|
Pitas.com
DiaryLand
yahoo
benicetobears
|
I wrote this for a friend of mine to give to here at graduations and thought I would share this story with everyone. I call it Home Away From Home
One block west and one block south of my house towers a shelter belt, the setting for most of my childhood adventures. Watching the lofty trees sway in the wind, smelling the cool outside air, and hearing my friends playing, I ventured into the shelter belt, overlooking the “NO TRESPASSING” sign posted out front. Finding my fellow explorers, I imagined myself a shark who could taste the blood in the water but could not see his prey; I could hear them, but I could not find them. There were many locations for them to hide-in a large sappy pine tree from which we would jump and dirt would just stick to us; in the old tree house we had stumbled upon while lurking around. It seemed about 50 miles deep in the shelter belt. Maybe my friends were at the mulberry bush, so mouth-watering that it hardly ever bore any fruit for long. Finally, I found them all, and we always started playing something new unless we did a “to be continued” of our longest running show about a king and his kingdom. The shelter became my place of residence when I was not at home dreaming of being there and imagining with my friends.
I hardly ever communicated with my parents to tell them I was leaving, let alone tell them I was going to the shelter belt. So that no one detected my leaving, the back door was where my journey began. Sneaking past all of the windows, trying not to be located because my room looked as if it were Toys R Us after a big Christmas sale, I fled to the road in front of my house. Across the road was a row of infant pine trees, which I would weave in and out of to come upon the bushes on the edge of my friend’s yard. Emerging through the bushes, I would acquire some scratches, but it was all worth it because I made it half way to my destination of the shelter belt. I would wander around TR’s (Tierney Rose) yard, sometimes snatching some strawberries from their patch, until I made it to the deck, climbed up the steps, and knocked on the door and asked, “Can TR come out and play.” Her mom would allow her go out, and when there was a pan of fresh baked cookies Deb (TR’s mom) would give me one. We were on our way. The shelter belt grow just catty corner to TR’s house, so it was just a matter of seconds before our journey would come to an end and our day of emanation would be created.
Being in the shelter belt most of the time, we had no concept of the world out` side. Pierce. Splashing around in the local swimming pool would have been a good way to cool off, but we liked it better in our shelter belt. Hardly ever more than about six kids were in the shelter belt, and we liked it like that. We could have gone to the Short Stop to get an ice cream cone or malt, but the trip down there was too long we never had any money, and we were too busy playing to think about ice cream. Playing video games was another thing to do, but it was a nice day and I did not want to be cooped up in the house. No matter what else we could have been doing, we always chose to be in the shelter belt climbing trees and making forts.
The first thing we saw when we walked into the shelter belt was probably the tallest tree I had ever seen. We would have contests to see who could scale the pine the highest. Even though I never won, it was fun to try. Building forts was our greatest talent. We built small forts that took merely ten minutes to construct and some that took almost two full days to complete. Sometimes the forts would be partly in a tree and partly on the ground. Making things like intercoms, draw bridges, beds, and ladders out of junk we found lying around was always a blast. Not a day went by that my friends or I weren’t hurt. Either we cut ourselves on the confining barbed wire fence, trying to get in or out of the shelter belt, or we fell out of a tree, never too far, though we were really good climbers. If we were bored and wanted to do something new, we dared ourselves to trek to the end of the shelter belt to the old tree house we had found one day and play there so no one would be able to find us.
Tierney Berger was the one who showed me the shelter belt and the one I spent most of my time with in the shelter belt. She would all ways be the “bad guy” locking people up or making evil potions for us to eat. TR taught me how to build forts and all of the out door stuff. She told me I can eat clovers, because they are really good with a tart taste to them that I liked. Buster (TR’s dog) was always a welcome addition to our fun. He would always be the lion, other wild animal, or just our hunting dog. The other person who played with us the most was Milly Wray, who always had to be the hostage, queen, or other good guy. I, on the other hand, always had to be TR’s sidekick or slave.
The shelter belt was our diminutively enormous place to play. We pretend the shelter belt be just a forest or a jungle, depending on our mood and how big our imagination grew that day. We took one little fort and portrayed it to be a giant castle with over one hundred rooms. The little mulberry bush sometimes had enough fruit on it to feed the whole kingdom. We split the shelter belt in two and spread mulberries on our faces and be natives in the jungle having a war.
Probably the best thing we ever played was the king and his kingdom. We fabricated a draw bridge with a long, flexible branch and a rope tied to the branch and secured over a branch above, and the watchman sat in the tree to see if people were allowed in or not. We made several rooms in the castle; one even had bunk beds. With some old drain pipes we found we made an intercom system, which reached anywhere in the castle. I was always the servant living outside the castle and I always argued with them to let through the gate-
“Please, let me in. There is a storm out here and I’m so cold.”
“No, you go sleep with the rats.”
“I will do anything you want me to; just let me in.”
“Anything?”
“Yes, anything.”
“You can go sleep in the dungeon, only if you do any chore my family or I ask you to do and do it right away.”
“O.k.”
I had to do everything, but I finally got into the castle.
About five years have passed since I have been in the shelter belt. It is so overgrown with weeds that I probably could not get through the shelter belt anymore. But I think after graduation, I may ask TR if she wants to make one last fort in the shelter belt, and venture deep into the shelter belt to find the old tree house. Maybe we could climb the front tree one last time. But no matter how overgrown, the shelter belt will be my home away from home.
Hello again, it has been a long time since I posted something on my weblog but here you go. This is a true story about how i got the crescent shaped scare on my forehead. Here it goes hope you like it:
"Don't run in the house!" This was very popular saying in my house when I was younger. I never gave running in the house a second thought because I was careful nothing would ever happen to me. Or so I thought. But when my parents told me, "No running in the house," I should have listened. I found out the hard way, and the lesson left a lasting impression on me for the rest of my life.
It was June 12, a hot and sunny day, a great day, my eighth birthday. Forcing my eyes open, I woke up at around 11:00 a.m., stumbled out of bed, and plopped down on our big blue couch to watch some TV. I did not budge from that comfortable spot for about an hour and a half.
My mom demanded from the kitchen that my little brother and I go outside to tell my older brother and sister lunch was waiting. We were having my favorite, pancakes, eggs, and sausages, for my birthday lunch. I decided to race my little brother to the front door. We were in the kitchen in the back of the house, and when we started to run, my mom yelled, "Stop running in the house right this minute!" were we going to listen to her, us being the two littlest in the family, and it being my birthday? No!
As we ran through the house like sprinting cheetahs running for a kill, I was bragging to my little brother, saying things like, "I'm going to beat you; you're too slow." When we approached the door, I knew I was going to beat him, but just to make sure, I turned my head to see where he was. As I turned to look in front of me, I saw our old wooden rocking chair that I had forgotten was directly in front of the door. I tripped on one of the rockers sticking out and fell forehead-first into the sharp edged doorknob. I cried my eyes out until there were no tears left to cry, as I said, "Mom, get a band-aid. It hurts so bad."
When my mom saw what had happened, she ran as fast as I have ever seen her run and ordered my little brother to bring a wet washcloth quickly to help stop the blood from gushing out of the wound. My mom phoned my grandma to ask if she would go the hospital with her and me, while my brothers and sister sat at home watching TV, I would be in the hospital on my birthday.
At the hospital I was so afraid, one would have thought I had just seen a terrifying ghost. I had not been in a hospital since I was too young to remember. I had about 14 stitches in a half-moon shape sown into my forehead, and I still have the scar today, something that no one has but me.
Now I know why my parents told me not to run in the house, and I know that there is a good chance that I could trip and get seriously hurt. So the next time my parents said, "Don't run in the house," I didn't.
Hello everyone, I am Adam. I have made this website because I had to for a class I am taking at Wayne State College, in Nebraska. I dont really know what I want to use it for yet but I will figure it out soon.
|
altavista
google
open directory
|
