief of cultural appropriation, wearing a feathered headdress and everything. My older brother was a Boy Scout. He was way into all the wilderness and knots and so forth. I was far too much of a homebody, not willing to spend weekends away from mom and dad to go out and pitch a tent. If I was going to do that, I would just as soon do it a few dozen yards away from the back door of our mountain cabin. Where the comic books were. 

It was that same mountain cabin that worked against any of us participating in Little League as well. We spent our summers tucked away in the woods, living that somewhat pioneer life and taking time out for practices and games with a thirty mile round trip each time would have done absolutely nothing for the isolation vibe we were trying to instill. I suppose had any one of us three boys shown a predilection toward baseball that my parents would have made the sacrifice. My mom was a champion room mother and both mom and dad were band parents in the extreme. They sewed uniforms and sold concessions at the football and basketball games. They showed up and turned out. They were devoted to their sons' extracurriculars. Baseball just didn't fit in that mix. I was, myself, prone to dropping the very occasional pop fly that might find its way to right field where I was inevitably assigned due to my almost criminal lack of ability. 

Which didn't stop us from playing a lot of softball down in the meadow. The whole family would amble on down the driveway from the cabin to the sloping green field where we would take turns bashing the ball that would eventually be retrieved by one of the neighbor dogs who made their way over the hill to see what all the fuss was about. We knew that it was time for a break when the golden lab who was our most persistent outfielder wandered off with the ball in his mouth to lounge in the creek. 

So maybe I didn't miss much after all. Maybe all those pledges and uniforms. And all that potential ridicule and hazing. 

Not that much at all.