We Were Just Kids

We had this fort, down in our creak. Me and my brother and our friends. Well, his friends. Not to say they weren’t mine either, but I was the only girl…so sometimes I wasn’t allowed to tag along. Anyway, it wasn’t really a fort, I guess. Just some fallen trees that made for good sitting spots if you were any good at climbing, which I wasn’t. My ‘spot’ was the tree closest to the ground, furthest away from the others. The higher the spot, the better you were. This area with the trees, it was across this little stream of water that opened into a big puddle. Ryan fell in once during the winter and he got really sick. No one tried to cross the tree hanging over it anymore after that. We all carved our initials in the bark with the steak knife my brother took from our silverware drawer and lit smoke bombs and all kinds of firecrackers to stain the wood different colors. Sometimes we took the trek over the creek and up into the trees to come out at John’s Apple Market. We bought snacks and pop and those little sticky hands that come in the bubble cases for fifty cents. I went down there recently, about six or seven years later and that hill isn’t nearly as big as it was back then and the woods not as thick. It’s littered with trash and it took forever to find the old path to the fort across all the thorns and broken fences. The fear of scorpions was gone as well. We used to hold weekly meetings there talking about childish things I can’t remember. I think we had a name for our group but I don’t know what it was anymore.

We found some alligator snapping turtles in the creek. They were huge. We named the biggest Godzilla and the smaller one Godzuki. We took care of them for a while, kept them in cardboard boxes and fed them big heads of lettuce and crickets. We went out every night after it rained and dug around in neighbors flower beds looking for those bugs. Sometimes we found nightcrawlers and if we were lucky and got enough, we would ride our bikes to Wildwood lake and go fishing. We found out catfish really like pumpernickel bread and made weekly trips to the bread store to get some. Eventually, all of our parents found out about the turtles and we had to let them go. It was too bad…now that I think about it we probably could have gotten some good money for them

Somewhere in between all of this, we made a Kool-aid stand. Because, you know, lemonade is over rated and Kool-aid is SO much cheaper. We got a table and pre-made a bunch of kool-aid and sold it for a few weeks during the summer. It was my job to jump out in front of the cars to get them to stop. We made about 35 dollars total selling 50 cents a cup. We each got around 7 bucks. It was a huge accomplishment so we got our bikes and rode to John’s to buy candy. I don’t drink kool-aid anymore.

My brother is almost two years older than me and so are all the boys that were in our ‘pack.’ I remember in the fourth grade they quizzed me on all the cuss words as we walked down our path. I should have known them all…but I missed a few. The fort stopped being ‘the fort’ toward the end of fifth grade. It was a hiding spot for Rick’s cigarettes and Devin’s weed. There was a little niche in the second highest tree we hid our knives in. I think they tried to get my brother to try it because I asked if I could come along and they only wanted the guys. I stopped going down there after that. I knew my brother wasn’t doing it anyway because he stopped too.

We started hanging out by the sewer after the fort became less cool. We spray painted our initials in stupid 10 year old handwriting and thought of ourselves as gang members. We got bolder with our actions, moving to vandalizing the curb of our cul-de-sac. Oh, we were tough. But what happened to playing baseball there? And kick the can after the street lights came on? When did it turn to us sneaking drinks of Grasshopper in my basement bar and setting toads on fire? I guess after we realized we wouldn’t get in trouble.

We were just kids with flannel shirts tied around our waists and hats on backwards. We were just kids who dared to bike up ‘Cherry Hill’ the biggest hill in our neighborhood that really isn’t so big anymore. Just kids who bragged about their latest scar from playing four-square a little too rough. We were just kids who didn’t know any better.