THE KITE OF YOUR GENIUS

AGE 12 WAS ONE OF THOSE tension-filled crossing points in my life. It was a time when the tenderness and lack of confidence in childhood were waning, and I was beginning to test my growing body, to create my intellect. My Genius arrived in a pre-teenage "do-it-yourself kit."

There never are any specific instructions. All early teens or preteens struggle to form our "self." We wrestle with this unique, "higher self" and meet or create all kinds of challenges, inner and outer, large and small. Our gifts seem to emerge from our engagement in our conflict with, or our fleeing from authority.

In 1960, my family lived in a particularly windy part of Colorado just east of the Rocky Mountains out on the prairies in a bedroom community named Broomfield between Boulder and Denver. The wind blew so hard out there that the metallic threshold on our front door vibrated and hummed loudly whenever the wind velocity topped 40 miles an hour, which was frequently, at all hours of day or night.

My mother had been a young woman in the “Dirty 30s” in Iowa and Texas. That was the era of drought and giant clouds of dust that would blow up, become storms, and roll across the open prairies engulfing farms and lives. So, she knew the tragedy borne by ill winds of the Great Depression and World War II. 

Age 12, for me, was also the age of grandeur. Grand ideas, climbing physical or metaphorical mountains, taking on significant challenges,  seemed just the thing for learning about the truth of life, what is behind the scenes.

In my case, life gave us wind, lots of wind, and we foolhardy boys seeking a thrill made "bike boats." "Bike boats" were a way for us to test ourselves, our creativity, and find grand adventure.