Today I was trying to remember what it was to be 14 years old. There aren’t many ages I can specifically identify as to the feelings of the day.

There was that time when I was two when I was sitting on a hardwood floor trying to figure out what to do with the awful hard candy I’d been given to suck on. Clove flavored. Save your babies from that stuff! Consider it equal to a garlic sucker or full vegetable and meat jello with celery bits.

Then I was four and had those dreams, one of which I was certain was prophesy from the moment I awakened, no doubt because I believed it to be prophesy as it progressed. Never under estimate a child. I was four and thought much as I do today, at least during that dream and in the dream I was adult.

I was eight when I was a city rat pack member of sorts. Other boys and I played army and ran from back yard to back yard in military campaigns like the guys in the never ending supply of war movies and world war two shows. I remember what it was like to be pulled in a wagon filled with water on a hot day in the front yard. And the wonder of finding an air plane fuselage in someone’s back yard.

My uncle moved in with us and introduced us to mindless paralyzing fear of the dark. It amused him. That stayed with me until I was ten or so.

At ten there was the most exhilarating perfection of physical being in which it was a joy to run and roll and crawl and play hard in the dirt. I began to climb little trees more often because fruit trees were available. It was great fun to climb through the pie cherry tree to harvest and eat the fruit. My parents had no interest in those cherries. We were discouraged from the apple trees.

Those were the days when an unproductive sense of helpfulness began to develop. I remember pedaling to my good friend’s house and kindly switching sides of the road just before a car would overtake me so I wouldn’t be in their way. A truck careened to the shoulder and nearly went over the embankment because  he’d swung wide and then I turned in his path.

When I got to my destination, my friend and I played “missing link” which was great fun. We were cave men with laser guns and a space ship trying to find our way back to our own dimension of the universe. This led to our wading in the creek to harvest crawdads which his mom cooked for us. Interesting, she called us from the woods for a long time and then used a triangle chime to signal dinner.

We started earning our way that year and that meant berry picking for money. I liked it.  I liked the challenge, the opportunities to excel, and the vast wealth I could accumulate and lose each summer.

At 13 I remember some awkwardness. I got the oil paints for my birthday and the frustration began with color mixing. Especially for greens. No one knew to teach me about lean to fat paint strategy or composition basics either. It was frustrating.

Age thirteen seems a far distant time. We lived in a trailer house, preparatory to fulfilling my fathers dream of a house in the country. The trailer was a step. Buy the land, build a foundation. Move the trailer over it. Build a basement while living in the trailer. Dispose of the trailer and live in the basement while building the main floor house. That was the plan.

Honestly, fourteen years was a time I’m not sure I have much claim on. The ninth and tenth grades were spent in a new school in the country that was still undergoing finish work on the grounds which were heaped with mounds of dirt. Concrete paths led from building to building and for the first time I had a day schedule that required me to traverse them like an ant between classes. There was no grass. Just mud and sticks and mounds.  My consistent pattern of getting straight A grades in social studies class began there. I must have begun high school at 14. I remember reading about hazing and decided not to play along under any circumstances with that barbarous lunacy. None of it happened, happily. During the summer before that first year of high school I think I had a growth spurt and was more imposing than I knew.

During that time a lot of things changed. That was when I realized that in fact I did not despise music. I actually liked a growing library of popular music. The stuff I grew to love the most was being made, but I had no access to it. Meanwhile there were the Turtles and the Beatles. Leslie Gore had a hit or two that I loved. A song here and there dribbled in to add to the ‘like’ list. Some of them surprised me.

I realized it was old style country western that had no appeal to me. Church hymns were strange mysteries too.

To be that age again would not be found on my wish list.

Life began to pickup nicely when I turned sixteen. It stayed nice for years. In important ways, it always stayed nice. There was no lasting peace until I was single again and then the stress of living with an unhappy person was replaced by a different circumstance.

For the record, it’s not possible to make another person happy when that’s not their inclination. If they want happiness, then you have something to build on. I don’t mean ‘want’ in the same way as one who wants wealth but won’t devise and implement a plan to get it. Happiness is the exclusive claim of seekers of happiness.

Life isn’t the pure river through time that we’d like. Not in my experience. It’s got its beauty and variety. It’s got its unchangeable features. Truth though, I think the matter of happiness isn’t what is in the water of that river. It’s what’s put in and what’s taken out. We purify our lives and that’s deliberate in the end. We add flavor to our lives and that’s also deliberate. And we get surprises.

When I’m in the company of youth, as I was today in a class room for Sunday School, I love their energy and their vibes. They’re far ahead of me at that age when I was a mouse of timidity. At that age, as to day, I loved learning science facts and history and I trusted knowledge sources such as encyclopedias to present actual fact.  That makes me laugh  now.

There is a certain wisdom that age and experience must provide that young adults don’t always have at their command. Like the rest of us, they have their notions.

But they are fully endowed with feelings and wonder and curiosity and capability. Now, with a pretty good idea what they’re ultimately capable of I really enjoy teaching in their classes. One has to believe that there is beauty in their souls that goes on to take the hits that life sends in its bid partly to advance them into eternity and partly to provide them the alternative if that is their preference so they can sample both heaven and hell in advance and know for themselves which suits them.  One hopes always that they’ll navigate clear of the traps set out to impede their progress and that any influence  one provides shores up their defenses for good. This is why we teach.

So teaching has the great promise of promulgating the core essence of joy. I like that.

Today I observed a Sunday school class where young teens were the audience. The subject was about how to teach and learn truth. There are rules to this sort of thing, ways that it’s effective and ways that it’s going to fail to succeed. That experience got me thinking.

I’ve delivered many a lesson over the years and probably to every age group. For me it was a slow evolution to figure out how to manage it. Maybe others are not so slow to learn as I have been.

The class pretty much fell apart under the influence of a class clown personality that showed up. I figure the lad was mostly interested in the pretty girls. The instructor was not equipped to control the situation. After they’d all let, he said it was the worst they’d ever been and lamented, “they don’t respect me.”

I told him he should not teach as himself but to assume the role of teacher. Then it isn’t him personally that they’re responding too, it’s the role. That role has its own obligations and objectives which may match the person delivering the lesson, but the lesson is actually taught by the spirit comprehended by those young people in their role as willing students via the same spirit. The instructor is a moderator that keeps those roles desirable.  Fitting the role is like doing your job at work where if you are a welder, that’s the role you’re paid to perform. Not  anything else. On the job, you lay down weld bead or fit or clean up or whatever your role is required to do.

Life is a succession of roles.