(Thomas Froese Photo)
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 13, 2025)
Today’s offering is about jumping boy. He’s the skinny, red-blooded, fun-loving young man I saw while recently taking an otherwise aimless summer stroll along the pier in Port Dover.
I happened to pass this boy, a stranger, at just the right moment to discreetly snap an unlikely photo of him. He was jumping off the pier’s wall for a dip in Lake Erie, this at the exact place where a sign warns to not even think about such things.
It’s a refreshing summer reminder (remember, it’s still summer until Sept 22) that not all young people live in fear. This is the unfortunate truth. Young people naturally possess a certain fibre of soul and spirit, but this can still be destroyed in a culture of overprotectiveness.
A Canadian on a plane – he and his family had lived in Australia – once told me this about our own culture. “Canadians don’t realize it’s not like this in other places.” I didn’t disagree.
Not that there’s not a time for caution or protection. In traffic, red lights are rather important. But when they’re put everywhere, do they hold much meaning?
The young ladies, for example, recently playing softball at a local diamond near my home. The infielders wore, strangely enough, wire faceguards. Not just the back-catcher, or hitter, as is the helpful norm, but players covering first, second and third base. Neither my dog, sitting beside me, nor I had ever seen anything like it.
I mean, people, can’t we even enjoy an open-faced, clear-eyed game of ball anymore? Surely anyone who has lived longer than a week realizes that you can’t be protected from life itself. Which is perfectly fine because in return, if and when you get a bloody nose, you also get some resilience. And that’s very handy to have in this world.
Often enough, as the old adage goes, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. So when opportunity arises, and it will, give some thoughtful pushback to the anxiety-inducing nonsense that doesn’t help anyone in their daily affairs.
Consider recent survey findings of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. It reveals that when it comes to talking about politics, religion, race, gender or sexual orientation, about half of Canadian university students – namely students with conservative views – fear social and academic repercussions if they honestly express their thoughts.
This is especially interesting considering that the raison d’être of universities is, or was, all about free expression, a safe place for students to challenge and ask hard questions and, sure, even risk being wrong. But now the conforming herd. Now the giant, shaming eye of social media. Now the thought police.
Even so, don’t be afraid. This, it seems to me, is what jumping boy is saying. If you can be anything, be yourself. The party won’t be complete without you. Come as you are.
My sense is that jumping boy might even enjoy some Henry David Thoreau, the poet-thinker who said that most people live their lives in quiet desperation. But not people like jumping boy. If his form holds, he’ll be a sailor to many ports. He’ll sound, as Walt Whitman put it, his barbaric yawp over rooftops everywhere.
He might even enjoy a bag of popcorn while watching “Dead Poets Society.” A first-day requirement for my own literature students, this timeless Robin Williams film nicely develops these thoughts along with the wild and sobering truth that life is, if nothing else, short.
Not that this shortness of life is the tragedy. The tragedy, as the poets and jumping boys remind us, is getting to the end and realizing that you never lived. Never took a chance. Never found your authentic self, the one to offer the world.
So here we are back in school. Welcome. And welcome to the school of life. It’s a place where lots of people will be saying lots of things. Much of it can be ignored. Jumping boy knows.