Like most little girls, I dreamed of one day meeting Prince Charming, being whisked away in a carriage, living in a castle, and living happily ever after . . . filling my kingdom with children! But then I was also quite the tomboy . . . my world filled with mud and bugs, football and baseball . . . war games . . . and friends who were all boys . . . so thoughts of that didn’t come often. During those years, if someone had the audacity to even hint that I might be a girl, it was usually cause for fists to get involved . . . the offender often slinking away with a black eye and a bruised ego! More often than not, you would find me pretending to be a pirate . . . hunting treasure with a motley crew . . . building forts in the woods . . . taking over neighboring kingdoms. Mud balls, carefully packed with rocks in the center, were our cannonballs . . . flung with gusto at cunning enemies . . . sticks found in the woods were fashioned into swords and muskets. We spent hours on the beaches that surrounded the area . . . digging for treasure . . . searching for shark teeth and shells . . . picking up an assortment of sea creatures that had washed up on shore.
In the tree line above the beach, chameleons and other lizards were plentiful. Chameleons were a real prize though . . . with their strange claws and shifting eyes . . . and capturing one ensured your place at the top of your game! We spent hours putting them on different surfaces . . . watching them try to blend in, trying desperately to disappear and escape our clutches. We’d heard that the color red would make one of these odd lizards turn themselves inside out, and we watched closely . . . just in case that rumor were true. It never happened, but we never doubted that it might . . . so we continued.
Marble games were a serious sport, and at recess you’d find circles drawn in the sand with opposing players, thumbs poised, marbles balanced, on opposite sides . . . waiting turns to shoot. I still have a lamp full of all sorts of marbles . . . won in those duels . . . Dad found them years later and encased them in glass for me. I left some sad boys on the playground in those years!
Spain, on that Navy base, was the perfect place to be . . . we were free to roam . . . as long as we made it home before the streetlights came on in the evening!
Tag, Dodgeball, Red Rover, pick-up baseball and football games, soccer, Hide-and-Seek went on all summer long when we weren’t swimming in the base pool. Secret games of Truth-or-Dare went on in forts in the woods . . . mostly daring each other to do things like climb un-climbable trees or seeing who could withstand a punch in the arm or making someone bite a bug in half (I never won the bug ones, that was entirely too gross for me). On the rare evenings we were allowed to remain out after dark, there were games of kick-the-can though I’m not sure why this single game was reserved for the evenings . . . maybe it made the game a little more challenging if someone couldn’t see the can.
In the military, kids come and go . . . nobody was safe from unexpected transfers . . . and new kids arriving mid-year was rather common. My world was somewhat altered in the 3rd grade when Guy walked into my classroom. I can’t tell you exactly what went through my 8 year old mind, but I do recall thinking that he was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. We became inseparable . . . well on Wednesdays anyway . . . because I’d made a deal with my mom: I could wear pants every other day of the week, being the tomboy and all, but on Wednesdays I had to wear a dress . . . and Guy would sit with me at lunch if I wore a dress. In a world where political correctness didn’t exist, this arrangement was perfectly acceptable to me. On the other days of the week I was happy to sit with any of the other boys.
My love affair with Guy ended at a class picnic. The boys headed to the baseball field while the girls found their way to the swings and slides . . . I had no interest in playing with the girls, so I joined the boys. Of course, in the 70’s girls didn’t play baseball, and Guy tried to send me in the other direction . . . being big man on campus and all . . . while some of the other boys were conflicted about his decision, they all sided with him. As luck would have it, my dad happened to be there . . . his presence won me a spot on the team opposing Guy’s. Toward the end of the game, my turn to bat came up . . . we were 2 runs down . . . bases were loaded . . . and who do you think was pitching? Yep . . . MY boyfriend. He racked up two strikes immediately and grinned as he wound up his third pitch . . . all I could think was “This can’t happen a third time.” As the ball left his hand, I watched it approach then closed my eyes and swung!! When I opened them to look, I watched that ball sail over the fence . . . it was a GRAND SLAM!! Guy met me at home plate after I rounded third, and as my foot touched the base, he told me that I could play baseball on his team anytime I wanted to. Not only did I tell him I wasn’t interested, but I let him know that I could no longer be his girlfriend. We won that day, and I was solidly accepted as one of the boys!
Tommy, I hope you are raised in the dirt . . . in a whirlwind of chaos . . . gritty and muddy! I hope you stick rocks in your pockets . . . build spaceships from boxes and scrap metal . . . suffer cuts scratches from climbing trees and whittling wood. Dirt can be washed away . . . rocks removed from the bottom of the washer . . . cuts soothed with Neosporin and Band-Aids. But your world needs to be touched . . . felt . . . discovered . . . breathed in . . . heard . . . from as many angles as you can find. Leave no stone unturned . . . no mountain unclimbed . . .
“It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation. Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.” ~ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
No comments:
Post a Comment