Somewhere Between Boy and Man

“There isn’t a day when childhood suddenly ends. One day you’re just living it, and somewhere along the way, you start making choices that belong to the person you’re becoming.”

I don’t remember the exact day I stopped feeling like a little kid.

I don’t think anybody does.

There wasn’t some morning when I woke up, looked in the mirror, and suddenly thought, Well, childhood was fun. Guess I’m a teenager now.

It happened slowly.

By middle school, many of the faces around me were still the same ones I’d known for years. I hadn’t gone far. I was still that kid from the mountains.

But my world was getting bigger.

Sports became more serious. Friendships changed. We started noticing different things about one another. We were becoming more independent, making more of our own decisions, and occasionally making some pretty stupid ones.

Looking back, I think middle school was the first time I started getting little glimpses of the person I might eventually become.

And sometimes, the person I didn’t want to become.

The Little Things

It’s funny what survives in your memory. Not necessarily the important stuff. Sometimes it’s a Coke machine.

I remember trying to scrape together enough change at school to hit the Coke machine before getting on the bus.

And my drink of choice? A cream soda.

I don’t know why that particular cream soda still sticks in my head, but there was something about getting one before that bus ride home that felt like a little victory.

Of course, we weren’t supposed to have food or drinks on the bus.

Apparently adolescent independence started with me sneaking a cream soda into my back pack.

I’d get on that bus, somewhere toward the back, and try to enjoy my contraband without getting caught.

Nothing important happened. No great life lesson came from it.

It’s just one of those little memories that somehow stayed. And maybe that’s childhood too.

Most of it isn’t made up of the big moments we remember. It’s a thousand little ones we never realized we’d miss.

The Same Kids, A Bigger World

I had generally grown up with the same group of kids, so entering middle school wasn’t some dramatic introduction to an entirely new crowd.

But friendships changed, and some grew even stronger.

Rustin was one of them.

I remember his family owning one of the gas stations in town, the only gas station in town, as I remember it. I didn’t really understand much about what people’s parents did back then. I just knew Rustin’s world looked a lot different from mine.

I remember going to one of his birthday parties at his house.

To a kid growing up in our little cabin in the mountains, his place seemed huge, a beautiful home, a big horse barn that I still remember, and what felt like endless things for a bunch of kids to get into.

And man, that birthday party was awesome.

But some of my strongest memories of Rustin are actually from school.

His parents always seemed to make the holidays a little more exciting. They’d bring little gifts or surprises for the class, and when Rustin’s birthday rolled around, there were cupcakes for everybody.

As a kid, I never thought about the time, planning, or effort his parents put into any of that.

I just knew it was a good day when Rustin’s family showed up.

I understand those little things a lot better now.

They weren’t obligated to do anything for the rest of us. They were simply making something special for their son and, in the process, letting all of us be part of it.

It’s something I still remember. And I think that says plenty.

The Trumpet Player Nobody Remembers

Middle school also brought organized school sports into my life.

I ran track. I played basketball. And I played football.

But there’s another version of young Steve that probably doesn’t immediately come to mind for most people who know me today.

I played the trumpet. And I actually loved it.

We didn’t have much money growing up, and buying an instrument wasn’t something my family could simply go out and do.

But my band teacher found a trumpet for me to use.

I wish I remembered more about exactly how that happened, because looking back now, I realize what a gift that was.

Someone saw a kid who wanted to participate and quietly removed the thing standing in his way.

And apparently I wasn’t terrible. My old memory is probably making me better than I really was, but I think I even managed to earn first chair every now and then.

Eventually, though, I had a decision to make. Band or football.

That was genuinely difficult.

I loved playing the trumpet, and I was so appreciative of the band teacher going out of his way to give me the chance.

But in the end, football won.

At the time, it was just a kid choosing between two things he enjoyed.

Looking back, I wonder if those little decisions were some of the first times I started choosing who I wanted to become.

The Boys Around Me

There were other people who became part of those years too.

Josh and I became pretty close.

He also lived in the little town of Nogal, and there’s a lot more to our friendship that I’ll save until I tell that part of the story.

But Josh and I definitely had our adventures. We rode steers and eventually junior bulls together.

Because apparently football wasn’t enough opportunity for adolescent boys to get hurt. We also joined karate together.

Those are memories I’ll come back to, because Josh and Nogal are connected to a part of my childhood that deserves more than a few paragraphs here.

For now, I’ll just say he was there.

Then there was Clint.

Clint was one of those wild kids who had dirt bikes and plenty of land to ride them on. He’d jump the things and do all the stuff young boys do before their brains fully develop the ability to calculate consequences.

At that age, that pretty much made you one of the coolest kids around.

Those friendships were part of growing up. But growing up wasn’t always something I’m proud of.

Ryan

There’s one memory from those years that has bothered me more as I’ve gotten older. A kid named Ryan.

I believe he was newer to our school, although after this many years I don’t trust myself enough to fill in every blank.

I remember Ryan being one of the bigger boys, a tall and athletic build. Definitely not somebody you’d normally look at and think, Yeah, I’m going to punch that guy.

But apparently middle-school Steve thought differently. Because I remember walking in the hall way by our school lockers and randomly punching him in the face.

What bothers me is that I can’t remember there being a reason.

I don’t remember Ryan doing anything particularly bad to me. I don’t remember him hurting me. I don’t remember some great disagreement that explains what happened.

Maybe somebody put me up to it. Maybe I was showing off.

Maybe there was some pressure I no longer remember.

Or maybe I was simply a kid who made a bad decision.

The truth is, I don’t know.

And I don’t want to create an excuse all these years later just because it would make the memory easier to explain.

What I do know is that Ryan didn’t deserve it.

I’m pretty sure we were friends before and afterward, which somehow makes the whole memory even stranger.

So Ryan, if this ever finds its way to you: I’m genuinely sorry.

Whatever was going through my head that day doesn’t change what I did. If I could take that one back, I would.

The Fish Shirt

And then there was Dylan.

This one isn’t quite as dramatic.

Dylan showed up one day wearing this button-up shirt covered in little fish.

And somehow, and I swear I remember this, he smelled like fish too.

Now, giving a bunch of middle-school boys a friend wearing a fish shirt who also smells like fish is basically asking for trouble.

I remember us standing around the playground giving Dylan a hard time about it.

Everybody laughed. Dylan laughed too. At least that’s how I remember it.

And for years, that’s all that memory was: something stupid and funny from middle school.

But getting older does something strange to memories. Sometimes you look at them differently.

Maybe Dylan genuinely thought it was hilarious.

Maybe he laughed because we were all laughing.

I’m not really sure.

We were pretty close friends, so hopefully he remembers it the same way I do.

But today I understand something that kid on the playground didn’t:

Just because everybody is laughing doesn’t always mean everybody thinks it’s funny.

Somewhere in Between

That’s the strange thing about adolescence.

You’re old enough to start making your own decisions but nowhere near old enough to understand all of them.

One day I’m trying to sneak a cream soda onto the school bus.

Another I’m choosing between a trumpet and a football.

Somewhere in there I’m riding junior bulls, learning karate, hanging out with friends, and apparently punching some poor guy for reasons I can’t even explain anymore.

We were figuring ourselves out.

Sometimes we got it right.

Sometimes we didn’t.

Looking back, I don’t think I was the worst kid.

But I also don’t need to pretend every version of me was someone I’m proud of.

That’s one of the reasons I’m writing these chapters.

Gratitude isn’t only remembering the people who treated you well.

Sometimes it’s remembering the people who unknowingly taught you something because you didn’t treat them as well as you should have.

And somewhere during those middle-school years, something else was happening.

While my world outside our little cabin was getting bigger, the world inside it was beginning to change.

Electricity had arrived. Television and movies brought pieces of the outside world into a place that had once seemed completely separated from it.

Other things eventually found their way in too.

And the family you’ve been reading about for these first seven chapter, the family living together in that tiny cabin in the mountains, wasn’t going to stay that way much longer.

But I didn’t know that yet. I was still just a kid.

Not quite the little boy carving roads into the dirt for Matchbox cars anymore.

Certainly not a man. Just somewhere in between.

And for a little while longer…home was still home.

To be continued.

⸻

A Letter of Appreciation

To the people who shared those in-between years with me,

Thank you for growing up beside me.

We probably didn’t realize that’s what we were doing.

We were just kids.

We were playing sports, riding bulls, learning karate, playing instruments, drinking cream soda we weren’t supposed to have on the bus, giving each other a hard time, and occasionally doing things that made absolutely no sense.

Some of you gave me friendship.

Some gave me opportunities my family couldn’t necessarily afford.

Some of your parents made an ordinary school day feel special with a cupcake, a little gift, or a surprise that I appreciate much more today than I ever could have then.

Some of you gave me adventures and memories that still make me smile.

And some of you taught me lessons in ways you probably never knew.

To those I laughed with, competed with, learned from, and got into trouble with, thank you for being part of those years.

And to anyone I hurt, embarrassed, picked on, or treated differently because I was still trying to figure out who I was, I’m sorry.

There are things I would do differently if I could. Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older.

You can’t go back and change the kid you were. But you can finally understand him.

You can appreciate the people who showed him kindness.

You can acknowledge the people he didn’t always show enough kindness to.

And you can be grateful that all of them, in one way or another, helped shape the person he eventually became.

We weren’t little kids anymore.

We definitely weren’t adults.

We were just somewhere in between, trying to figure it all out.

I’m grateful I got to figure some of it out alongside you.

Thank you for being part of my story.

— Steve