Veteran of Growing Up

An essay by Chad Schomber

There were no medals for it. No parades. Not even a laminated certificate. Just a silent graduation. One day you were balancing on a banana seat and the next you were tightening your jaw while reading a gas bill. But you earned it. You… a veteran of growing up.

Kids back then didn’t call it character-building. They called it Tuesday. They called it “go outside.” They called it boredom that stretched like chewing gum across the hot months, snapped, and started again. The 70s and 80s weren’t painted in nostalgia back then. They were painted in lead-based colors and nicotine fog. And they built us in weird, useful ways.

No GPS. Just your brain and a vague sense of which way the sun went down. If you got lost, you figured it out or you didn’t. Sometimes you found a shortcut. Sometimes a dog chased you. That was your navigation app.

Parents weren’t helicopters. They were air traffic control. You checked in occasionally. But mostly, you were on your own flight path. You got bruised. You got splinters. You learned. You might’ve cried, but not loud enough to bring an adult into it. There was pride in self-triage.

Play wasn’t scheduled. It was a roving gang of kids on bikes, showing up uninvited. Knocking on doors like debt collectors. You learned social skills fast. Not from a workshop, but from getting left out, let in, and figuring out who shared their Fruit Roll-Ups and who ratted people out to their mom.

Technology wasn’t sleek. It was heavy and warm and made clunking noises. And it broke in ways you could see. Gears and belts. Nothing virtual. Nothing clean. We learned to fix things with butter knives and electrical tape. Or we didn’t fix them at all. Just found a way around.

TV ended. It shut off. Signed off. Wished you goodnight with a flag and a fuzzy screen. There was an ending to the day, even if your brain wasn’t ready for it. That taught something too. That there are limits. That quiet happens. That your mind is yours to fill.

We didn’t get trophies unless we earned them, and even then, they looked cheap and wobbly. Glory didn’t glitter. It rusted. And that taught us what mattered. Not the object, but the effort. The hot breath, the scraped knee, the losing with grace and the winning with a shy shrug.

Childhood back then had texture. Gravel. Metal slides in the sun. Corded phones. Mildew-scented basements. Ashtrays in armrests. The world left a mark on you. It stuck. And you grew around it like a tree swallowing a barbed-wire fence. Twisted, but still reaching up.

We learned to wait. For film to develop. For songs on the radio. For someone to pick up the other end of the line. Waiting wasn’t wasted time. It was thinking time. Wondering time. Time to watch ants or clouds or ceiling tiles. That gave us patience. Or at least a tolerance for it.

Disappointment wasn’t softened. If the ice cream truck didn’t come, it didn’t come. If the movie was sold out, you picked something else. If you got dumped, your friends gave you a punch in the arm and said, “Sucks, man.” That was therapy. That was resilience. Maybe crude, but it worked well enough.

Danger wasn’t hidden. We saw it. Rode in cars without seatbelts. Lit fireworks with matches. Played with tools that could actually cut something. That didn’t make us reckless. It made us aware. We didn’t think the world was safe. We knew it wasn’t. So we paid attention.

There were fewer filters. On people. On words. On air. You learned to hear the meaning behind what someone said. Not just the words. You could read tone, body language, the way someone stubbed out a cigarette. You developed antennae. That’s called street smarts now. Back then, it was just survival.

School didn’t always nurture. Sometimes it mocked. Sometimes it bored you stiff. But it showed you systems. Hierarchies. It taught you how to navigate people who didn’t like you. Teachers who forgot your name. Students who spit gum in your hair. The lessons weren’t always academic. But they stuck.

You built friendships in person. Face to face. Over dares and secrets and poorly built forts. If you had a falling out, you had to walk past them the next day. You had to reckon. Reconcile. Or avoid eye contact for months. There was no block button. You had to deal.

Food was what you got. Not curated. Not allergy-aware. Not served with a side of affirmation. If you didn’t like it, you went hungry. Or you learned to drown it in ketchup. That wasn’t cruelty. That was efficiency. You figured out how to tolerate things. That’s called adulthood now.

The world wasn’t gentler. But it was clearer. You knew what time it was by the position of the sun or the fact that “Happy Days” was starting. You knew your place in the world by how fast you could pedal and who showed up to your birthday party. It was a rough sort of compass. But it pointed somewhere.

Not all of it was good. A lot of it was bad. But even the bad gave us grit. You learned to work with discomfort. To make friends with boredom. To look out for your younger sibling while barely knowing what you were doing. That gave us endurance. And humor. The kind that doesn’t wear costumes or rehearse punchlines. The kind that shows up unshaven and tired and still smirking.

So yeah. We earned that invisible badge. The one that says, “Veteran of growing up.” We didn’t enlist. We were drafted. Raised in an era with no tutorials and no helmets for the soul. But we made it. Mostly. A little crooked. A little sarcastic. But standing.

And when things go quiet now… when the phone doesn’t ping and the lights hum softly and you’re left with your own breath… you recognize that silence. You met it long ago. That’s where you were made.

---