But Jesus called the children to him and said, \u201cLet the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.\u201d<\/em> \u2014Luke 18:16<\/p>\nI remember three things about Doug.<\/p>\n
Number one: When we were in the same class in elementary school in Odessa, Missouri in the mid-1980s, Doug lost the battle of boy versus bladder in the hallway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really need to go!\u201d Doug said to our teacher, sweat beading on his brow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry Douglas, but you\u2019re going to have to wait,\u201d our teacher replied. \u201cI can\u2019t just let all you boys run willy-nilly in the bathroom now, can I? Wait until it\u2019s your group\u2019s turn to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not too long before that, when teachers allowed all of the boys in a class to use the restroom at the same time, someone smeared something on one of the walls as if he believed he might be adding a finishing touch to a Congolese mud hut. The teachers sent boys to the bathroom in small groups after that\u2014as if this might prevent additional pungent paintings from appearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to make it!\u201d Doug shouted seconds before he failed to make it. Doug had to call his mom and ask her to bring a new pair of pants to school.<\/p>\n
Number two: That same year, Doug and I dug for treasure behind the yew bushes in my parents\u2019 front yard.<\/p>\n
One of us succeeded in securing Spree candy that day, and we ate the entire roll in a matter of minutes. Our imaginations under the influence of processed sugar, we became convinced that pirates had buried treasure behind those bushes.<\/p>\n
We found foil pie pans\u2014ideal for condensing the rays of the sun into lasers capable of cutting through the crust of the Earth, or so we thought\u2014and took them to where we believed the treasure lay.<\/p>\n
We pointed the pans at the ground, but soon realized that sunlight could not reflect off of them in this position, let alone concentrate into anything like laser beams. In fact, the pans shaded the very ground we hoped to scorch.<\/p>\n
At that point, Doug and I decided to dig with gardening spades instead. We might have succeeded in unearthing treasure, too, if not for my mother\u2019s meddling. She opened the front door to check on us, probably to ask if we were thirsty, and found us happily tunneling to Tunisia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat on Earth are you boys doing?!?\u201d she stammered, standing there all slack-jawed and stony-eyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re digging for treasure,\u201d I said. \u201cDon\u2019t worry\u2014we\u2019ll put the dirt back!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not what I\u2019m concerned about, Chad,\u201d she said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t our house. We can\u2019t dig up the yard like we own the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean it\u2019s not our house?\u201d I wondered. \u201cWe live here. Who else would the house belong to?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChad, we live in a parsonage<\/em>,\u201d she said. \u201cOur house belongs to the church.\u201d<\/p>\nI had no idea what this meant. The word \u201cparsonage\u201d sounded like it belonged to the province of adulthood. To make matters even more confusing, at this age I thought of the church as a building and not a family of fellowshipping believers. How could one building own another?<\/p>\n
If Mom meant that God owned our house, I could comprehend that\u2014and I could certainly see why he would not want us to dig up his yard.<\/p>\n
Doug and I packed up our primitive equipment and pouted on the front porch. Shortly after that, his mom pulled up in our driveway to pick him up\u2014and not because we were in trouble for our adventures in amateur archaeology. Playtime had simply come to an end.<\/p>\n
My friendship with Doug would not survive my family\u2019s move to Rolla, Missouri\u2014a three-hour drive from Odessa. I would not see him for another fifteen years.<\/p>\n
Number three: One weekend when I was home from college, Doug visited my parents\u2019 house in Rolla. We had briefly reconnected via email, and were surprised to learn that he lived in the same city as my parents.<\/p>\n
He and another childhood friend of mine named Matt had enrolled at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla to pursue careers as engineers\u2014and not the kind I remembered from childhood, who drove trains and wore striped caps and overalls.<\/p>\n
When Doug and Matt came to my parents\u2019 house, I suppose I should not have been surprised to find that my childhood chums were no longer children. But I was.<\/p>\n
The two men who stood before me looked like adult versions of the boys I once knew, but sounded nothing like them. I could not imagine this version of Doug standing in a puddle in the hallway at school or aiming foil pie pans at the soil\u2014not this version of Doug, who spoke of calculus so casually.<\/p>\n
Both Doug and Matt had become adults. I suppose I had grown up, too. I could not imagine myself digging for treasure, even though Doug and I could have feasibly done so. Mom and Dad own their house in Rolla, after all, and have spirea bushes in the front yard\u2014probably planted by pirates to mark their buried booty.<\/p>\n
A decade later, the only holes I dig are the kind writers know too well. In my search for buried treasures in my mind\u2014the ore of memory writers hope to refine into literary riches\u2014I sometimes look up and find myself standing in a hole I cannot climb out of without the help of an editor.<\/p>\n
When I feel most despondent about my writing\u2014trapped in impossible pits of my own devising\u2014I remember that the spirit that drove me to dig belongs to my inner child. I take comfort knowing that the boy who believed he could harness the power of sunlight with foil pie pans still resides in me.<\/p>\n
Such childlike faith should never be buried.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Cathy Warner, Literary Editor of IMAGE Journal\u2019s \u201cGood Letters\u201d Blog But Jesus called the children to him and said, \u201cLet the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.\u201d \u2014Luke 18:16 I remember three things about Doug. Number one: When we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,50],"tags":[65,75],"class_list":["post-3185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chad-thomas-johnston","category-relationships","tag-childhood","tag-friendship"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.happylittlemesses.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/IMG_0763.jpg\" "\\"dirt\\"")
For Cathy Warner, Literary Editor of IMAGE Journal\u2019s \u201cGood Letters\u201d Blog<\/em><\/p>\n