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By David Shapiro

Saturday, October 7, 2000

When your inner
child grows up

I received an email from a nice lady in Ohio who used the name Butterfly and wanted to talk about the child within.

She was doing research on the Internet about the psychological theory of the inner child, who she said has "lots of answers for us on things adults forgot."

She came across a column I wrote five years ago about my own inner child, whom I described as more of a horrible brat than the intuitive and innocent creature of psychology texts. Butterfly wanted to know how my little hellion was doing.

Oops, I fretted, I was busted for major child neglect. I had to admit that my outer adult hadn't been in touch with my inner child even once since I put the last period on that old column she found.

At Butterfly's urging, I decided to peek in on the kid. I was horrified to discover that in my years of dereliction he had grown from an inner child into an inner teen-age punk.

And a hostile one at that. He blamed all of his problems on my failure to keep in touch with him when he was an inner child.

"You were never there for me!" he wailed. The kids always blame their elders when they turn bad.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to stuff an inner teen-age punk back into the subconscious once you let him out. My peaceful life threatened to fall into chaos as I confronted long-forgotten adolescent angst.

As my inner punk and outer adult struggled for control, I worried that I'd soon listen to obnoxious music at loud volumes, do bizarre things to my hair, become secretive to the point of obsession, lose my voice around girls, rant and rave at the slightest provocation, want to race everybody on the highway, get powerful urges to rebel against my poor 76-year-old mother and develop acne.

Then my inner punk showed me the other side of the equation. While the teen years involve making the simplest things in life incredibly difficult, it's also a time when complex things are sometimes amazingly simple.

Back then, for instance, the newspaper business for me had nothing to do with momentous events, news budgets, tight deadlines or rolling presses.

My newspaper business revolved around waking at 5 a.m. to fetch a stack of newspapers that had been dropped for me at the curb. I'd sit on the porch in the dark and carefully fold the papers, then secure them with rubber bands.

Finally, I'd load them into canvas bags on the handlebars of my bicycle and pedal through the quiet neighborhood under the streetlights, trying to flip a newspaper onto each doorstep without disturbing the silence.

I'd finish just in time to be first in line at the donut shop when it opened. I'd purchase the first chocolate long john out of the kettle and savor it in small bites that I washed down with a cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

"I'm a strong believer that whatever I need on my journey in life will come one way or another," Butterfly said in her email. "So I must of needed to see what you wrote."

And I must have needed to remember the morning solitude and warm chocolate on my tongue that brought me as close to true serenity as I've ever been.

Thanks to my new friends Butterfly and the inner punk for the trip home.

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David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at dshapiro@starbulletin.com.

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