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Getting to experience an awakening

The first awakening I can clearly identify as being one happened when I was eight years old. I was a camper at the old Alpena Boy’s Club Camp on Long Lake in Montmorency County.

On the first morning at 7:00 a.m. reveille sounded. In response everyone rolled out of their bunks, those cozy refuges from the coolness of a June morning, and came together on the parade ground.

It was a willing but modest and disheveled crew who stood at attention while the flag was raised, the national anthem played, and our pledges of allegiance were made.

Then, stripping off all underwear — our modestness now completely revealed — we broke ranks and started running, whooping, careening down paths to the water’s edge; there, to be enfolded in the lake’s early morning caress – a skinny dip!

It was an awakening I shall always remember.

There have been other awakenings. Some, not nearly so refreshing;  others, more so.  Some, the product of the enlightenment of learning, others of experience, still others — for another reason.

One summer evening my buddies and I — five of us just 17 — having  access to a 1949 Pontiac sedan, cruised around back of Memorial Hall to the double doors there. Those doors opened to the building’s main floor where my cousin’s wedding reception was in full swing. We slipped the old Pontiac into neutral but kept it idling at the ready for beer was being served just steps away and it was beer that had brought us ’round back that night to those double doors.

Beer on tap was not so routine then. A common mode of dispensing was from jumbos – Blatz, Stroh’s, Drewrys — in those big quart bottles.

One of the bartenders set a full case of those bottles within our contemplation then averted his gaze. It was with gratitude we slipped the gift of that altruistic gesture into the old Pontiac’s cavernous trunk.

However, an entire case of jumbos was more potential then we were  prepared to accept. A six pack of regular bottles had been our previous biggest score. We decided to hide the case so as to make plans for its later more optimum though indefinite utilization. Hide where? In the woods of course – that’s where you hid things. We marked the spot.

But when we returned our cache was gone.

One of our own stole our treasure; we had been betrayed by a buddy — for a case of Blatz!

An awakening.

It isn’t just skinny-dips, enlightenments from learning, or illuminating experiences that can elicit awakenings. Betrayals – even for things less precious than a case of Blatz – can compel them.

None can occur, however, if we betray ourselves.

When we deny ourselves an attempt to do or to become something we yearn to do or be we betray ourselves and deprive ourselves of a possible awakening – one that could be the fullest of them all.

This Christmas give yourself and those who love you, an awakening: a gift of the who you are, who aspires to the who you wish to be.

Have a very Merry Christmas.

Doug Pugh’s Vignettes run bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached via email at pughda@gmail.com.

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