My brother Peter got the name, but I got the forever-young syndrome. After all, I’m writing this story in Nottingham, England, two hours north of where J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up in 1902.
On Friday, from our 10-day perch in this Midlands city, Rebecca and I will visit Cambridge because, well, it’s got a famous school.
By my count, I’ve spent 73 years in classrooms, starting with Kindergarten at four. Thus, as a child, I went to school and sat in the back row. As an adult, I went to school and stood behind a podium. And as a senior, with my head held high and shoulders back, I’m still going to school, with a pack on my back.
Next January, in San Miguel, Mexico, where Rebecca and I spend January, I’ll teach a Lifelong Learning course titled “Growing Old with Bob Dylan.” Bob’s seven years older than me and still writing and singing songs, itches he needed to scratch.
School is the same for me.
My childhood yearnings were never about school unless they were nightmares. Like yours if you were an American boy in the 1950s — I wanted to be Mickey Mantle, the center fielder of the World Champion New York Yankees.
And I was a pretty good baseball player until high school, when I stopped growing and, worse, couldn’t hit the curveball. So I switched to golf, a ball that sat on a tee, and the heroic Arnold Palmer, who visited my hometown in 1965.
But youthful fantasies are just that. They come and go. But school stuck around, even when I didn’t want it to. For example, Sister Robert Cecile kept me after the bell rang in 6th grade on the last day before summer vacation for reasons I still don’t understand. She had me clean the erasers.
And 10 years later, in the spring of 1970, after Nixon invaded Cambodia and colleges, afraid of rioting on campus, were giving students the choice to leave early with our current grades or stay to the end of the semester, I opted to stay because my grades were so poor.
Regarding school and me, I could never quite extricate myself until I stopped trying and gave in.
Perhaps it is a form of not growing up. Or, to put a bit of a positive spin on it, of nurturing the part of me that wants to stay forever young. After all, I’ve mostly succeeded at the important adult responsibilities: mowing the lawn, caring for children, holding a job, and saving money. That’s part of me, too.
At the end of the day and term, school has become a way of being in the world. It’s a state of mind I carry with me, outside its walls, even during the hot months. There’s always something new to learn and to teach.
Including that Mickey Mantle, until the day he died, had nightmares about never being good enough, despite his Hall of Fame career. And Arnold Palmer always wanted more major championships than his seven, woefully short of his good friend Jack Nicklaus’ 18. And Jack, another hero of mine, wanted the adoration of Arnold’s crowds.
My boyhood heroes, too, had complicated adult lives beyond a child’s understanding and multiple parts to their personalities.
Just like me and, I’m guessing, you.
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