Memory

I grew up in a neighborhood of very tight knit families. There were a lot of kids, and almost as many old ladies living on the same block. There was an alley behind my house that I considered mine, because if someone was driving on it that we did not know, well something was going on because that never happened.

These were the days when my mom would push us out the door in the morning and not expect to see us until dinner that night.

We spent a lot of our time at the nearby school on the playground, or when it was really hot we would actually go and pop tar bubbles on the street (uh, gross.). We would go down to the creek and try to find treasure, and one time my brother even attempted to raft down in it in a rubber raft (unsuccessfully, the water was not even a foot deep).

We played pickle for HOURS on the street. We played Swinging Statues and Shadow tag. We played Ghost in the Graveyard.

If we went to someone else's house THEY got to make the rules. We had to abide by them.

If the back door was locked, that meant Mom was mopping the kitchen floor, go to the front! Some days we would just roll down the hill in the front on my house, for hours and hours. Other days we would watch my brother make videos of himself pretending to be Indiana Jones.

Breezy, sunny fall days remind me of these days.

I think I'll go ride my bike.