You're Killin' Me, Smalls

Last week I found a DVD of The Sandlot at Best Buy. I figured it would be a good buy for $5.00. Joe Muir had never seen it, but he watched it several times last week and he has it on now. It is really fun to see a kid discover a great older movie. I love some of the quotes and scenes from the movie. I think Joe's favorite part is when Squints tricks Wendy Pethercorn into giving him mouth to mouth. What is so appealing to Joe about this movie is the lifestyle of going outside and playing with friends all day, everyday for an entire summer. This is just not the lifestyle kids lead anymore and I think that is sad, but I understand why life could not continue this way.

This was how I spent my summers as a kid, not playing ball, but playing outside. My at-home time was spent sleeping, eating or doing the dishes. That was it. I think my mother was grateful that we were out of the house and not under foot, making messes. This life just sounds so much more fun than playing video games or watching TV.

I didn't live in the country but there was a rustic, undeveloped, rural feel in the place we lived. We had a wooded area past our backyard that provided endless hours of fun for tree climbing and fort building, a blackberry patch for snacking and an apple tree for climbing and snacking. There was a giant hill on which to ride and crash our bikes. I don't remember not having scabs on my knees when I was a kid, mainly because I would lose control on the way down that darn hill. There was a creek at the bottom of the hill that we would explore. We didn't spend as much time exploring the creek as we would have liked because it was haunted. I am not sure why we knew the creek was haunted. But now that I think about it, the rumor was probably started by a mom trying to keep her kids from getting muddy at the creek. I have no doubt that the boys were out playing ball somewhere when they weren't chasing the girls because they decided we would make great Germans, Koreans, Japanese, or Viet Kong combatants in their war games. The neighborhood girls were always busy in never ending games of house, school, hospital, zookeepers, or office. Can you believe that the boys didn't want to join our games, especially school?

After dinner and dishes were done we would go outside again until the streetlights went on. This was when the boys and girls would play together. We would play hide and seek or red light-green light, or cowboys and Indians. We would catch fireflies and try to tame June bugs. What made us so congenial to each other after dinner? I'm not exactly sure why we could get along in the twilight hours but I think it had something to do with the fact that some of the dads were on their back porches, socializing, and keeping half and eye on the kids.

The down side of this lifestyle was the unseen dangers, the things that could go wrong. When I was 5 I was partially responsible, along with my six year old sister, to see that my three year old sister, Deanna, could play outside with us and not get hurt. I remember getting in trouble if she ever did get hurt. Think about how that would fly now. Fortunately, I don't remember any kid getting seriously injured or lost. We had very little adult supervision. The only thing that stopped us from really getting in trouble was that we were a big group of tattle tales. Honestly, you couldn't find a bat in the neighbor's cellar and try to have a funeral for it with out a goody-two-shoes running to tell your mom you had touched a dead animal. We were afraid of getting spanked because that seems like the only punishment ever given to the kids in the neighborhood. Just think about it. If we were put on restriction, we were underfoot, making messes and more work for our moms.