Climbing a Fence with Squirrely and Chimps—My Nephews

For one summer, exactly one summer, I loved hopping fences. I had just turned 13 and my calves had worked out a deal with the rest of my body that, if my body spread its weight out over a few extra inches, they would be more than happy to hoist it all up the chain-link and over the cross bar. There was no real climbing involved, I was already tall enough to avoid such toil. A single step onto the fence, another on top of the cross bar, and then a leap down to the soft earth below.

       The boys and girls who were more confident, and often of smaller stature than I, tended to be more in control of their limbs and core, enabling them to climb and hop with no problem in our younger years. But for the twelve-year-old kid who was big enough to wear his dad’s shoes and his grandfather’s shorts, and who stands perfectly tall and scratch his ankles without so much as a hunch, I was not yet blessed with the lithe frame and grace to comfortably clear fences.

       Up to this point, my coordination had been the rub, the Achilles heel of my fence-hopping hopes, keeping me clumsy and terrified of what consequences I may run afoul of should my attempts fail. when once lacks the full control over every sinew in the body, there’s a fear—a survivalist, existential fear—that comes with putting one’s inseam within grazing distance of a jagged chain-link tie or the rusted nail of a wooden fence. Somewhere in a denim graveyard are mountains of Bugle Boy and Levi with after-market patches and stitches repairing that which was stripped in the meatiest part of the mid-thigh of the cautiously-adventurous young boys of the 90s and early 2000s.

       But something happened in 2003; I grew taller than I did wider, and with that growth came ability—speed, agility, and coordination. Finally—the athleticism I had been promised. This feeling lasted about seven years, until I jumped from a brick wall beside my college library, and—having misjudged the space between the bushes and the wall as well as the distance from the top of the wall to the earth—I ended up with brick chips in my backs and arms and thorns and thickets in my most padded of areas. All this to save a shot on a game of frisbee golf (FROLF for those in the know).

      Thus ended my days of ad hoc parkour.

       But a new generation has arrived to carry on the tradition!

       We have family in town this week, Ryan and I. Our two nephews—who I’ll call Squirrely and Chimps—are part of that crew. They’re both under ten. I think nine and six, but who knows. I’m not sure if they know. When do kids really know their age? They could be in high school and I would only be shocked for a moment, then do some math in my head to make it all work. I don’t pay much mind to children until they’re old enough to be bored and polite at the same time. So, forty? Case in point: Ryan told me earlier this month that our friend’s child had just taken his first steps. How exciting! I asked Ryan, “Ok, isn’t that kid, like, four years old?” Ryan responded, saying the child had been born roughly a year earlier. “Shouldn’t he have been walking like three or four months ago?” I added. Again, I have no clue.

       But Squirrely and Chimps are different. I really do know their ages; they just walked into my office as I was writing this and I confirmed with them (29 and 48. Wow. They grow up so fast). On the first day of their visit this summer, I had prepared for them some foam baseballs, bats, and a net they could use for makeshift batting practice. As anyone who has spent more than eleven seconds around boys of that age can tell you, their goal was never—not for one single second—to hit a ball into that net. Their goal, from the start, was to see how far from the net they could get a ball.

       Now, I could blame the younger Chimps for this, he deserves blame for something, I’m sure, and he was doing his best to break the rules Uncle Tid had set forth pretty clearly moments before. But to cast blame on Chimps would be to let the older, more intentionally impish Squirrely off the hook. Squirrely is older, taller, and has more of the aforementioned coordination, not to mention the burning desire to break this rule as hard and as often as he can. So when badgering Squirrely to keep the balls in the net—or at least our yard—for the 4,736th time, I pulled out the page from the generations-old playbook—shame.

       My intent was to walk Squirrely to the corner of our yard and have him call for our neighbor—Ms. Pat—whose yard into he had smacked the balls. But when, for the first time ever, Ms. Pat was not in her yard (perhaps recovering from a head injury caused by one of Squirrely’s wayward baseballs), Squirrely and I knew what had to be done. “Can you climb this?” I asked him, looking our six-foot-tall fence up and down. I had never scaled a six-foot fence in my life and now I was asking this nine-year-old who weighs less than my dog if he could do it. I was expecting a response lacking confidence, so before he answered, I told him I could lift him to the top of the fence and he could climb down the other side. Our only problem then was, after jumping the second (shorter) fence on Ms. Pat’s side of things, he would then have to jump back over into the side yard and climb the six-foot fence before I could grab him and pull him back to our side.

       His younger brother, Chimps, I would have been able to toss over the fence as though I were The Trunchbull of Dahl’s Matilda, and Chimps one of the hated pupils under my tutelage. I can’t say for sure that Chimps weighs less than Squirrely, but he’s shorter. He’s more compact. Easier to throw. That’s just physics. Throughout their first day here, I lifted Chimps over our little gate at the front of our driveway several times so as not to run the risk of the dogs bolting for quieter, more peaceful yards. But Chimps was not yet prepared for this task; it was a journey for the first-born. Was it too dangerous, though? There were dogs to think about. Toes getting caught in chain-link. Also, Squirrely and Chimps are from New Jersey. They’re in a foreign, more docile land. If they get caught, they’re likely to drop some Jersey language and offend the whole block!

And so, I turned to Squirrely, ready to tell him how we could walk around the block and just ask for the balls back.

      Before I could offer him a game plan, he cut me off.

      “No, I can do this.” With the confidence of the most senior member of the bomb squad, Squirrely began to climb. Within seconds, he had reached the top. For a moment, fear flashed across his face. I had seen this before. A young man realizing going back would be just as scary as going forward. There was no turning back. We exchanged a quick glance, a shared nod, and he was off.

       He leapt to the ground six feet below him.

       “Run!” I shouted.

        Over the second fence in a blink, a sprint to the baseballs that had been placed in a pile only through divine intervention. He threw them back to those of us too cloaked in cowardice to try such a daring feat.

       Then back over the small fence. A slip of the feet. My God, the drama.

       “Hurry, Squirrely!” Chimps shouted, worried for his brother’s young life.

       Across the yard and up our six-foot fence until he reached the top, vaulting into my arms and back on to home turf.

       For a moment—that moment—Squirrely was the hero we all needed.

       The shine of Squirrely’s heroism was short-lived. Within minutes, he and Chimps were fighting over whose turn it was or who sprayed what with the hose or whose towel was laid in dog mess.

       And in that moment, I was truly grateful…

       Grateful for my nephews.

   And for my child-free life, 51-weeks out of the year.

-AT

Adam Tidrow is a serial entrepreneur, expert in American business and economic history, and scholar whose work focuses primarily on local economic development in the American Rust Belt.