Back when I was about ten years old, my best friend
Tony Jones and I were two holy terrors. I'm quite sure
our respective mothers probably would have agreed
that, somehow, their erstwhile sweet, innocent baby
boys had at some forgotten stage been kidnapped, and
replaced with look-alike "Wild Injun’ savages. Back in
those days, our frazzled, haggard Moms were only too
glad to bid us a fond good-bye’ the very minute our
feet hit the doorstep after arriving home from school.
Today's over-protecting, micro-managing Moms were
unheard of back then. True, my Mom ddd routinely
warn my sister Kim and I never to accept a ride from a
stranger, but, other than that brief precaution, we
were free to roam as far afield as our ability to remain
hunger-free would allow.
We also regularly walked to and from school. Except
on rainy or especially cold days. Tony and I, Usually.
My sister Kim, three years our junior, and with no
contemporaneous female friends yet at that stage ofher life, bravely tried to keep pace with us boys. I have
to give her enormous credit for trying as persistently as
she did. Never once did she give up or quit. Until
Tony and I reached puberty, and (at least in his case)
found more interesting pursuits than another
same-age boy, I think my sister Kim might have spent
almost as much time in his company as I did.
After roughly the fourth family cat had met its
untimely demise on our murderous residential street
(the same one in which we neighborhood kids
routinely played our games of kickball, sandlot
baseball, or 'Red Rover' ...), Tony, Kim, and I had a
sizeable--and growing--'Pet Cemetery’ in our
backyard. Of course, we tended it daily, and beautified
it as much as our ten-year-old imaginations and sparse
pocket allowance would permit. Naturally, we called it
the "Kim-e-Terry," (What else? ...)
As I say, we regularly walked to school, but Tony and
I, being somewhat smarter than the average bears, and
being intimately familiar with all the surrounding
woods, creeks, and swamps which ringed our
neighborhood, and partly as a really clever way to
avoid engaging with the heavy traffic on the main roadto the school, usually took a shortcut to the school
through the woods. This involved traipsing through a
neighbor's backyard, and then down a hill and
through the woods to where a creek, flowing lazily
southward, had created a sizable area of swampy, very
muddy bottomland for a good hundred yards or so.
The only way to get across this otherwise
impenetrable swamp, was by carefully, delicately
balancing one’s way across the top, tightrope-walker
style, of a medium size sewerage pipe, roughly a
hundred or so feet in length, whose sole purpose, of
course, was to deliver the neighborhood's refuse down
to the water table near the creek. We kids had always
known what was inside those pipes, because where
they ended near the creek, they dead-ended into small
towers built of bricks and mortar, with a manhole
cover on the top, whose sole purpose was to allow the
solid waste to accumulate and rot, and the water waste
to disperse into the water table. Our noses, which
functioned perfectly well, thank you, told us exactly
what was down inside those towers and pipes. ... (ha
ha)
Well, Tony and I, being more adventurous and
foolhardy, used regularly to scoot across the top of
those Pipes, erect and walking, with relative ease. Idon't recall that either of us ever fell in, though--being
brainless testosterone-fueled boys--we did have our
share of close calls.
It was my sister Kim who fell in. ...
But only once. The dramatic aftermath was sufficient
to cause our mothers to ban us forever from taking
that particular shortcut to school ever again.
Ordinarily, Kim--being more level-headed--would
crawl atop the pipe on her hands and knees. But this
took up a great deal of time, and Tony and I were
always impatient to hurry up and get to school, and
were forever harrying my sister to speed up, or at the
very least, stand upright and walk across it, the way we
had done.
Well, on this particular occasion, she had actually
bravely done as we had asked, and had stood up to try
to walk across the pipe the last few feet, before it once
again put us over dry land. Of course, she promptly
slipped and fell right into the swamp. With a gigantic
splash!
Of course, Tony and I were immediately horrified.
But we were also only ten years old. Kim pickedherself up out of the water, which in reality was only
about a foot or two deep, hair and dress completely
soaked and matted, and covered in swamp mud, slime,
and ooze, we fished her out of the creek, and up onto
the bank, and proceeded directly on to school. Tony
and I went our way, to our respective classes, and Kim
went her way, to her second grade class.
All was fine until time for class to begin, and the roll
call to be taken. Her teacher came to the W's, and
looked down the TOW of students to where my sister
sat, dripping wet with her matted hair.
"Um, Miss White?" inquired the teacher sweetly, but
simultaneously with daggers coming out of her eyes,
as only Southern women know how to contrive.
"Yes, Ma'am," replied my sister.
"Is everything all reght? said the teacher once more.
"Oh, yes ma'am, everything is just five!" proclaimed
my sister, definitively.
"Well, come along with me to the office,” replied the
teacher.And that's when my Mom got the phone call from the
Principal of the school, asking her please to come
retrieve her daughter, take her home and get her a
change of fresh clothes, and preferably a bath first!