When Insecurity wasn’t an alien nation

 

If I could time travel, I’d go back to visit myself at age fifteen. “Let’s go fishing,” I’d tell younger me. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and catch some decent trout. Even it they aren’t biting, I need to give you a few words of advice.”

Once we were settled in the magic canoe that transported me back to Sennebec Hill Farm in the early summer of 1963, I’d make myself comfortable and proceed to tell younger me what was in store for him. I doubt he’d believe a word of my tale, but who knows.

I’d tell him of instances that stick in my mind like burrs under a saddle, wearing and tearing, eating away at self-confidence and inner comfort for far too long. Stuff like being afraid...all the time, about imagined expectations of others, about wanting to talk to certain girls, but letting that insane movie director in my head, the one I later named Cecil D. Disaster, write a script where they totally humiliated me in front of everyone in hearing range (I used this as the start of my first novel The Wizard of Simonton Pond).

“Kid,” I’d say while casting a Grey Ghost streamer fly at a promising spot by a tree that had fallen in the water, “Here’s the deal. Everyone around you, no matter whether they’re better looking, more athletic, or come from a family with more money, has the same swarm of brain demons you do. Some handle them better, some about the same as you do, but slap a zit on their nose and put them in front of a mirror, and their insecurity rises up like a hot air balloon.

“My best advice to you is this. Screw what anyone else thinks and work on having fun when you try something new instead of being terrified that you’re not instantly good at it.”

After my pep talk, I’d shut up and concentrate on fishing while my younger self chewed on what I’d said. I knew he was FINE (fouled up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional), but so was almost everyone he knew.

Once we returned to shore, I’d wish him best of luck and just before I let him watch as I and my magic canoe slowly vanished into his future (and my present), I’d offer a final piece of advice. “Remember being yourself is the only role you’ll never have to rehearse for.”