Let's Do Something!

My stepson turns 21 today – the last one of our kids to cross the Long Line of Legality. I will alert my liability insurance carrier immediately.

My stepson is a good son. He will have dinner with his mom and me this evening and then he’s spending the weekend with his dad in Las Vegas. I’m confident that, given a free drop, he’d be hanging exclusively with his friends for the next few days, testing out his newly valid picture ID. He is taking a friend with him to dinner tonight and they intend to “do something” after dinner. Ah, I remember what it was like to “do something” after dinner. And, he’s taking a friend with him to Vegas and I’m sure they’ll find some time to slip away from dad and “do something” there, too. Ah, I remember what it was like to go to Vegas and “do something”.

I had not crossed the Long Line of Legality at the time of those remembrances, because they occurred before I turned 21, which occurred after September 1968 when I was immersed in a baptismal font under the famous Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Until that event Mormonized my life I was a standard-issue college kid who would go out and “do something” with my friends at any and every opportunity. In those days, I operated under the pseudonym of Claude Wilson Grant, Jr. The real Claude was a fraternity brother who looked a lot like me. His ID worked like a charm – 100% effective; never a question; not so much as a raised eyebrow. That ID allowed me to buy a commemorative six-pack the day before I was baptized, which was a serious violation of the Mormon rule book. But, hey, it was just one of the many violations getting washed away in that font the next day. I thank Claude for helping me salvage some of my youth. I thank God for the many wash jobs I’ve received over the years.

Needless to say, my 21st birthday was subdued. While I didn’t toe the line perfectly after emerging from the Tabernacle into my new life, I was fairly true to the faith. My “slips” were not random; they were always tied to some commemorative event, like hanging with a frat bro who was turning 21 and wanted to go “do something” after dinner. After all, at the beginning of every fraternity meeting we held we would recite Psalms 133:

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard….It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life evermore.”

Now, I ask you – how can anyone pass up such a clear shot at life evermore? I can’t count the number of times that my brothers and I would pour precious “oil” on our heads or allow it to run down on our beards. There was a lot of “dew” on Mount Zion in those days! Plentiful blessings were bestowed on our brotherhood. We believed in life evermore.

There was one other little damper on my 21st birthday celebration – I was in the “receiving center” at Fort Ord, California, awaiting a bus ride to my basic training company “up on the hill”. My 8’4”, 315-pound drill sergeant at the receiving center was not receptive to requests for permission to go “do something” with my Army bros. The only drink I would have gotten at his hands was a drink from the puddle of water under my face when I collapsed after doing 750 pushups for daring to ask, “Yo, Sarge, where can a guy a cold one around here.”

I envy my stepson, and all his bros. The early 20s are good years. Responsibility is beginning to rear its ugly head, but there’s still a lot of freedom to just “do something” because you feel like it; because you can. Exploration is the order of the day. Mistakes can still be made and washed away. The cost of learning is usually borne only by the learner. This is the time of life when we pass from dependence into independence on our way to interdependence. All such passages are noteworthy.

Transitions bring awareness and awareness brings the opportunity for awakening – awakening to potential, to possibilities. At these times in life we raise our line of sight and begin to focus a little farther down the road ahead. We actually realize there is a road ahead!

It’s a good time to be alive. It’s a good time to “do something” with life.