While my siblings and I dabbed Solarcaine on sunburns and relished the extravagance of window unit air conditioning in the efficiency apartment rental, my dad settled himself on the Indian Beach fishing pier. The second week of August was our designated yearly vacation time and the North Carolina heat beat down with abandon. My daddy, transformed nocturnal, dressed in angling armor accessorized with tackle box, thermos of Sanka, and carton of Pall Malls. He baited hook and cast line to set the right ambiance. The rod and lures and occasional fish he caught (and gave away,) served as props for his late-nighters. His goal was to meet friends and swap tales. His favorite part of the family vacation happened outside of his kinfolk.

     On one of these summer evenings, Daddy met a man and his four-year-old grandson. As conversation unfolded over spin-casts and surf, Daddy asked the young boy where he was from. 

     “You know where Peanut and them live?” the boy answered. 

     Having never met the people before, Daddy said, “No, he didn’t believe that he knew where Peanut and them lived.” The boy, undeterred by the response, plowed forward with his explanation, “Well, we live down the road a piece from their house.”

     I always loved this story. For years, it was a call back in my family when something was obvious to one of us but not the rest or when someone was making the world all about them. It makes me grin just thinking about that little boy and his geography reference wrapped around an individual named Peanut.

     This can be the way sometimes, not considering how knowledge and understanding builds on experience and personal bandwidth to establish footing in the human equation. Big fish, small pond, small fish, big pond, big fish, big pond, microcosm, Mississippi River.

     The ability and willingness to compare and contrast impacts the view both in the world and of the world. While I have my own personal Peanuts, I can’t expect the universe to know them. It’s endearing on a four-year-old, not on a grown ass adult. It’s up to me to bring myself to the world, lest I risk suffering from terminal uniqueness, causing a long, slow decline towards short-sightedness and need to be righted-ness. 

     I grew up in a family with five kids. We had one bathroom. Many fishies, mudpuddle. It didn’t matter so much how I felt about things as our modus operandi was wrapped around service and volume. I don’t feel as though I was slighted, and my parents often even called me by the correct name. I was part of something bigger and that meant giving and taking. We were a school of fish and in that school, there was indeed a teacher.

     I learned that as a contributing homo sapien, I was tasked to have confidence in myself, yet not be selfish. I was asked to stand my individual ground while considering the greater good of others. I was taught to consider both the significance and teensy-ness of my spot on the planet. I was expected to take responsibility seriously but find humor in my mistakes. Not being wholly good nor bad, I learned about the tipping scale of balance and the purposeful practice of common-sense type moderation.

     I don’t know what the grandpa of the little boy said after the dialogue about Peanut and them. I like to think he chuckled and gently reminded the boy that there were from Sanford or Kinston or Robbins or Martinsville. I like to think that he lovingly coached the boy to see beyond what he had always known and interface with others on broader terms. The truth is that I don’t know what happened next and based on what I observe lately in our world, there are situations where if we don’t know or resemble the same Peanuts or swim in the same watering holes, then our destiny is not friendship.     

     I’m complicit in not keeping the covenants that I learned as a youngster. It’s hard for me not to stereotype based on a litany of beliefs that have been canned and sealed inside me, including whether or not you’re left-handed and your birth order. As though my learning these two things about you would allow me to diagnose your personality and predict your behavior. And if I happen to be right, my theories are reinforced paving the short road to my little pond, where I live near Peanut and them.

     I am going to be bold here. It’s easy to take a side and hunker down in a position. It’s the force of the common mind to backstroke in familiar and fail to interrogate authentic reality. I am talking about ethnicity, race, politics, sexuality, religion, and gender. I am talking about the things that make me uncomfortable and the things I don’t fully understand. I am talking about it being okay for people to be different than me and look different from me and think different from me, not just from a place of tolerance but with a spirit of respect.

     It’s one thing to start out down the road from Peanut and them, it’s quite another to grow up and move. 

     Whale, ocean.