Pudding geography

When I was a child, I loved chocolate pudding. We’d put a little milk, just the right amount, on top and then use our spoon to create reservoirs, mountains, creeks and rivers. And then eat the geographic world we’d created.

When I was a child, I loved rainstorms so we could take popsicle sticks, sharpen them on rough concrete and have races with them down the raging rivers of our streetside “gutters,” noting which places had eddies from uneven pavement, which formed rapids and chutes.

When I was a child, I played on a Lake Michigan beach, creating not sand castles, but motte-and-bailey fortifications with defensive moats “captured” from the incoming gentle waves.

When I was a child, we were forbidden to go small game hunting by the current idea of Sabbath observance, so we “took a walk” instead and armed ourselves with sticks, rocks and spears. Once or twice, my brother caught a cottontail with his hands. We knew every escape hole on the neighbouring farm and blocked them up ahead of time.

When I was a child, we made dams on shallow, temporary streams, created deltas and dikes while the spring runoff or a pouring rain supplied the water.

When I was a child, we made a “beaver dam” on a ditch that ran through the backyards of our neighbourhood. We used sticks, rocks and mud until one of the neighbours came out with a hoe and attacked the dam, using more energy to wreck it than we used to make it.

When I was a child, I would put a hookless fish plug on my fishing rod and cast it out over the lawn to where Jeff, my brother-cum-bass, would wait, pounce and “hit” the lure, make runs, do headshakes, jump and either “throw” the [hookless] hook or gradually be played in and captured.

The play continues

When I became a man, I narrated my 77-year-old fishing buddy’s fights with 12-inch trout: “Here’s Gary, on a wilderness lake, mere metres from civilization, fighting the monster trout. . . oh, look at how he deftly uses the leverage of his fly rod to forestall the trout’s attempt to foul the hook on the motor and then – when played out – brings the trout to net, once again demonstrating both the fecundity of wilderness waters and his amazing skill at piscatorial enterprise.”

When I became a man, I made ditches in the melting ice and snow on our driveway to help the run-off water go somewhere else. My old friend, Arnie Brooks (then 75), and I used shovels and ice chisels to re-route an overflowing tributary of Lemieux Creek back to the culvert, which was its destiny.

When I became an old man, I still made geographical landforms out of chocolate pudding and milk.

When I became a man, I did indeed put away some of the childish things, but not all of them. And I did not play computer games. Ever.