Every kid I have ever known can't wait to go up, to do all the things that being a grown up brings. Driving, getting paid for a job instead of going to school, the ability to make one owns decisions in life; Theses are all good things to look forward to. I have to say though that being a kid was a great experience, even if it were not always picture perfect. I just loved being a kid. As a kid there were basically three places where I could just enjoy life. The first was the school playground. It was simple to have fun as a kid, even an average Joe kind of kid. On the swings, I could swing higher then most and had no fear of jumping out of the swing seat and making a that plunge to earth from 10 feet high. We had one of those slides that has a twist to it. My friends and I would go down and stop half way down, causing a blockage as more people came down. The trick was to see how many people you could block in before your legs and arms gave out and you could not hold the masses any longer.
The neighborhood I grew up in was the second. I had my best friend, kick ball games until way past sunset, the ice cream truck, and bike rides until my legs felt like rubber. I used to love building bike ramps and jumping over things, including my trash cans and my brother. Another fun time was playing in the woods and the swamp behind the neighborhood.
The last place was hanging out with my friend Marc Loranger. Marc had an incredible imagination and used to make up whole si-fi story lines that we could act out. Sure it was what most would call "geeky" but it always amazed me how he created things in his head at such a rapid pace. Marc was also kind of a comedian. Sometimes he would sleep over my house and he was a late owl. He would make a heck of a lot of noise to keep me awake until all hours of the morning, sometimes he would even wake up my parents. When they would come down to see what was going on he would pretend to be asleep. Marc was always good for a neighborhood game of football. After we graduated from grammar school together, he went to a different high school and we lost touch for a while. Later I found out he was becoming a reverend. I ran into him once or twice and he was always nice enough to send me a card around Christmas.
Now that I think about it, there were a lot of kids from that time I lost contact with. Steve Brown, whose father was a police officer for our city loved to ride dirt bikes but I don't know where he is anymore. Leah Sousa was one of the girls in my class that I liked and had a secret crush on but I could never tell her about that. the same thing with Diane Lawrence. Jennifer Constintine was the oldest of 8 kids, there was one kid in each of the 8 grades of my school. Her father was a dentist in town but I guess business was good because he needed a big house for 8 kids. Billy doushaneau was one of the kids in class that always made me laugh. i remember one day we had a snow storm and kids were being released early. If you lived close to the school and your parent called, you could be dismissed early and walk home. After announcing one kid after another, Billy stated that if were not the next kid called, he was going to hit his head on the desk as hard as he could. the result was something like " Leah Sousa, you are dismissed" BANG " and Billy Doushaneau is as well. Billy had an older brother named Norman who I think is a police officer in the city here.
There were some times that life didn't feel so funny. I remember getting picked on because of my size or because I was not as good in sports as some other kids. When I got my braces, that was a few days of misery as well. My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. At that time I think I was the only kid I knew who was from a divorced family. I'm sure there were more but it wasn't something that people came out and talked about. But looking back it didn't really matter. One of the worst but funniest was when I started my paper route. I really liked this girl named Karen, she was the paper girl in the neighborhood. I would follow her around all day. I did this for so long she wooed me into talking her paper route for her. The first day I was going to deliver was on Christmas morning and it was freezing cold and very windy. I also had lost the list of house that got the daily paper. So I went along the route in the cold with 85 newspapers guessing what house should receive them. One set of steps was icy and not shoveled and I fell down them knocking the wind out of me. I just laid there unable to breath for a few seconds but that was not a great start to my working career. I got a lot of angry calls that morning from people missing the paper. Being a kid was overall a great experience. Now that I have kids of my own I can see how they too want to grow up fast and do all the things that come with adulthood but I hope they remember how much fun it is being a kid from time to time.
Next time - What the hell is there to do in Ennis Texas?
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