If you are old, or as in the eyes of a teenager, about dead old, pitied, if cared about at all, you might remember stories from long ago parents: the miles walked to school, the starving children of China, the unfortunate pagan babies of Africa or just the garbage you could buy labeled, “Made in Japan.”
If you really get into those long-gone times, you might remember the joy found with an old board and a few nails making your palace in the trees, or one made from boards, sticks and rock dug into the dirt. You might recall playing chaises with marbles and capturing someone’s prized steely, maybe demonstrating your turn around skills at Hopscotch, jump rope, or being cast off a merry-go-round, or that time jumping off a titer toter that seemed a good idea, maybe that swing where your mind sailed you to a new Olympic distance record.
Perhaps you can close your eyes and think back when it was too cold or wet outside, so you made do with that cozy little in-door house your parents let you create out of cushions, pillows, sheets and towels.
Playing house, dressing up in parents’ clothes come to mind. Girls played hopscotch, jacks and jump rope while boys, if not playing football or basketball, found delight in who just farted or just some good long-distance spitting.
For me, I add a kitchen knife and a game of splits, or seeing what I could do to a stone with my dad’s eight iron.
There was kite flying, bicycling with playing cards clipped in the spokes or just being Robin Hood with a tree branch and OH GOD his bow and arrow. Stevie Bogard, my best friend and I couldn’t hit a living thing that wasn’t a plant that Christmas morning with our new bows. When frustration set in, I challenged him to who could send an arrow the highest without a thought of its return trip when we panicked slamming into each as the arrows plunked into the dirt.
Our childhoods were stuffed with our imagination, glories won and lessons learned in a cacophony of gregarious social interactions.
ALL NOW GONE AND REPLACED:
Richard Kimball
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