As another birthday has come and gone I have spent some time thinking about the past and thought I'd share a few stories with you.
Growing up we had a square coffee table in our living room between the couch and the TV. The top was some type of ceramic tiles in an off white color surrounded by dark wood. It had four legs which connected the top platform to the bottom wooden platform of the table, which rested on the floor. My sister, Farrah, and I would squeeze under there together to where one could only see our feet sticking out. We would laugh and fight and have a great time while in this very small, confined space. No one ever really knew what we were really doing under there until one day my mom decided to lay under there with me. Farrah and I had made our own "weather map" on the bottom of the table. We had drawn, to the best of our ability, the US and had cold fronts, snow, tornadoes and hurricanes all over the place in crayon! You can just imagine the look on her face when she saw what we had done to her table! She actually took it well. It was one of the many times she would say, "Just don't tell your father." Somehow or another he found out and didn't take it well. My mom was, and actually still is, the master of keeping our dad calm and with the program, even after 25 or so years of being divorced. You should have seen him on my wedding day. I heard it was touch and go there for a while! I do wish we had pictures of our weather map. It would be interesting to see if our forecasts came true. Who knows, maybe we could have given Al Gore a run for his money!
There is one baseball story that sticks in my mind vividly. We were playing during the day and Johnny was pitching to us. It was my turn up to bat. I had always been a bit timid of the ball because I didn't want to get hit. I had seen my sister and cousin pinged by balls when they played and saw that it wasn't pleasant. He had been trying to work with me to stay "in the box" when pitched to and this time I was convinced I wasn't going anywhere. He pitched the ball to me, I stayed still, timing my swing, then BAM! I made contact. I instantly had a smile on my face. I hit the ball right on and it was going to fly. I knew I was going to make it at least to 3rd base, if not home the moment the ball left the bat. Then I heard the noise. It was a dry thud. I looked across the "field" and there was Johnny with his hands up to his face. The ball had hit him. Wait, now he's down on one knee. I've really hurt him. Oh crap! Everyone ran to him and I ran in the house to hide. I just KNEW I was going to be in trouble. He came and found me after he had ice on his eye to let me know it was okay and that he would be fine, but it was really bad. His eye was swollen shut and had already started turning colors. I felt horrible. To this day, my family still laughs at the fact that I ran. 
That's all I have to share for now. I'll think of some more to share later.
Maybe some of you have stories you want to share of your childhood or of times we spent together?
3 comments:
Now I know why we hung out so much. I can make fun out of nothing. There were many, many times we were at your house with NOTHING to do. You fed my destructive habits rather well...remember Farrah's walkman? I bet she remembered it too, although I wouldn't say she recognized it when we were through with it. Her answering machine met the same fate. Its life ending in a plastic bag full of tiny little electronic parts. Oh, and, we created the first flameless luminaries. Another time when we had NOTHING to do, when we "painted" your lampshade with Johnny's pink, coconut scented, surf sunscreen. We thought it was cool. The lampshade was pink and your rooms smelled like coconuts...however, your mom was hot because of the lampshade and Johnny was upset over the fact that we used the entire tube of his sunscreen. I don't know why your mother let me stay with you so much. Ha! She even said I was good.
Okay, childhood story - Dad had to take my brother Mark and me logging with him when I was four and Mark was 3. While Dad and the guys were out in the woods, Mark and I climbed up to the top of the loader. The loader was a platform built on top of a half ton truck that had a chair and all the controls needed to use an articulated arm to load logs onto a trailer. Did not take long for us to start fighting over who got to sit in the chair and play with the controls. It was not long before Mark fell off the platform down towards the truck. I remember looking down and seeing all of the metal of the truck frame and the drive shaft of the truck. I even had enough time to realize as a four year old that this was going to kill my little brother - just what kind of whipping does that entail? I then watched Mark pass through all the metal without making contact with any of it and landing on the grass under the truck with the breath knocked out of him. Don't remember what happened after that. Could be that Mark was fine and Dad never found out about it. Could be that Dad saw the whole thing happen and either I have blacked it all out or I may have received severe head trauma of my own from Dad and don't remember. The point is that I just don't remember, okay??!?
Yall took apart my walkman??!! Boy that explains a lot.
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