This was a great weekend! Saturday was one of those days that went on forever...but not in a bad way. Kevin said it was really long too--but not in a bad way either. So strange these days for days off to feel like they are long, right? I remember being a kid and being bored a lot--an only child thing maybe...or maybe just the times...no internet...no Wii...no cell phones...just my bike, a basketball goal in the driveway and a tapeball game in the top circle in Cherokee with a neighborhood full of boys. Any of you all played tapeball? Just a ball made from some tape...sounds so hick-fied doesn't it? Man, those were good times. I lived in the top of Cherokee my whole childhood. Chad and Jason Williams, Tony and Chris Meadows, Robert and Wille Richard...then A.J. Smith and Kameron Crowder used to wander up for basketball games as we got older. I have always had good guy-friends and prize myself with being able to understand the opposite sex better than most women and I think I can attribute this to being a Tomboy and growing up with nothing but boys around. I used to sit on the front porch with my case of Barbies and bribe the boys in the neighborhood--if they would play Barbies, then I would play Cops and Robbers afterwards. It was a good system and those boys would be mortified knowing that I am revealing that they used to play Barbies with me on my front porch! HaHa.
I wish our kids could have more of that simple life--where days just seem to drag on. It breaks my heart when Riley will say, "Geez Mom, where does the time go? It just goes by so fast!" I NEVER remembered time going by quickly when I was a kid. Maybe the summer evenings went by quickly from the time supper was finished til dark when my mom stood on the front porch and called me in because it was dark and time to come inside and get ready for bed--other than that though, time was slow.
We had some great water gun battles when I was a kid. Man those were good times. Tony and I each had these black water guns--this was back before Super Soakers. I think he got one for his birthday in May and then he got me one for my birthday in June. We thought we were something else. Those things had a black canteen that hooked on your shorts that held the water. HaHa. We had many evenings of water gun battles and then somebody would always make that fatal mistake of shooting my dad. My parents weren't so sophisticated as to run inside in defeat...oh heck no...Daddy would manage to get us involved in a water gun battle in the front yard while he hooked up the water hose around back and soaked our butts when we came around. Then Mama would come out and we'd get her good...and for anybody who knows my Mom...well, you know revenge is a given. So one of us would be in the driveway and Mama would come out of the house with the dutch oven filled to the rim and dump that thing over our heads and laugh hysterically! I'm tellin' ya, those were good times. Nothing better.
My kids don't play baseball/softball. And I love it! That might sound terrible, especially since my husband played ball in college, but I love that tonight will finish off Cub Scouts and that we will have nothing scheduled for the remainder of spring and summer but FUN! Playing in the pool, running through the sprinkler, roasting marshmallows in the backyard...that's the kind of stuff that kids remember...the stuff that doesn't cost a dime. What are my favorite childhood memories? Building huts with Chad and Jason in the woods, playing Monopoly at the kitchen table at Tony's house til midnight, water gun battles in my backyard, sleigh riding down Cherokee hill and praying no cars are brave enough to try to come up the hill (that was the daring part haha)--and I remember being bored-- a lot--and it was great!
I hope my kids will remember being bored sometimes. I hope their lives aren't so over-scheduled and organized that their memories will be more of running to and fro to this and that than just being kids and making mudpies in the sandbox, catching fireflies on hot summer nights, and maybe I'll even manage to teach 'em how to build a hut.
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