Blowing up an anthill and other formative experiences

Ah, spring. That fecund time of year when pasty pseudo-intellectuals sprout up all over… Ah, spring. That fecund time of year when pasty pseudo-intellectuals sprout up all over Frick Park, burning in the midday sun as they hold court on notions of Art and Beauty.

Aside to those short-short-wearing girls playing Frisbee: I work so hard to create this facade of interminable wisdom — can I at least get a smile? Do you know how many Shakespearean love sonnets I could recite if only you’d look this way? I’m not invisible! I’m interesting!

But enough of all that. The point is that we were sitting in Frick Park reading and trying not to notice the girls not noticing us. Suddenly, two screaming, three-foot blurs shot past — children of some type, apparently. Trailing behind them like a weary marathoner was the mother’s plaintive cry, “Timmy! [Not his real name.] Don’t run! I don’t want your sisters running!”

Don’t run? In the park? Outside, on the nicest day this frozen asteroid of a city has seen in months? Are you serious?

If the 60-plus degree springtime outdoors is not the place for running — or frolicking, gamboling, larking, romping, etc. — then what’s the point of leaving the house? Why not plop the kids down in front of Sega’s “Frick Park,” the home game? It’s like going outside, but without all the danger: cathode rays instead of sunlight, pixels instead of dirt.

I thought Hysterical Apron-String Mom an aberration, some deranged escapee from the Ward for Overprotective Mothers. Ten minutes later, I heard another HAM say, “No, honey, lets not go on the chin-up bars, it looks like there’s mud under there.” The father chimed in, “And it looks like there’s rust, too.”

Good Lord. I was surrounded by pod people. And they were breeding.

A lot of people complain about the youth of today, about the teenagers with their piercing, gene-splicing and, in general, growing of new orifices. I’m more concerned with those teens’ older brothers and sisters, those new parents who stop to calculate actuarial tables before deciding if young Billy can climb a tree. They’re everywhere, and they’re turning the children (our future) into tiny, easily managed accountants.

Let me tell you about one of my formative childhood experiences. One summer, a large anthill appeared in our yard. It kept getting bigger, bustling with larger and larger numbers of big, red ants. One day, my dad grabbed a kerosene can and said it was time to “take care of those [ants].” If they didn’t burn, they’d drown in a pool of kerosene. Then Dad dropped the match.

The five-foot fireball was the coolest thing my young eyes had ever seen. It seemed to reach the sky. I don’t remember if I lost my eyebrows, but if so, they grew back, and I was a better man for having experienced some serious backyard pyrotechnics.

When I look at these safe, bland children not allowed to stray from the safety of well-paved paths, I shudder. Have their parents — they of the matching sunglasses, close-cropped hair and creepily assonant names (“Hi, we’re Todd and Terri!”) — ever blasted a hillful of ants, leaving only a scorched crater in the lawn? I doubt it. Their lawns are too well manicured for ants or craters.

I’m not suggesting a national “Blow Up Something With a Child Day.” What worked for me won’t work for everyone. But remember why everyone wants to be a child again: Children aren’t bound to the arbitrary rules we adults agree to follow. They’re allowed to run in the park, get dirty and rusty, and have fun. They don’t have to fret over whether the rust will cause tetanus or whether the mud will stain their new clothes. That’s part of a parent’s job, but another part is to know that real fun always has an element of risk. Trying to shield your kid from every danger, real or imagined, only makes for another generation of well-trained pod people.

The horror of the HAMs made me fear for the future of the Republic, in my typically self-important way. Just when the day seemed darkest, I heard another mother’s voice: “Maverick! Run, Maverick, run!”

His name is Maverick. As in “Top Gun,” Tom Cruise, “Maverick.” At five years old, he’s already a thousand times cooler than I will ever hope to be. With a name like Maverick, he will be both a rock star and an astronaut. He doesn’t stay on the path with everyone else — he makes his own rules. No one tells him not to run, and if there’s any justice in this world, he is the future.

If I were cool enough to be Ice Man, I’d tip my wings and say, “Godspeed, Maverick.”

Jesse Hicks is in the market for a cooler name. E-mail suggestions to jhicks@pittnews.com.