Decrepit Old Fool

I did similar things when I was 13; this post is an attempt to explain why. 

A 13-year-old boy suffered serious injuries to his head and chest after failing to jump a gap between two sections of a four-story apartment building and falling to the ground, police said…
Bloomington Pantagraph: Boy, 13, critical in fall from building

Central Washington is a great geologic playground, full of basalt cliffs, many considerably higher than four stories.  But I was not inclined to attempt stunts; I spent as much time thinking as moving on the cliffs.

Later, as a college student in East Tennessee, I was again drawn to nearby cliffs, and a new entertainment; caves.  There were plenty of both within walking distance of the college.  Some were quite a challenge.

I used to practice long-jumps on the grass so I wouldn’t miss when the ground was three seconds straight down.  It’s hard to guess how carefully the young man here in Normal, Illinois planned his jump.  We may never know. 

But something inspired him to try.  My friend Pete guessed he might have been inspired by the popular video, Russian Climbing Ninjas.  I will try to describe the video.

It begins with a shirtless Russian youth performing amazing stunts of agility in a playground of the type that lawsuits have long since erased from the American landscape.  Then there’s about a minute of ‘artistic’ pixellation, but don’t stop there…

The young man takes off into crumbling Soviet-era buildings, running, climbing, jumping and performing high-altitude stunts.  Soon he is joined by another similarly extreme urban acrobat.  These thumbnail pictures do no justice to the jaw-dropping, mind-blowing action on screen. 

There is a substantive connection between beauty and danger.  High mountains are dangerous; so are tigers, and both are beautiful.  This eight-minute video grabbed my emotions and I was left wondering if we even know the limits of what is possible for a human being.  But any one of the young men could actually have ended up impaled on some rusting rebar.  I know how dangerous old buildings are because I knew someone who died in one.

His name was Max.  He was a photographer who fell through a floor that – a century before – had been sturdy enough to support a train engine.  There was no question of ‘going for help’ – his brother held him while he died there on the dusty floor, amid massive, silent machines.

Max was there for beauty.  Amid the decay of the old railyard and the powerful machines he produced wonderful photos.  While I am not happy that he died, I am at peace with the reason for his passing.  So many of us die for a cigarette, a cheeseburger, a stressful business decision, a cell-phone conversation behind the wheel.  He died trying to add meaning to his journey.

Children sit in classrooms; they may be allowed to kick a ball around in a carefully supervised playing field.  If they ride a skateboard, we frown on them, as if their endless practice and self-discipline meant nothing.  Their lives are dominated by the requirement to learn information that is completely remote from their hearts.  At times, they may not even feel that they are alive.

13-year-old boys are not immune to the pull of beauty.  There is a transcendence to surviving dangerous situations.  Their lives are so full of remote goals – lessons to be learned for some hypothetical job they may have someday.  The one lesson we have kept from them in every way we could – their mortality – we leave them to discover on their own.

There was a time when we took their hands in this lesson.  Don’t stay behind the horse; it may kick you.  Set your gun down flat before climbing the fence.  Don’t get between the sow and the chute.  Shut off the tractor engine before trying to clear the hay baler.  The boy had seen people injured and may have seen them die.  He had seen animals die and probably killed an animal himself.  Mortality was real to him, and there were recognizable rituals of passage.  When he was ready to become a man, he became a man. 

Suburban teens have only abstract dangers to consider. Is it any wonder they may go find dangers more fitting to the blood of their not-so-distant ancestors?