By Mitch Lee
It was that first Saturday in June when I knew I didn’t have to return to school and the freedom of summer was staring this awkward teenager square in the face.
Next fall I would be a high school freshman. No longer could I be a goofy middle school kid who forgot his locker combination, his homework, his class schedule and/or almost anything else that could be forgotten.
I now had the entire summer to prepare myself to become a high school dude, someone who would be ready to take regents classes, play varsity sports and act as if I fit in.
Meanwhile the voice inside me was urging me to continue to explore my woods, make my sketches and just forgo the whole growing up into a highschooler thing.
But this was not to be as my hazing began, in earnest, when my summer friends arrived back at Limekiln Lake.
Most of these friends were one year older than me, and the ways in which they changed since I last saw them had a profound effect on me.
They returned ready to ridicule, tease and belittle, behaviors they learned in high school and brought back on the shores of the lake with them.
I was not prepared for this change in their personalities and it made for a summer far different then those in the past.
No longer were Kick the Can, whiffle ball tournaments and badminton in vogue.
All they wanted to do was lay in the sun and get tans, or just water ski once before retreating to the confines of their cottages until dusk where they could sit around the campfire and make fun of one another.
Their negative behavior towards me was difficult to understand. They now considered me as a local or a townie, not like them at all.
For the first time I felt the sting of being an outsider in the very place where I was the only one who could call it a home.
The worst of it came when I wore my straw cowboy hat. It was a great hat I had won on our spring trip to South Carolina. I won it pitching baseballs at targets and it only cost me $4 in tickets.
I had shaped it to fit my style by breaking the visor slightly in the front and back and wrapped a bandana around the outer hatband.
It was my personal touch of flair as I took my daily hikes and adventures around the lake.
But that hat became a focus of ridicule and hate among these friends of mine. They took every opportunity to steal it from my head, poke fun at it and label me a hick for even donning it.
One was so bold as to steal it away and toss it from the end of a dock into the lake.
For the first time in my life I built up such a loathing that fueled me to wear that hat proudly every time I left my front porch despite their actions.
Midway through the summer I did gain some acceptance for being a bit different, but never again was I treated as one of the lake kids.
I accepted the fact that living on the lake year round might have made them jealous or even envious, and possibly that was the only way they knew to lash out at me.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com