Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) by Alex McCord, Simon van Kempen Page B
Authors: Alex McCord, Simon van Kempen
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next-door neighbors. For some reason I always thought he should eat apples with me, instead of his dog food, and was prepared to enforce the issue. “Croix, if she annoys you just bite her,” someone said to the dog. He never did, patient dog that he was, but I got the point. They say that girls play “let’s have a tea party” and boys play “let’s jump off the roof.” There’s a photo of me somewhere playing “let’s have a tea party on the roof,” so between Simon and me we have passed on rather boisterous genes to our children.
Alex and Dad on Ladder
Simon
I am a great believer in letting one’s children learn the hard way. And while it’s always good to learn from others’ mistakes, we all have our own to learn from, too.
One night when I was around 11 years old my mum was out and I was in bed. I am sure my brother, six years my senior, was around, but my memory of this night doesn’t recall. What I do recall though, is as clear as if I had just watched it on video. I crawled out of bed and put my clothes on over my pajamas and left the house, walking out onto the street. At the time we were living on the outskirts of a small town in Australia with cane fields bordering our back fence. Our street was lined with houses but backed by farms. It was semi-rural and also a dead-end, as the bridge had been washed out years ago and was never repaired. As such, it was a pretty safe area and this was 1975. Anyway I picked up my golf club and as I wandered down the street, I saw my first cane toad of the night. This particular toad had been introduced into Australia in the ’30s to eradicate the cane beetle, which was damaging cane crops, however it was less successful at that than it was as multiplying at an alarming rate. As a result, I had only ever known it as a pest and vermin. No different to how an NYC kid regards rats.
These toads secret a poison (stored behind their eye in the parotid gland) as part of their defense against predators and my 11-year-old brain understood that this poison, if it got in my eyes, could cause blindness. As I raised my golf club back over my head and swung it forcefully forward, the toad took a slight step. Instead of catching its body dead center and sending it 100 yards down the bitumen road, I caught its face, causing its parotid glands to rupture and spray my face with their contents.
Scared and petrified, I raced home, madly rinsed my eyes with water and as I crawled back up to my top bunk, I remember glancing at the ceiling and thinking that that would be the last thing my eyes would ever see.
Sometime throughout the next afternoon I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be blind and was elated to know that I clearly wasn’t. But what this experience did teach me was that if I was meant to be somewhere, then there I would be. There was no more sneaking out of the house after that.
Alex
My dad was in the oil business, and around the time I started school he bought several fields in rural southeast Kansas. I spent my school years there and we traveled during vacations. In the oil fields there were lots of fascinating pieces of equipment to play on and with, and although Dad would sometimes explain what the machinery did, more often than not he’d just let me explore. I remember getting filthy on a regular basis, climbing up and down trucks outfitted with all sorts of barrels and pulleys and although they were never far away, I had plenty of room to fall down if I didn’t hold on tight. My parents believed in taking responsibility for your own personal space pretty early on and learning consequences and that is something I’m trying to pass along to my kids. I once found a small snake in the field and brought it in to show Mom, who happened to be washing her hair over the tub at the time. The guilt I felt at her hitting her head on the tap and hurting herself because of me was worse than any time-out, spanking or removal of privileges she could
Alex and Dad on Ladder
Simon
I am a great believer in letting one’s children learn the hard way. And while it’s always good to learn from others’ mistakes, we all have our own to learn from, too.
One night when I was around 11 years old my mum was out and I was in bed. I am sure my brother, six years my senior, was around, but my memory of this night doesn’t recall. What I do recall though, is as clear as if I had just watched it on video. I crawled out of bed and put my clothes on over my pajamas and left the house, walking out onto the street. At the time we were living on the outskirts of a small town in Australia with cane fields bordering our back fence. Our street was lined with houses but backed by farms. It was semi-rural and also a dead-end, as the bridge had been washed out years ago and was never repaired. As such, it was a pretty safe area and this was 1975. Anyway I picked up my golf club and as I wandered down the street, I saw my first cane toad of the night. This particular toad had been introduced into Australia in the ’30s to eradicate the cane beetle, which was damaging cane crops, however it was less successful at that than it was as multiplying at an alarming rate. As a result, I had only ever known it as a pest and vermin. No different to how an NYC kid regards rats.
These toads secret a poison (stored behind their eye in the parotid gland) as part of their defense against predators and my 11-year-old brain understood that this poison, if it got in my eyes, could cause blindness. As I raised my golf club back over my head and swung it forcefully forward, the toad took a slight step. Instead of catching its body dead center and sending it 100 yards down the bitumen road, I caught its face, causing its parotid glands to rupture and spray my face with their contents.
Scared and petrified, I raced home, madly rinsed my eyes with water and as I crawled back up to my top bunk, I remember glancing at the ceiling and thinking that that would be the last thing my eyes would ever see.
Sometime throughout the next afternoon I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be blind and was elated to know that I clearly wasn’t. But what this experience did teach me was that if I was meant to be somewhere, then there I would be. There was no more sneaking out of the house after that.
Alex
My dad was in the oil business, and around the time I started school he bought several fields in rural southeast Kansas. I spent my school years there and we traveled during vacations. In the oil fields there were lots of fascinating pieces of equipment to play on and with, and although Dad would sometimes explain what the machinery did, more often than not he’d just let me explore. I remember getting filthy on a regular basis, climbing up and down trucks outfitted with all sorts of barrels and pulleys and although they were never far away, I had plenty of room to fall down if I didn’t hold on tight. My parents believed in taking responsibility for your own personal space pretty early on and learning consequences and that is something I’m trying to pass along to my kids. I once found a small snake in the field and brought it in to show Mom, who happened to be washing her hair over the tub at the time. The guilt I felt at her hitting her head on the tap and hurting herself because of me was worse than any time-out, spanking or removal of privileges she could
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