Reflex Reactions, Fortune Telling, and Flashlights

We'd looked upon its broken down grandeur with awe, with its peeling paint and rusted squeak of the wedged door. After a winter of abandonment, we'd rushed back to it—hugging its crude shutters and sweeping the blanket of dead flies from its napping corners. We'd always scream when a large, furry, eight-legged creature would scurry away from our brooms or attack our twelve-year-old toes. We just smashed them with thrown tennis shoes— the thick kind that we didn’t wear anymore because their bottoms were encrusted with our evicted occupants’ innards. There were black scuff marks all over the walls of that old, beat up playhouse—trophies of our victories and their defeat.

We'd re-decorate, re-odorize, and re-love the place every June—four days after the last recess bell of the season. As soon as it was “civilized” once more, we'd have sleepovers and play cards with flashlights until three in the morning, reading each others’ futures with our Charlie Brown face cards. King of Diamonds… she’d marry someone rich. Two of Clubs… she’d have stupid children… Ace of Spades… they’d fight a lot. But don’t worry, the next card I pulled was the Queen of Hearts… and that evened everything out.

She'd just sigh in relief and reach for the stale chocolate donut gems that we'd bought earlier from the vending machine at her dad’s swimming pool. They tasted like wax—poop brown crayons with holes in the middle of them. But she'd eat them anyway. I'd shuffle the cards and reach for the Laffy Taffy, reading the riddles on the back of the wrapper out loud to her. We'd always joke about how dumb they were. But we read them anyway. Because it was a reflex reaction. Like how if someone hit me, then I'd hit them back harder. Or how she'd dump ketchup on her French fries before she'd even tasted them. Or how we'd evict creepy crawlers from the playhouse every time June would roll around the corner.