Hey hey, I actually remembered to do this twice in a row. Could this be because I am glued to this new laptop 24/7? Could be!
Here is number two on the big journal entry site.
Describe your neighborhood bully.
Okay. I’ll start right here and say that I can’t answer this straight out, because we didn’t have a neighborhood bully. We didn’t really have a neighborhood. I grew up in a rural area, on a road with a neighbor on each side. The next nearest neighbor was an older couple, and then some littler kids lived past them. I knew them from the school bus, but only made the trek over there a couple of times.
The kids on either side of us were more our age. It was actually kind of a nice thing that we all were of comparable ages.
To the south of our place were the H family. Becky was in my grade at school, and we played together quite a bit. We had a pool and ponies; they had horses and a three-wheeler. They also had a pool, later, but ours was bigger and deeper.
I liked playing with Becky, but we got mad at each other sometimes. I loved riding with her on the three-wheeler. I would always ride behind Becky, with my arms around her. It was exhilarating and sometimes scary. There were hot places you didn’t want to touch with your bare leg. Experience made Becky more confident, and she would bend into the turns. I bent away from the turns.
We weren’t friends when we got older, and that was really a shame. I don’t even really understand why. I guess it was just the proximity that made us friends (my mom called us playmates) and we didn’t click otherwise. I was pretty nerdy, and Becky was mean a couple of times at school but friendly at home, and that didn’t fit well with me. Not that I blame her or anything. It’s hard enough to fit in during school days without having to stick up for your nerdy neighbor!
I vibrantly remember sneaking the Flintstones vitamins from our house and taking them triumphantly to Becky’s, and our eating them while we rode the three-wheeler. I remember she had a lamb, and she gave the lamb a bite of a carrot and then bit off the same carrot. I remember she had a horny toad. She was an excellent horsewoman, even as a little girl. She called her grandparents Granny and Pa, and I called them that too, in my head, but I didn’t address them as that. I called them Mr. and Mrs. H. Once, after we weren’t playmates anymore, I couldn’t find our pony, Crystal. I found her over at Becky’s (our parents opened the gates between the fields so the animals had both areas to roam) and Becky had saddled and bridled her, with a bit. I took Crystal home.
The neighbors on the other side were the A family. They were all older than me, but Jeff was only one year older. He was a boy, though, and I had no brothers, and he was better friends with my sister Marissa than me anyway.
One time I got hurt over there, and my mouth was bleeding bad, and Jill wouldn’t let me and Marissa in the house to clean it up because she said her mother wasn’t home and she would get in trouble if we made a mess, so we had to walk home with me bleeding the whole way. Mom was mad.
Janna was outside once and asked me if we were going anywhere for Spring Break, and I told her yes, to my grandparents’ house in Stilwell. She informed me that I meant Stillwater. I told her I didn’t, I meant Stilwell. She told me I was wrong. I told her I thought I knew where my own grandparents lived. She went inside, and I heard voices in there. I assume she was asking her mom and dad if there was a Stilwell, Oklahoma. She came out and sullenly told me to have a good time. It made me feel good that I stood up for myself with a big kid like that. Funny how I even remember such a little thing.
Jeff had a little motorcycle. He took Marissa on it a time or two, I think, but I never got to ride on it. One time our little boy dog was getting up on their big girl dog and I said, “Look! Gladys is giving Savage a ride!” and Jeff laughed and started to say something and Marissa told him to shut up and not tell me anything. Their dog Gladys had nipples that dragged on the gravel road sometimes when she walked around. She had puppies a couple of times while we lived there – once in our barn. She killed all but one little brown one by burying them in the dirt in the barn or something like that. It was awful. The little brown one looked like our dog, Buster. Buster and Gladys were comparable in size and style, and I think he was the father of most if not all of the puppies after we moved there.
The A family also had HBO, which we still called Home Box Office back then. I remember watching “Pete’s Dragon” over there one time.
So, no bully, really, just a bunch of kids living on the same street. Marissa bullied me a little, but she was really a symphony of extremes, from fiery anger to boundless adoration. So she wasn’t a bully either.
