She Called Me, “Davey-Do” Because…

She became exasperated, as the story goes, and realized she was being negative towards me when she would say, and got tired of saying, “DAVID DON’T!”

And I was only 5.

I don’t remember her saying, “David DON’T!” But she would tell me stories about how I was always, “Doing stuff.”

Like hiding under the porch; hiding in the brushy fence line; climbing things like trees, and chicken coops;…

But the thing that would get mentioned most of all was the fact that I would always “steal her clothesline” and use it for my cowboy rope.

Sometimes I would have one of those spring loaded, rocking horses, and I would outfit them, like any good cowboy would, with an extra bed roll; proper stirrups; a rifle and scabbard, leather reins would replace the cheap plastic ones it came with; a canteen; and the coup de grace… a length of “stolen” clothesline would round out the outfit… and when I would “get off the horse” I would throw the lasso over my shoulder, grab the rifle, and go stomping around in my ever present… cowboy boots.

I didn’t always have a cowboy hat; or a canteen; BUT… cowboy boots, I always had my cowboy boots, and moms clothesline.

The only thing I do remember her saying, ALL THE TIME! was, “Keep that rope off your neck!”

Those were “the good ole days” for me.

Looking ahead to 2022, started for me after deer hunting. My personal years end.

I start looking towards the new year around Thanksgiving, by Christmas I have started on my “New Year” goals and projects, this will be the third year I’ll be aiming for a Marine Fitness Test, around the third week of January.

So the week before Christmas I start back in my little home gym.

This coming year, 2022, one of my goals, after wading through the river of my personal self-discovery in 2021, I’ve determined to use a technique that I learned while working at a residential treatment facility for young men/boys.

Every student would arrive and be given an assessment as to his personal needs.

There were standard treatment components, like attending school, and then there were personalized “treatment plans” that the staff would put together for the individual.

Things like… extra work experience hours; or extra art classes; or even extra writing classes for a student or two who were working on poetry, or short stories.

The term “treatment plan” sprang to mind once I realized… emotionally… I was still stuck on the old, kitchen screen door glass, where my dad broke my heart at age 11.

If you’re brave enough to brace yourself against the cold running waters of your own mental health… and when and where those headwaters start, you will find them… both the cause of the mental break… and… the cure… in the deepest hole of that river, and if you allow the currents of your memories to get you there, you will notice you had the ability to apply the cure all along.

You thought you were “up that creek” without a paddle, truth is, your anxiety just had you panicked for a minute, and you didn’t see the “extra” paddle attached under your seat.

My extra paddle, that I had all along, was that little nick name my mom had for me… “Davey-Do”.

The paddle technique I would use, that I learned as an adult, was… “developing a treatment plan”.

As human beings, we are made up of flesh, mind, and spirit. For my opinion today, I’m saying that my mind, and emotions are the same thing.

So, at this stage of my life, my flesh, my body, has matured. My spirit, also has matured, and continues to mature.

But my mind, my emotions, have not progressed or matured as we would have liked.

In 2022 my treatment plan for myself… to treat little “Davey-Do” as I would one of those students of mine, or one of my little league ball players… or even my own kids.

I have the mature skills spiritually, and bodily, to help myself… emotionally.

Dr. Jonice Webb, Ph.d has written, “We have the ability to give ourselves what our parents could not.”

So, I went back farther, back to the good memories, the cowboy memories.

And then, I walked up to 11 year old Dave, who was still standing at that screen door, nose pressed to the glass, staring out into the dark, waiting for his dad… and I placed my hand on his shoulder and said, “Hey, Davey-Do. It’s time to go. We gotta move. You know? Like your old cowboys would say, “We gotta saddle up!””

He looked up at me, just like so many of those “other” kids I’ve worked with over the years, and said, “Ok.”

I said, “It’s gonna be alright.”

So… him and me… we’ve been hanging out since deer season… that’s the treatment plan… for me to explain things, especially emotional things, to my “inner-child”, in such a way for him to gain some understanding… which is all he ever wanted in the first place… for someone (his dad) to talk to him and teach him things… he needs a good conversation, he has good questions, he’s inquisitive… he’s a good kid, we hung out at work the other day, he got tired, but he hung in there.

To examine oneself, you gotta wanna, when you run into the hard parts, like a painful childhood memory, or a new set of rapids… you gotta paddle faster to get through and deal with them.

People have been working on themselves for quite a long time.

We need to learn from that.

“Termination of activity, cessation from movement [being emotional] and opinion, and in a sense their death, is no evil. Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this [change] anything to fear?

Turn thy thoughts now to thy life under thy grandfather, then to thy life under thy mother, then to thy life under thy father; and as thou findest many other differences and changes and terminations, ask thyself, “Is this anything to fear?”” ~ Marcus Aurelius

John Wayne, Ol’ Rooster Cogburn himself said, “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”

Jesus says, “It is I. Fear not…”

Davey-Do was kinda a risk taker, when he was little, his curiosity was always stronger than his fear of… maybe falling out of that tree he got to the top of, and he was always willing to saddle up (he never met a horse he didn’t like) and chase the bad guys, as far as the living room couch anyway, so here’s to looking at 2022 through the eye’s of a child.

See ya next year!