Tell me some of your favorite childhood memories

[judecorp]

When I was a child, my best friend in the whole world was Keith. His grandparents lived next door to my grandparents and so on lazy summer afternoons, we were often babysat together. When it was not raining, his grandmother would chase us out of the house, sing-songing, "O-U-T-S-I-D-E!" Temperature was not a factor. Once our cheap Crayola knock-offs melted to our coloring books as we tried to color on the front steps. Keith's grandfather built a shed in the backyard for his outdoor tools and lawnmower. This became our clubhouse. We had to climb over the big lawnmower to get to the ladder to the second level, and it was treacherous to little legs. We called this "the Ouch-Ouch Machine," and it was something of a rite of passage to get to that ladder every day. To get past the front door, one had to know the 'password': "Keith's cabin, number seven, beefsteak tomatoes." Don't even ask me why.

His grandmother loved the fact that we were both smart kids. She would tell us we were geniuses. She was determined to marry us so we would have "smart children," a concept that revolted us yet provided hours of mocking potential. When I would call his grandparents' house for him, his grandmother would hand him the phone saying, "Keith, it's your fiancee." He was 7 or 8, which would have made me 10ish. Goodness.

We played games of our own devices, almost never using any physical props. With our imaginations, the neighborhood was a gigantic playground. We were obsessed with Ghostbusters, and imitated them often. I was Ray Stanz, who loved Cheez-its. Keith was always Peter Venkmen. No one else ever played, nor were they important. We graduated from ghosts to zombies and played one version or another of Dawn of the Dead for years. We would shimmy across ropes, climb fences, and shoot zombies who wanted to eat our brains. And then escape to the safey of Keith's cabin (number seven beefsteak tomatoes).

Sometime in between Ghostbusters and Dawn of the Dead, Keith and his parents moved to the most ideal location - the apartment above ours. Our families kept the back staircase open so we could go back and forth, and we often slept on our porches in the summer heat. We turned the staircase into a combination spook house/obstacle course and rigged all sorts of pulleys, lines, and lights for unsuspecting guests who would never come. We knew the obstacles by heart and could race up the stairs easily. For reasons I don't remember, though they were likely never clear, we referred to our porches as initially "the poop porch" and later the abbreviated "the poop." Every evening I would ask my friend, "Are you pooping it tonight?" and he would answer. We would then plan our evening's adventure of zombies and mayhem. Sometimes we would leave notes for each other in secret locations.

One winter day, we were having a snowball fight that took us all around the neighborhood. As we turned the corner in a neighbor's yard, he hit me in the face with a big snowball and I fell on top of him just right, breaking his collarbone. Thankfully this was before those days where anyone will sue anyone, even friends and neighbors. I don't think anyone even got mad. All I did was run down the street and get his grandparents, and they took care of the rest.

Keith's family eventually moved from our building to another apartment house down the street. We were getting older, though, and that cross into junior high and high school damaged our imaginations and the world of ghosts and zombies. When he left, I never pooped it again.

When I went to college, he was still in high school. He got a girl pregnant and they gave the baby up for adoption. He seemed to grow up a lot faster than I did.

Comments

[folkyboy.livejournal.com]

Dawn of the Dead? weren't you kids a little young to be watching that?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Neither one of us had parents who censored what we watched on television. In fact, my brother and I were the only kids in the neighborhood who were not blocked from renting R-rated movies from the video store, so half the neighborhood wanted us to rent horror movies for them!

[folkyboy.livejournal.com]

hahaha yeah i used to totally rent R rated movies at Blockbuster when i was growing up :)

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

The only time *I* saw such things was when I happened to stay the night over at friends house who had CABLE! Naughty! This post brought back some good memories of my own, Though we were all more prop oriented. :-)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

We also had cable very early on, and the sort of pre-cable called Preview which was kind of like just having pay-per-view movies (or just subscribing to HBO).

So tell me some of YOUR memories!

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

Haha.. Okay here is one of my favorite ones. When I was a kid I was lucky enough to have a treefort. Anyway, among some of the other toys I had, was this Walkie Talkie set, it had a walkie talkie and also this elaborate "Base station". I guess it was supposed to be like this exciting radio center where someone could listen to all the walkie talkies (you could buy extras with the set and use them along with this base). Anyway, my friend Carl and I got this idea we were going to have some fun with two of the neighbor kids. Elden and this other boy who lived across the street.. Elden and his friend were several years younger than Carl and I, but we were still young enough as to not mind too much. But this is probably what lead to this all going awry. We were going to have a watergun fight, and of course, whenever you had a watergun fight, whoever had the treefort was basically, invicible. Anyway, Carl and I decided that we would ceed control of the treefort to Elden and his friend THIS ONE TIME. But before we did that, we had done some extra work. Carl and I created a flat wooden box with a hole on one side and nailed it underneath the treehouse and drilled some holes in the floor. We then took the walkie talkie, taped it in the "On" position and placed it in the slot under the treehouse so we could overhear what was being said. We then told them that we would each go to our respective forts (ours being the garage) and "make plans". The idea being to get them into a mood to think something out we could then overhear, and using our voyeuristic powers, defeat. Not because we didn't like them, but because we were older and wanted to fill them with a sense of awe (Elden was in fact always very dear to me) Anyway, we sent them off and we sat in the garage listening, waiting, hoping. Time passed and we listened as they talked about nothing, waiting for us to make the first move. After a frustrating couple of minutes of them not making any plans. I came out and called out "Are you making any plans yet?".. They called back "No!.."(Almost bewilldered at the pressure of it all). I said "Well make some plans! You need a good strategy if you are going to beat us" (or something to that effect). So we went back, waited, and listened. STILL nothing. This certainly wasn't working out the way I had originally planned. So after another few minutes I decided it was time to get a little more direct. "Hey, how is the planning going?". "We are working on it". I said "Well, you better be.. Make a plan and then come attack us!".. "Okay!" he called back. And then FINALLY he made a plan..

"You go left, I'll go right, and we'll BOOGIE DOWN!"

(p.s. I'm going to crosspost this to my journal, if you don't mind. :-) )

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's awesome! :)