Once when I was eight years old I was in the backyard of our home in Robesonia playing Matchbox Cars with my friend Matt Ohlinger. It was a bright summer day and we were encompassed in the affairs of our tiny roads and buildings. As a side note, Matt always made me live in the house with the smaller pool, and I had to be the trash collector truck. Heh.
Anyway, It was a particular hot and dry summer. My mother had come home from work and to my utter delight had brought me a toy. Now, this was significant because I normally didn’t get toys just out of the blue like that. Not to say that I was deprived of toys when I was young, but normally there was some sort of event involved; a holiday, birthday, vacation trip, etc.
Mom had bought me a bright red playground ball. You know the ones. The same red playground balls that the big kids would pelt you with in dodgeball at recess. Yeah. Those. Matt and I were unbelievably excited. We immediately started talking about all the things we would do. I mean, really! Imagine the possibilities! Dodgeball, kickball, basketball, soccer! We had all these things at our disposal at this point.
We decided to start off we would simply stand in the backyard and bounce the ball back and forth. Fair enough. Might as well warm up before getting into the big stuff. So we started tosssing it back and forth. One hop tossing. Chest passes. All the good stuff.
Matt tossed me the ball on a fast one hopper and I caught it. Being a dry summer, the grass was kinda loose and coming up. So when I got the ball I noticed there was some grass on it. I brushed the grass off and sent it back to Matt. He tossed it back again. More grass. Brush brush. But this time it didn’t come off. So I picked it off. Although this time, the grass had actually punctured the ball. As I pulled the grass out I heard the air rush out of the tiny hole. I was devastated. We had this ball for all of 3 minutes and now it was flat. My brother and dad tried to super glue the hole shut, but every time we would pump the ball up it would re-open the hole.
I never got to play with that ball after that. I’m in my mid twenties now and I’m still hung up on it. So to my kids of the future I say:
“No, you can’t have that toy. You’ll just break it. Go outside and get some exercise.”
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p>Lazy kids. Sheesh. 