Personal Narritive - 2ND DRAFT

Posted by rjhmoore at 8:03 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 7, 2008

My Hide and Seek

Hide and seek has always been a special game for me. You know, you get tired of ring-around-the-rosy and hop-scotch after a certain age, but ask me to play tag or hide and seek today and I’m there! You think I’m enthusiastic now, you should have seen me seven years ago. The cul-de-sac I live on is a kid’s paradise: no cars, no bossy adults, and so many places to run around you couldn’t count them if you tried. This large playground is filled with massive trees and scores of empty trash cans. One can see how the other kids and I were tempted out of our houses on any warm and sunny afternoon.

Our prime hide and seek season was summer. With no school and hardly any curfews, we could keep playing well after the sun went down. But often we played in the hot, sticky afternoons when the cicadas would let out their wretched reminder that was well above 95 degrees outside. Though it wasn’t as if we needing reminding; we consistently dripped like leaky pipes.

The large, black, looming lamppost at the end of the street was Base. Base was what you grabbed onto for dear life if you were being chased. Base was where you teased “It” after making sure that you were really, really safe. Base was also accompanied by two towering Bradford pear trees, which gave us dear, glorious shade when we desperately needed it. The only problem with Base was that it had this nasty habit of soaking up the sun. It would get so hot that we would have to periodically have to let go to rub our little, burned, pink fingers. Otherwise, it was the perfect spot for the most dominant and permanent feature of the game.

Unlike Base, of which there was the one and only, there were a number of places to hide. As we were so small, it was easy to crouch behind leafy bushes, plaster yourself to the side of a great oak tree, curl up in an empty trashcan, lay rigid in the long, itchy grass… the possibilities were endless. What a splendid feeling it was when you found a fresh hiding spot that nobody else knew of! It was your own secret haven, your fort, your hideaway. You were brilliant, a genius even, but as time wore on, that fantastic feeling would begin to fade. You would get lonely, or had to go pee, or your restlessness would give you away. Once everyone else found your special place, it lost its sense of security and privacy and you could hardly use it again without being caught. What a shame to lose something so valuable. The sense of disappointment never plagued us long though; there were a million other hideouts just waiting to be discovered.

We didn’t always play together like nice little kiddies ought to. Now and again we would burst into shrill shouting matches declaring that our version of events was right and the other individual was the cheater. We had our ways of dealing with the arguments on our own, more often verbally than physically. I do remember one occasion when we must have thought physical force was necessary and I ended up with a nice nosebleed. My brother and I weren’t allowed to play outside again until the next week. The altercations never lasted longer than a couple of days however, and we could be seen playing delightfully in the sunshine once again.

Hide and seek is just a kid’s game to some, but to me it’s a wonderful memory. Our game was confined to the boundaries and the occupants of our street, under the age of eleven of course. We had our rules, basic and outrageous, but they fit us like they won’t fit any other group of kids. When we played I was at the mercy of another world, one of action and danger, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.