Young Andrew

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while now, you know I was pretty rambunctious as a “youth.”

Because I’ve now been alive for so much longer, I’ve developed the ability to be patient. I’ve learned to communicate better by remembering that nobody out there is a mind reader. In short, I’ve grown up quite a bit.

Still, this mischievous, hyperactive, curious kid is still in there. I want to introduce you to him today.

In my mind, I’ve started calling this alter ego Young Andrew.

Young Andrew is like a fully formed little person who lives inside me, like a perverse homunculus that haunts me, even as I continue to grow and mature. He has a really hard time listening. He might have heard the adage “two ears, one mouth”, but he knows so many things that other people don’t know, and it drives him crazy not to share those things with other people.

He’s a bit of a ham, really. Young Andrew will get up on stage if given the opportunity, like when he was in fifth grade and participated in a spelling bee to represent his class, or when an older version of him played loud punk rock music with dozens of people looking at him.

He remembers overcoming that fear of performing in front of others fondly, like a crowning achievement. Over the years, I would feel him tapping on my shoulder any time I paused to reflect in front of a crowd, like when I was about to teach a jiu jitsu seminar or lead a rules meeting for US Grappling—or when I was singing karaoke.

Young Andrew really likes to climb. He’s positively arboreal. He reminds me of how he can flip upside down and hold on with just his legs, and I think about that when I do jiu jitsu sometimes.

Boundaries are of little interest to Young Andrew, so he tests them every chance he gets. Of course, this means he’s constantly learning about the consequences of all this uninhibited freedom.

Sometimes, being a grownup can be a bummer. There are decisions to be made with no clear winners, and bills to be paid that require trade-offs. Young Andrew is nowhere to be found during these sorts of times, so he has to hide somewhere safe while all that grownup stuff is happening.

Ultimately, he wants to explore the world, and share what he discovers with other people. Oh—and he has an absolutely ridiculous, nonstop desire to create.

Maybe it’s drawing comic book covers every day until he can draw them with an ink pen, carving The Beatles into the side of a clay cliff, creating mixtapes from the radio, making Transformers out of paper and tape (yes, I’m still proud of this one), or (eventually) designing a D&D campaign for my friends. Whatever it was, it was relentless.

Young Andrew grew up in a time when boredom was very common, and sometimes you just had to sit with it. There were no hand-held electronic devices around him most of the time, but he always had his imagination. This was the key to escaping drudgery, and it could make a really awful day seem magical.

Even Young Andrew’s very (last) name implies the urge to create, as I recently described here:

Young Andrew is like a nuclear furnace constantly burning inside me, constantly throwing off energy. He’s hard for me to keep up with, so I give him chances to do his thing throughout every day, like right this very moment.

I’ve learned to use his powerful urges to be seen to my own advantage, although I’ve got to be careful not to let him get in the driver’s seat for too long. That’s because he’s really bad at avoiding controversy, and he sometimes inadvertently offends people.

The rest of me has to take care of keeping the world safe from him, but his enthusiasm and relentless creativity have to be allowed to escape on a regular basis, or else I run the risk of Young Andrew revolting and taking over my life.