“Don’t you know there is an entire world out there waiting for you?” It was the “baron” talking to our 14-year-old daughter, who was methodically wrapping her ankle in an elastic bandage before another basketball game.
“You never see anything of the world except that gym and our house,” pontificated father, warming up to his subject.
“Oh Daddy, that’s not true,” she answered, naming six other gyms their team had played in during the past several months. She then put on her mod blouse and miniskirt and chain belt, checking her eyelashes and giving her hair one last swipe with the brush.
“Furthermore, I never saw such a PRETTY basketball team!”
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| Donna "Legs" Lebo shooting for thevarsity basketball team at Towson High School |
She giggled. Then she unwrapped three pieces of bubble gum, and we both winced, thinking of the latest dental bill, which, like Topsy, just seems to grow and grow.
“Miss Alcindor” left, her long hair bouncing in the March wind.
I remained a captive audience.
The Baron fixed himself a plateful of peanut-butter-cracker creations, having just given up smoking for peanut butter. (Where do you run at midnight when you suddenly discover there isn’t a smidgeon of peanut butter anywhere in the house? There ought to be peanut butter machines for ex-smokers.)
“No, I really mean it,” he continued. “There is a whole great world out there and she should get out of the gym and see it. Do things. Have new hobbies. Meet new people.”
I rose to her defense. “Well, she does make her own clothes, and she has met quite a few new and interesting people through basketball tournaments.” I was thinking of the high school years ahead with driver education and football stars and long prom gowns and I envisioned the baron then, pacing the living room rug waiting for our daughter.
“You’re getting tired spending all your Saturday afternoons watching basketball games,” I asked. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
My husband, the peanut butter addict, the worrier, the golfer, then lied, “Of course not!” he bristled.
“Why don’t you make arrangements to play 18 holes on Saturday? Besides, there are no games this weekend. The girls are going to see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for the fourth time.
I could see already the soothing influence just of conversation on golf.
Just then our son emerged from the basement playroom where evidently the supplies of pie and milk had just run out or the electricity had miraculously ceased to function in a maze of amplifiers and tape recorders.
“Hey, Dad” he exclaimed joyfully, “just the man I want to see.”
The baron was glum. “I’m broke. Forget it.”
But ‘“Bronson the Second” was not about to be discouraged.”Naw, naw, it’s nothing like that. Say those peanut butter things look good.” He took six.
Rummaging through the drawers, hunting for the chess set, he described in glowing detail the further adventures of the village hitchhiker, who had just returned from Albany, Boston and the Cape. The village hitchhiker, who has all the mystical charisma of early peddlers in Revolutionary times, has created an audience of peers who listen to his adventures at Berkeley and Yellowstone and Cleveland as though he had just emerged from the mists of Ararat with the ark upon his frail shoulders. He is 17.
“Where does he earn the money to pay for his meals and lodgings?” I asked, wincing inwardly at all the questions mothers are predestined to ask during adventurous times.. From Sarah on, we have all worried about how sonny will get his pancakes and sausage.
“Uh oh I dunno” said our son blandly dismissing all the nettlesome little problems of everyday living.
“He’s going to try to get a job on a freighter and go to Calcutta next.” Well, from Cape Cod to Calcutta is not bad for a rather slow-to-start spring time, I thought.
“You know, Dad,” continued this overshoot with a case of wanderlust, “I’ve been thinking.” (Ominous, very ominous.) “Maybe I’ll take a year off before college and just knock around, see the world.”
The baron spluttered. I congratulated him silently for not lighting up two cigarettes and gobbling down an entire jar of peanut butter simultaneously.
“We’ll talk about it, son,” he said slowly.
“Your trouble, Dad, is there is an entire world out there waiting for you and you don’t know it.”
So help me, I couldn’t help it. I giggled.
- March 22, 1970
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