As Safe As Yesterday Is
The Friday Five:
1. When you were a child, what was your favorite game to play?
During the summer months my friends and I sort of made up a game called Spotlight Tag, although in actuality it was just Hide & Seek outside in the dark with a high-powered camping flashlight. I grew up on a cul-de-sac (where my parents still live) with all my childhood friends living in nearly every house in the circle, and my friend Jeanne's older brother Lee was always "It", just because he enjoyed being "It", and anywhere outside the cul-de-sac was out of bounds, so we had options of hiding behind houses, in the hedges, up the trees, and best of all, all the spooky little shadowy places that we'd discover under the moonlight and street lamps. I remember sitting still as a sparrow in a shadow pocket on a picket fence under a pine tree while Lee walked with the flashlight less than 5 feet away from me and never once saw me. I'm not convinced that there's a drug on the market today that can compete with the exhilarating high of a 13-year-old girl's adrenaline rush during a moment such as that.
2. What is your favorite game to play right now?
Currently getting myself in shape for the 2012 Olympic 100-meter cotton ball toss.
3. Can you share a good story about playing with others or yourself?
Around about the same time as Spotlight Tag, around the same age as well, I somehow got it into my head that I was strong enough to stop a person on a bicycle coming at me at full speed. I made Jeanne ride my old dirt bike into me while I stopped her each time by holding out my hands and grabbing the handle bars. I made her come at me a little faster each time, and finally she was really tearing at me with all the speed she could muster, and when I braced myself and grabbed at the handle bars the bike lurched forward and all 98 lbs of teeny-weeny Jeanne went sailing over the bars and over my own head (as I was hunched forward braced hard with both hands outward) and apparently doing a pretty impressive flip before landing with a skid across the pavement of the cul-de-sac. Miraculously she stood right up, dusted off her clothes and announced she was okey-dokey. Later that night while hanging out in our clubhouse (my parents backyard shed redesigned with couches and rugs and lamps) with some other friends Jeanne lifted the cuff of her jeans and noticed some blood on her leg. She dropped her pants and all of us were alarmed and mildly horrified to see long rivers of thick, dried, caked-on blood running from her entire left hip all the way down to her ankle. I guess when she skid she sliced into herself a little deeper than even she suspected, and maybe her side was so numb she hadn't felt it happen. Amazing that the blood never once soaked through her jeans. We sure were tough cookies back then.
4. What do you do for play time fun now?
Tyler-Toss. Typically far more entertaining when Tyler isn't particularly in the mood to be tossed. He finds the whole scenario appallingly ignominious.
5. If you were able to invent a game, what would you call it?
ORFBALL!!! But it's far to convoluted to go into here. But someday, when we have enough players. And enough vehicles. And enough money to bail us all out of jail afterwards...
1. When you were a child, what was your favorite game to play?
During the summer months my friends and I sort of made up a game called Spotlight Tag, although in actuality it was just Hide & Seek outside in the dark with a high-powered camping flashlight. I grew up on a cul-de-sac (where my parents still live) with all my childhood friends living in nearly every house in the circle, and my friend Jeanne's older brother Lee was always "It", just because he enjoyed being "It", and anywhere outside the cul-de-sac was out of bounds, so we had options of hiding behind houses, in the hedges, up the trees, and best of all, all the spooky little shadowy places that we'd discover under the moonlight and street lamps. I remember sitting still as a sparrow in a shadow pocket on a picket fence under a pine tree while Lee walked with the flashlight less than 5 feet away from me and never once saw me. I'm not convinced that there's a drug on the market today that can compete with the exhilarating high of a 13-year-old girl's adrenaline rush during a moment such as that.
2. What is your favorite game to play right now?
Currently getting myself in shape for the 2012 Olympic 100-meter cotton ball toss.
3. Can you share a good story about playing with others or yourself?
Around about the same time as Spotlight Tag, around the same age as well, I somehow got it into my head that I was strong enough to stop a person on a bicycle coming at me at full speed. I made Jeanne ride my old dirt bike into me while I stopped her each time by holding out my hands and grabbing the handle bars. I made her come at me a little faster each time, and finally she was really tearing at me with all the speed she could muster, and when I braced myself and grabbed at the handle bars the bike lurched forward and all 98 lbs of teeny-weeny Jeanne went sailing over the bars and over my own head (as I was hunched forward braced hard with both hands outward) and apparently doing a pretty impressive flip before landing with a skid across the pavement of the cul-de-sac. Miraculously she stood right up, dusted off her clothes and announced she was okey-dokey. Later that night while hanging out in our clubhouse (my parents backyard shed redesigned with couches and rugs and lamps) with some other friends Jeanne lifted the cuff of her jeans and noticed some blood on her leg. She dropped her pants and all of us were alarmed and mildly horrified to see long rivers of thick, dried, caked-on blood running from her entire left hip all the way down to her ankle. I guess when she skid she sliced into herself a little deeper than even she suspected, and maybe her side was so numb she hadn't felt it happen. Amazing that the blood never once soaked through her jeans. We sure were tough cookies back then.
4. What do you do for play time fun now?
Tyler-Toss. Typically far more entertaining when Tyler isn't particularly in the mood to be tossed. He finds the whole scenario appallingly ignominious.
5. If you were able to invent a game, what would you call it?
ORFBALL!!! But it's far to convoluted to go into here. But someday, when we have enough players. And enough vehicles. And enough money to bail us all out of jail afterwards...
posted by Melissa at 9:16 PM
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