Lighting Out for the Territory
A Story about Running Away
“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally says she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” – Huckleberry Finn
And that’s when I knew there was no choice but to try to make it to the tree line.
“Tom, what are you doing? Hey! Get back here, Tom!”
But it was too late. By the time Mrs. Ratched took it upon herself to start after me, still calling my name, I was halfway to the tree line – and freedom.
Let’s back up a bit. You won’t understand my story, or why, on a late April day in 9th grade, I found myself sprinting away from Sigmund Freud High School with my geometry teacher in undignified pursuit.
To understand my story, you’ll need to understand a bit about my childhood, and about my parents. Let me take you back a few years, to a time when I still lived with them.
I was born a member of iGen, or Gen Z, or the Zoomers, whatever they call us. For reasons I will elucidate, I do not seem to have much in common with my fellow Zoomers, other than my age.
My sister was born on December 31st, 1999. Y2K. My parents did not worry much about Y2K at the time, although many of their friends had warned them about the impending civilizational collapse. Neither of them owned a television, let alone a computer, and they thought the whole idea of a date reset contributing to the end of times a bit ridiculous. Events later vindicated their lack of concern.
I was born around the end of the second Bush’s presidency. With nearly an 8-year age gap separating me from my sister, I did not spend much time with her growing up. She went away to college when I started middle school. For most of my childhood, I played alone.
I had a strange childhood, though it never seemed strange to me until much later. Perhaps in the 1950s, my childhood would not have seemed so strange. But in the second decade of the 21st century, I had a rather anachronistic childhood. Though my parents eventually did buy computers for their jobs, for the most part we had an almost Amish household. We owned a landline, wrote our letters by hand, and entertained ourselves with books and physical sports, rather than television.
I lived good portions of my childhood outside. I climbed trees, played baseball and basketball, and fought imaginary dragons in the back yard. Our family read stories every evening, and I developed a knack for telling my own stories. I loved acting out those stories in the yard, especially the stories that involved trees to climb.
In school, I had a little bit of trouble making friends. I was different from the other kids. They had iPhones, even in elementary school. They had grown up on their parents’ iPads. By fifth grade, I was the only kid without a Facebook or Twitter account. The friends I had seemed to spend a lot of their time plugged in. At least, that’s the way it seemed to an outside observer (I count myself an outside observer of my own generation). I’m sure it seemed completely normal to them at the time.
To them, I was the odd one. When I was ten years old, I remember a few kids bugging me about my tree-climbing.
“Don’t you get bored?” they asked.
The question surprised me. The thought had never crossed my mind. How could I have been bored when there were always more trees to climb and more dragons to fight? In general, I never had trouble occupying myself, even at an early age.
They pressed me, though.
“Do you at least listen to music?”
“What is there to do outside? What do you watch?”
When I explained that I found plenty to do outside, and that I watched nothing outside or in, I cemented my status as an outsider. I knew then that I would always be different.