We Promise Not to Make You Dead

My Daddy was in the Navy when I was a little girl, so we spent every single vacation where both sets of my Grandparents were; in a little town smack dab in the middle of West Virginia. I mean, dead center of the state. The way the roads were then, it was a 9 hour drive back then, and there were no DVD players in cars, no gameboys or PSPs. My sister and I had to make do with reading books, or playing "car games" like counting license plates or green cars. Anything to keep my father from killing us on those pilgrimages through the mountains to our little hometown in the middle of the state of West-By-God-Virginia.

My Daddy's Parent's were from the more affluent part of town, lived in a 3 story Victorian House that my sister and I thought was a mansion as little girls. My mother was a farmer's daughter, and while both sets of Grandparents technically lived on the same road, albeit about 5 miles apart, the worlds were completely different. We adored my Daddy's parents, but, we always had more fun out with at my Mother's. That's where my cousins were, and that's where we could be kids, doing summertime things, playing kid games, swinging on tire~swings, hunting craw~dads in the creek, playing with new pups or kittens in the barn, or just running around.

My one cousin was only a year older than I and was our favorite playmate. We would get into all sorts of trouble together and we'd always come up with creative games to play. My sister always hated when it was time for us to figure out what to play. Our (my cousin's and my) favorite game was airplane. One of us would suggest it, and my sister (who was a year younger) would start to cry. We'd look to her.

"Why are you crying?"
"Because I don't want to be dead" (said among a bunch of sniffles)
"We promise not to make you dead....this time"
"You....won't?" (more sniffles)
"No."
"OK, I'll play."

That settled, we would start our game.

My Grandmother had a slightly rickety porch swing. Painted green, where the paint was chipped and peeling a bit. That would be our "airplane". My Cousin would be the Pilot and the Dad, I would be the Mom and a Nurse and my sister would be the little kid. We'd start swinging the swing, making it go higher and higher and all of a sudden my cousin would JAM his foot onto the porch making the swing jar and bounce in all directions. We would all scream, he would start yelling "MAYDAY, MAYDAY" into the imaginary radio and we would all "fall" out of the swing and land on the porch in crumpled little masses. It was VERY dramatic. I think we probably deserved Oscars for our performances.

I would always "come to" first. I was injured (we would take berry juice and smear it on us for blood. I would crawl over to my cousin and throw water on him to waken him and then put rag slings on his arm or something or wrap up a leg or bandage his head because something *had* to be broken. Then together we would crawl over to my sister, laying lifeless somewhere on the porch. I would take her pulse. I would listen to breathing. I would look at the tons of berry juice now covering her prone body. Then look at my cousin with a very sad expression, nearly in tears and say in my most dramatic voice. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." and then cover my sister up with a blanket and she was *dead* for the rest of the game.

If we played "Shipwreck" it was pretty much the same scenario, only we would drag her lifeless body to shore and do pretend mouth to mouth on her and have to give up because she was *dead* and then cover her up with branches. "Tornado"....same thing. "Bank Robbery"....same thing. She was sort of like the guy in the Red Shirt in Star Trek. You knew every time he went down to a planet on a field mission that he was gonna die.

Every game we played, somehow or other, we made her dead, and we LIED to her every single time to convince her that we weren't going to make her dead so she'd go along with us and play, just so we could ultimately make her dead. As an adult, I can't imagine why she would put up with that. I mean, laying for long periods of time under a stifling blanket in the middle of summer while my cousin and I set up our imaginary signal fires couldn't have been a lot of fun.

Occasionally, we did let her "live". I think that was mostly so that she wouldn't go and tell on us for making her dead "AGAIN". For some unknown reason, my Mother and my Aunt had some major issue with us doing this to my sister over and over again. I figure karma has, or probably will pay me back for the multiple demises of my sister, but I can't help remembering how much fun it was, being a kid on a summer afternoon, out in the country, playing silly games like that.

Kids today just don't know how to play like that anymore.

Your Mommy doesn't have a WHAT?????

My eldest son learned to talk at a very early age. He was using complete, grammatically correct sentences before he was 18 months old, which, I must admit, was pretty funny when watching the reactions he would get from strangers. His vocabulary was enormous and his pronunciation was impeccable. He did, however, have days when his tremendous fluent abilities would cause me all sorts of undue embarrassment, totally unbeknown to him.

For example, he would have, what my WonderHubby and I would refer to as "The Letter of the Day" days. Now, these were days when he would select a given letter and every single word he said would begin with that letter. He started this somewhere around 15 months or so. A psychologist friend of mine was astounded that he had the ability to do this, as this required quite advanced thinking and skill, things not generally found in someone quite so young. In general, The Letter of the Day days were pretty interesting to observe, and rather amusing at the creative words he would come up with. There were, however......exceptions. These would be letters like B, or God forbid, F.

In the middle of the grocery store he announced at the top of his lungs just how ITCHY he was, which, of course, came out as BITCHY. The little white haired ladies and the other young mothers would look at me in disgust that this sweet child would be uttering such a repulsive word. But, F....F was absolutely worse. You simply cannot imagine how many TRUCKS and DUCKS we would find on F-day. "Mommy, Mommy, look at the f***!!!", he would YELL excitedly. We would find them in stores, in parks, always in public places where every adult present would look at me in abject horror to hear the f-bomb being dropped by a toddler. After a while, I merely became immune to the looks.

We were never parents to lie to our son about the names of his body parts. His penis was his penis. Not a willy, not a pee-pee, not a jigger, a penis. He would bathe with my husband sometimes, but, at this point, we already knew that this child was a little too smart for his own good, so he didn't bathe with me anymore. So, he knew that Daddy had a penis too, like him, and one day he asked if I had one too, and I told him no. He didn't ask any other questions so we left it at that. Never tell a child more information than they ask for. Topic closed...or so I thought.

One day we went to the grocery store and we're in the check out line, I'm filling out my check, he's flirting with the check out lady and all of a sudden he blurts out in that loud baby voice of his "Mommy has NO penis!" You could have heard a pin drop in the entire store. The check out lady looked at me horrified, I turned about 15 shades of purple, my son started singing "Mommy has NO penis!" over and over like a new song. I gathered up my groceries as quickly as I could and RAN out of the store.

From then on, my son used that expression as a sort of "Greeting" whenever we went anywhere. He told everyone. Bank tellers, gas station attendants, convenience store clerks, strangers who just happened to stop to talk to him, EVERYONE. The conversations would go something like this:

"My, aren't you a hansome little guy!"
"Mommy has NO penis"
Person looking to me in shock, and quick end to conversation with me purple and running out of wherever I was.

Finally, I just more or less, gave up. I realized he was going to do this to me forever and I might as well just accept it.

One day, I think went to get a slice of pizza for lunch. I ordered the pizza, the girl told him how handsome he was, and out came the the proverbial, "Mommy has NO penis!" The girl looked at me with that same look I'd seen a hundred times or so by now, and I just looked back at her and shrugged and said back to her, "Well, I don't!" This, for some reason, embarrassed HER and she quickly turned around to find something else to do. Like find our pizza.

Out of the mouths of babes.