the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clark, scotts and rogers )

No, you are not wrong, all of what you have seen so far in this Post has been intentionally mis-leading, it’s all been a come-on, a ruse…for the purpose of enticing you into reading today’s Post. All this because, among you Readers might possibly be the one Reader who will write a Comment on this Post.

Surely that justifies the verbal legerdemain? Well, you are probably right, it is best not to resort to tricking people who enjoy reading blogs, who as we all know, are the most perceptive and discerning of audiences.

Having said that, if you are still with us here, we owe you another story.  A few days ago, in the Post titled; 3 personality types, 1 rabbit and the Wakefield Doctrine,  we told you a story  and while it was a good story, it was meant for the scotts among us. Since we started today’s Post with trickery and deceit,  it only makes sense to  tell a story for the clarks out there!  ( don’t worry, clarks will understand why this is the case. )

As a young boy about 4 or 5 years old I grew up in the town of Oak Bluffs, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.  From where we lived I could walk to a family friends house in about 15 minutes and with another 15 minutes walking I could be in the center of town, which at that time consisted of 2 blocks of commercial development. 1 street with drugstore, restaurants and barbershops etc on both sides. Continue down Circuit Ave and you come to the Flying Horses (merry-go-round) and the boardwalk that defined the shoreline on that part of the Island. There was a neighborhood that was composed entirely of Summer Cottages across the park that overlooked the ocean. Year round residents did not take too much notice of this area, as they were boarded up and vacant for 9 months out of the year, when the Summer People went back to their real homes.

Whatever. One day (around end of September), I was walking home from town with a friend following an afternoon of doing nothing much. My route home took us past a recreational field which was part baseball and part football field. On this particular afternoon, the grassy area was being put to use as a football field by a group of ‘big kids’* The field itself was up a slight incline from the road, (no sidewalks or anything fancy like that), so for some reason we decided to ‘sneak up’ on the football game players.  (Bear in mind there were no bushes or hedges between the street and the field, just macadam road a little sand then grass up 5 feet or so then level field).  So we snuck up on the football game. (Nearly every boy of this age at this time in the culture had his Army Man game moves. Mostly a matter of running a short distance and throwing yourself down on the ground. From this position you would either do the ‘crawl into position’ or (you might) jump up and run another short distance so that you could ‘hit the dirt’ again. And so on and so on.)
We got into position on the side of the incline, peering over the top where the football game was continuing, obviously we were not spotted. For some reason I decided that we should throw some rocks at the kids in the football game! (Don’t ask me! Maybe the situation required the use of grenades, maybe I was bored…those of you Readers who are astute enough might know. I cannot recall why I thought it was a good idea.) But I did and we did, throw rocks. As soon as we established our range (with the stones) the big kids noticed and stopped their game. At first they laughed, at the sight of two 5 year old boys throwing rocks from  the side of the road. But then one of the rocks almost hit (or may have hit, memory not clear) one particular boy who was wearing an orange knit sweater. The laughing stopped, the game stopped, we stopped and all of a sudden my friend and I had the un-divided attention of 10  boys.  We stood up as a small group from the game headed in our direction (lead by the boy in the orange sweater). For reasons still not understood, even though the focus of the group on us began to waver ( “hey, forget them, lets get back to the game”), I threw one more rock and yelled “Run for it!”
We were chased. My friend headed for his house, me to mine. I could hear the kids somewhere behind me yelling something about calling the cops. Just as I made it to my house, quite by chance as I now know, a siren started wailing in the distance. And it was moving in my direction. I ran into the house and up the stairs to the safest place my somewhat desparate brain knew: my parents bedroom. I slide under their bed and lay and waited.

As I remember this childhood incident, the strangest  thing about it is that the story stops right there, me hiding out like an escaped criminal under my parent’s bed, hearing the sirens somewhere in the distance, certain that I would soon hear the sound of  feet pounding up the stairs.
None of these consequences materialized. Nothing happened, at all! My ability to recall ends there, no memory of what happened to my friend, whether the cops were after me on not (I know now, probably not) I don’t even remember if I told the family about it. Life (un-recalled) went on.

Hey!! Where did the time go!  Tomorrow is Video Friday so set your clocks to Friday and be sure to tune in, we hope to have: a) a guest b) a really interesting conversation, c) good listener feedback.

And don’t forget now, the Wakefield Doctrine is to be found over at ‘the FaceBook’** so come over and visit, we even have a video club that you should join.

*big kids being defined as those between the age of 12 and 14
** it’s an old person thing,  you know how old people always seem to stick a totally unnecessary article in front of things that they are un-familiar with? ‘the email’,  ‘the Facebook’…’the cancer’…I suspect that old people do this thing with modern inventions as a verbal equivalent of using those oven mittens that everyone has at the stove…better be careful!  you might get hurt…here put on these mittens and insulate yourself!  fuck oldness.