The Secret Clubs of Childhood

With their codes of honor, passwords, and other emblematic rituals, these clubs contain rites of passage by which children maintain a distinct identity apart from the adults who might otherwise possess an intimidating authority over them.

And yet, even though certain camaraderie is promised, the newcomer should first know something about the secret club's purpose if for no other reason than to learn which one is best.

Begin by Asking Questions

"Will I be more popular if I eat Jalapeno peppers as part of some crazy initiation process, or, in my pursuit to be one of the men, do I just have to ask my mother to buy me a Tarzan lunch box?"

Maybe the purpose of the secret club is to collect whistles and comic books. Maybe its purpose is to learn new ghost stories.

Maybe as well, however, the goal of the secret club is to throw tomatoes at the local storekeeper. This is where the collision with a later sense of maturity often takes place.

A child should never go against a better ethical judgment just to be part of the cool kids--the ones with the best stamp collection or the one with the missing tooth and torn jeans that can climb the highest tree in the neighborhood.

Learn to Memorize

Referring back to the codes of conduct and other rituals by which the secret club might feed into the fantastic and exquisite intricacies which resemble Batman's contemplative lair, for example, while still finding time to play baseball with dad after dinner, the child needs to have a memory good enough to remember the details which constitute membership.

Even in the historically subtle and glam rock technicalities of the batcave, there was still the prerequisite thoughtfulness--the need to remember the ins and outs of how to be transformed from the ordinary to the super; the fundamental wisdom to first shine the belt buckle, and then put gasoline in the car.

In the secret clubs of childhood, emblems are never enough. Everyone also needs to memorize the significance and the routine of them.

Emblems in secret clubs are stitched together as an honorary device and with the possibilities of enduring friendship.

Accept Transformation

Children, in their desire to belong to secret clubs, need to find the sympathetic and symbolic dressing room where they may consult their cereal box decoder rings and emerge from the bathroom window as a newly proclaimed hero--even as mother is calling them to the breakfast table.

Transformation requires a willingness to belong, to raise the solemn hand in deference to the "secrets" about girls and baseball cards which outsiders are presumed not to know.

To accept a childhood club's transformation is to adhere to the secrets which others envy, but have no opportunity to be part of, at least on an immediate childhood level.

Inevitably, the passwords of the secret clubs and hiding places of childhood are exchanged for the handshakes and hostilities of a competitive adult world.

That's why children should stay children as long as possible.