Dead End Kids

Welcome back. Hope everyone’s weekend was relaxing, safe, restful, and fun. I had a pretty good weekend. It was my birthday ‘extravaganza’ weekend!! What is the birthday extravaganza? I came up with this concept years and years ago. Being a single parent at some point I realized I just didn’t have the time to get it all done, get it all ready and be prepared, so I elongated all birthday celebrations to the entire weekend. It took a lot of pressure off. The girls and I have continued this tradition. It works out well, one night the birthday dinner, the next day the birthday gifts, later on the birthday cake. It spreads the festivities over a longer period of time.

So this weekend was my birthday extravaganza weekend. During this time I got to reflect on the past and think of some of the amazing things that have happened to me over my lifetime. In doing so, I’ve came to the realization: I shouldn’t be alive!!

I thought back to a time when we lived on Garfield Street. It was a great neighborhood to grow up in. There were plenty of kids scattered about, plenty of things to do, but, thinking back though, I realize my mother should now only be claiming “five children” (not seven).

My sister and I should not be here. We lived on a dead end street. At the end of the dead end was a small field and a path we would follow that would lead to the cities open storm drain – which we as kids called “the brook”.

The brook! How many hours did we spend there, tossing rocks, making damns, and doing all the things kids would do. I don’t remember exactly when we got this gem of an idea, but, a bunch of us would go into the storm drain, (we were seven or eight years old and we could stand up in this storm drain.) We would then follow this pipe up into the darkness and kept going until we were under the streets of our neighborhood. We would then stand under the manholes of the streets for sunlight and to yell at any passerby.

Okay...so let’s total up what we have here so far… 5-6 children, all under the age of ten, scampering up the storm drains… Okie-dokie, um…Hey Stupid, did you think maybe it may RAIN somewhere upstream? Our parents would search for days and they would find us weeks later in Boston Harbor. What were we thinking?!?!?? Remember that ol’ idiom, “but for the grace of God, go I”?

And then Winter. Ah, Winter in New England. Picturesque, frosty cold, snow storms, days off from school… kids out playing all day with the rosy cheeks and frozen fingers! My sister and I would make snow forts, we would spend (what seemed like hours) making forts in the giant piles of snow. We made tunnels which led to carefully carved out rooms where we would stash our premade snowballs in case we were attacked by the rebellious neighbor kids.

Again, let’s see what we have here... two children in 10-15 foot snow piles on a dead end street… and where did these snow piles come from? From the city plows clearing the roads and dumping the snow in huge piles on the dead end street. What were we thinking?!?!?? Again I say, “But for the grace of God, go I”.

My poor mother!