Experiencing Life

Until recently, I thought I had had a typical childhood.

If those of you who have heard some of my stories would quit laughing so loud and choking; and stop the sarcastic comments while you’re at it; I can continue sharing with the newbies in the group.


You know how it is.  You see the world from your own perspective.  And my perspective on what a typical childhood was like was certainly shaded (some might say twisted) by my personal experiences.  I had my observations of my life’s experiences, and I augmented my observations with the experiences of the closest other boys I knew growing up, and came to the understandable conclusion that an active childhood was normal.

Hindsight has brought me to understand that “Active” was a massive understatement.

Sure, the other close boys were my two older brothers, and those few lads around our home town that could semi keep up with us.


Now, it may be critical information to know that my eldest brother is only 35 months older than I, and that here was an additional “middle brother as well who was just about 16 months younger than the eldest, and 19 months older than I.

Yep, three boys in 35 months; kinda makes you question the over-all level of sanity that’s embedded in my family, doesn’t it?  Add to that the fact that the first was born less than 14 month’s after my parents married, and that I, the last, was born before our mother reached legal drinking age.

So, while my brothers and I were not exactly of the same den’ing, we were unquestionably a single pack.


Barry felt put out being the oldest, feeling that he had to fight harder for each step forward than did either Jeff or I.  And I for one am willing to give him that; as long as he is willing to admit that some of his more spectacular failures delayed Jeff and I receiving those same freedoms.  So all in all, Barry had to fight harder for selected freedoms, but Jeff, and much more to the point I, had to wait regardless of our arguments for the calendar pages to fall before we were granted equal rights.

But if truth be told, the three of us were not particularly adept at waiting and tended to just reach out and do; with or without approval.

Now my son one time famously told his mother that “it wasn’t fair” that he “didn’t get to do the kind of things Dad did while growing up”.  His mother looked at him like he was prone to riding short busses and said; “do you really think that Dad and his brothers asked permission to do all that stuff?”


But I digress.  Growing up Barry, Jeff, and I pulled many of the stunts that I’ve since written about and many more that I haven’t even attempted to transfer from recollection to paper.

Now as most youth, I grew through my active days and moved on to a short stint or two grappling with higher education, invested in building a career and started a family.  All life events that tend to take the spontaneous “hey, let’s go and…” out of life’s pattern.

Yep, years passed between my own childhood and the firmly established childhood of first my son and then my daughter.  And as those childhoods blossomed and I, as a supposed “adult” was drawn into Boy Scouts, 4-H and other youth programs, and I found myself sitting around campfires with various groups of other people and their children.


Now, there is something special about a campfire.  A special communion of those present with each other, and with themselves.  Maybe it’s that wood magically turns into light, heat, glowing colors, and popping sounds.  Perhaps it is the curtain of darkness around the circle warmed and lit by the fire, or it might be the feeling of anonymity created by the obscuring legions of smoke that march first this way and then that around the circle and into the darkness beyond.

Whatever it is, it has been for tens of thousands of years; and it has always been around just such smoky, warm, dark enchanted circles that the art of storytelling first crawled forth from some hunter, who if we’re being honest was likely shading the truth a bit in hopes of attracting a better blanket warmer; and then spread like a rampant disease throughout the tribe and virally leapt to the next circle of nighttime fire watchers.  Ultimately, it has been around the blistering red coals of night that the storytelling art has been perfected.   

And so, as first my son and then my daughter began to sit around evening campfires with friends and parents, I began to draw up recollections of things that Barry, Jeff, and I did as boys.  In an effort to encourage the kids around the campfire to stretch their imaginations and participate in the communing, I began to offer up those recollections of my youthful activities.  Little did I expect either of the reactions that I drew forth from the crowd.

Universally the youth found points to laugh about.  Now in truth, my sense of humor can be a little bit dry and I have been known to exaggerate a point or two, but the kids readily enjoyed these stories of growing up a generation earlier, often asking for some particular story to be repeated for both their enjoyment and for whatever new child was along that had yet to hear the tale.

Equally universally, the adults’ eyes sprang open like large white plates.  Eyes wide, often slightly out of focus as if they had been popped hard, on the nose, the adults sat still, listening with slowly shaking heads and gaping mouths.

It was that second reaction that got me to revisiting my own childhood and reconsidering the type of child I had been.

It was that second “life review” that brought me slowly to understand; my brothers and I had been full on wild hellions as kids.  Not kind of, not once in a while, but day in day out hell raisers who, though without a single malicious thought, had left indelible tracks in the history of our small town.


I owed my parents an apology, most especially my mother.

I owed neighbors (now long dead) apologies as well.

And I can’t even begin to define what I owed the baby sitter we tied up and threatened to burn.


I was stunned.  Or as stunned as I have ever been by anything other than a chromed-steel bumper up side the head.

Next time I saw my oldest brother I just had to share with him the epiphany that I had had.  And yet, once again in life, he proved the relationship between wisdom and experience.  For when I said to him “You know, I just recently realized we were real hellions as kids”.

His response was; “I remember when I realized that, but I don’t think of it as that any more, now days I just figure we ‘found more ways to experience life’ than other kids did”.

© Copyright 2019, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Asking the Obvious Questions

I’ve spent all of my life in sales to one degree or other.

I’ve sold electronic scientific instrumentation; I ‘ve sold paint, nuts, bolts, garden sprayers, plants, chemicals, and lightbulbs; I’ve sold “cleaner land” and “Cleaner air”; and visions of a better society through community non-profit groups; not to mention toilet bowl brushes and even flower seeds door to door.

And even before that first door to door job selling packets of flower and vegetable seeds, I sold my parents on believing that as the youngest, I was the least culpable on any of the various wild escapades my brothers and I pulled.

And speaking of brothers, much to their dismay, I sold my mother on the idea that the family dog constantly stole part of my graham cracker, thus getting an entire new cracker and a warden’s care while the second cracker was fully consumed.

Yep, it has often been rumored that not only could I sell a freezer to an Eskimo, but I could double back and sell the same Eskimo an automatic ice-maker for the freezer.

So in my life, I have spent my share of time and more mouthing the “unfailingly colorful” language of sales.  And I don’t mind the occasional stretch of truth, of twist of perspective that is used in the sales spiel and advertisement, although I find any number of them truly humorous.  Such as:

U-Haul Corporation's long standing “Adventures in Moving” – let’s be honest, of all the times you’ve wanted an adventure, it was never in the middle of a move.  Nope, Everyone I have ever known simply prays for an uneventful moving process, never for an “adventure”.

Or Chevy’s “Like a Rock” tag line for their trucks – Surely they aren’t implying that when I get it off road it is going to sink in the mud “like a rock”, accelerate ‘like a rock”, and they can’t be trying to compare their trucks hill climbing capability to a rock’s, which we all know roll downhill and never up.

Recently I have been noticing that flamboyant phrases have been slipping into food advertising.  But to a more insidious purpose.  In food advertising these wild tag lines are being used to subtly imply that some particular food is good for you.  Like:

Red/cherry licorice sticks that proudly claim “no Fat” – Of course stupid, their 100% sugar….they will cause your body to build fat, but they don’t contain fat.

KFC’s “Finger Lickin’ Good” – maybe, but the real reason to lick your fingers is because if you try to use a napkin, that gelatinous fat that oozed out of the chicken is going to turn the napkin into instant papier-mâché right there on your skin and then you’ll need a sandblaster or pressure washer to get your hands clean.

Then I noticed that the “language stretchers” had wormed their way into the mainstay food we eat and at that point, I decided to launch my own little pushback campaign.


A couple years back I was in a grocery store and saw a colorful plastic tub in the Dairy section with shelf signs proclaiming “Non-fat Sour Cream”.  I couldn’t help myself.

I picked up one of the tubs and walked up to the front of the store, there I asked the clerk to call the store manager.  When the manager arrived, I asked him; “do you know what cream is”?, He looked at me slightly confused.  So I said; “When I was in school, I was taught that cream is the liquid and semi solid fats that rise to the top of whole milk and are skimmed off”. 

“That’s right” he said, smiling benignly.

“Then how come you’re defrauding the public selling “Non-fat” sour cream? 

I’m not defrauding anyone” says the manager

“Look”, I said; “this can either be cream, which is fat, or it can be non-fat, which means its not cream, but it can’t be non-fat cream….so one way or the other, your defrauding the customer”.

You know, I have hit 4 or 5 grocery managers with that issue.  Not a one of them can explain it.  But everyone has seriously tried.


And then several months ago I was wandering around picking up some fruit and vegetables.  When I was going through the checkout process the clerk asked me if the carrots I had were organic.  I told her, sure, all carrots are organic.  She punched in some keys and the price per pound was exorbitant.
I told her the price was too high, She said; “No, that’s the price for organic carrots, the non-organic carrots are less expensive.  I said, well, then have someone get me some carrots that are not organic.

The Veggie guy come hustling up with some “non-organic carrots, sees the carrots I selected and says to the Cashier; “those carrots he has are non-organic”.

I stopped him and said: “Do you know what the word organic means?”  “The definition of Organic is ‘relating to or derived from living matter’ and that carrot came from a living plant, in fact, if I plant it and water it, will regrow a living plant”.  “Therefore that is an organic carrot”.

Neither the cashier nor the veggie guy ever “cleared the fog” so to speak and they were still trying to convince me that my carrots were non-organic when I left the store.   Oh, I got my carrots at the “non-organic carrot” price.  And went home and happily crunched on them.


Most recently, I was headed into a Carl’s Jr fast food place a few weeks back and noticed their big banner on the Door: “All New Veggie Burger, The Burger that goes beyond the beef”.

I couldn’t help myself.

When I got up to the order counter, I said to the cashier: “I’m Confused”, I see your “Beyond the Burger” choice, but thought that it was a veggie burger”.

The cashier assured me that it was.  By this point, the Manager was listening in, so I turned my focus on him. To him I said: “But veggies are what the cow eats to make beef, so a veggie burger is BEFORE the beef, not beyond the beef”.

At least this guy realized I was joyfully yanking his chain and he simply chuckled and said; “You know, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but your right”. 


I ordered grilled chicken instead.

© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved