Life lessons from a four-room flat, a factory whistle, and a bunch of guys who thought they knew everything.
When I was a kid I walked a bit over mile each day to school. We lived in a six apartment building. Each apartment was a four room cold water flat so close to the railroad tracks the building shook as the express freight trains roared by. Each morning a shoe factory, 50 meters to north, started work at 5 a.m.
The trains shook the walls, the factory shook my sleep, and my friends—well, they shook my understanding of the world. On the way to school I’d meet up with friends from the other apartments and we talk about boy stuff like baseball or football or who was stronger. Once I hit adolescence the talk was still sports but girls played an increasingly bigger role in the conversations. In those days there was no talk about sex in the home. So how did a kid going through pubescence learn about sex? The way most guys did, by listening to the older guys give their wisdom. These gems of wisdom were passed down through generation through crafted art of storytelling. Can you imagine going from playing ball and talking sports to the world described by the older guys? Of course, my friends and I accepted these stories without questioning their authenticity. What’s that experience taught me? Turns out, not everything passed down from the “elders” is gospel—especially when it comes wrapped in a baseball cap and ends with, “Trust me, I know.”