My First Backyard Pond, AKA "The Mud Hole"
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This would be one of my earlier 'vague' memories as a six year old. Yeah, I remember it was one of the few hot days we saw that summer (this was in Daly City, just south of SF and just as cold and windy and FOGGY), and yeah, I remember that it was my brother Steve and my two Hispanic neighbors, Miguel and Jose and a kid named Bob.
And I remember having the idea and taking all the blame when Pops got home from a flight. Steve pointed directly at me.
"It was his idea!"
Pops just said that we had a week to play in it, then we had to fill it back in.
"Shut up Steve!"
Mum on the other hand smiles everytime I ask her about the mud hole. To her, this was a cherished memory of motherhood.
Her two boys...
Weren't they something?
Mum had left us to play in the backyard of our neighbor's and gone in to chat with Mrs. Dejesus (spelling might be wrong). Don't ask me what they were chatting about, but let's just say it was earth shattering because they were at it for hours.
Meanwhile, her two sons had collected digging instruments and were busy making a swimming pool out back...
Chat chat chat...
Dig dig dig...
This was the state of construction Mum discovered us under. This was such a dramatic visage that Mum got a camera and documented the progress.
I guess boys being boys was a great enchantment for Mum. I don't know about all women (well, I'm not an expert on any one woman, to be sure), but I gotta make the assumption that the inner workings of being a boy must intrigue the heck out of someone who had always been a girl. Mum herself had been shamed out of tomboyhood by her father as a child. Perhaps this is why she laughs and smiles and loves recounting this little escapade that Steve and I participated in?
As for myself, I see this as incipient stirrings of things to come. I still love digging holes and filling them with water.
Only now, I put fishies in them... 
9 comments:
Maybe the difference between boys and girls is comitment.
I never dug holes (except at the beach to try and reach water and my arm was always to short so dad had to finish it off) but i was the mud pie king. You make 'em and throw them or force your dolls (or little sister) to eat them. Hardly Landscaping.
You guys seem to have been more organised and committed than that! That one serious pothole you dug.
Having two girls and definitely NOT being a tomboy, I shudder thinking about raising a boy.
It seems that your mom did a fabulous job of it though - and you're doing a bang up job as a good son.
Hi tisty. Yes, we were diggers. We made caves. We made holes with plywood lids for hiding. We dug up buried animals to see what they looked like dead.
But evolution took over (perhaps instinctual) and we moved into the trees, building tree forts and stealing lumber and nails from construction sites, chasing away the girls who showed up with curtains...
Hi Ammogirl. Hope you feel well, now. I should come see.
If my Mum knew one tenth of the stuff Steve and I and Our Gang got up to, she'd have never ripened to this stage of the game.
Thank Heaven, is all I can say, for litle girls...
Er.. As one of Four girls let me assure that we are no easier to raise. I mean do you know hard it is to nail up curtains in a boys club house AND get out alive????
And if you moved into the trees that was anti-evolution. You were de-evoving back into the ape form (Which would explain some stuff about my most recent dates :-P)
And Ive just read your other comment about peaking under my veil. A very brave thing to do. I mught have had a -er - Concealed weapon. AS it is all you will find under mine is a block of chocolate, a naughty book and the fact that yes, I am an Aussie.
Consider yourself luck to have escaped so lightly.....
Aren't childhood memories the best? Your picture makes me wanna be a kid again. Life sure was less complicated then.
Hi daisyjo!
I'd love to hear your favorite "being a kid" story.
You too, tisty.
Girls tried to hang up curains on our treefort. They brought their dog to guard them and keep us away. We ran home and got Sampson. Sampson only had one ball but he was BIG.
The girls grabbed their dog and ran home. We got their damn curtains down...
Hi Scott!
Hmmm....I've got so many. I was quite a tomboy in my youth. Distance-spitting watermelon seeds with my brother. Aiming for and actually hitting the telephone pole at the end of the yard with my brother's BB gun. My brother and I ripping up the side lawn to make HotWheels paths. We didn't have tv, so it was an imaginative and simple childhood.
I'd have to say my favorite childhood memory would be the joy I felt hitting home runs in whiffle ball games with my father, brother, and sister. Sunset, paper plate bases, wind whipping through my hair, pumping my short legs as fast as they would go.
Of course, there's also the time when I wandered into the boys Cowboys and Indians area and ended up tied to a tree! I wasn't too happy that day, but it's a good memory now.
Hi daisyjo-
I had a much younger step-sister my pops married into when I was about fourteen. I discovered that I could put a watermelon seed on a patio table and "make it disappear" by hitting it with a spoon. Of course the seed just shot away, but you couldn't see it. I used to do this for hours while my new step-sister laughed and laughed...
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