the days are long and short

When people would tell me that me and my friends were playing in sewer water I knew they were wrong. I knew what sewers were for and we would have seen floating turds or yellow water.  The water was so clear in fact that it must have been rain water but I rarely saw it dry, even during the summer.

The ravine that ran behind my elementary school was called “The Creek” but to me, it was a canyon. The end that I usually entered from featured an enormous six foot concrete tunnel that ran under a road. The water that ran thru the tunnel was rarely deeper than about 3 inches so you could walk thru from one side to the other if you knew where to step and didn’t mind getting your feet wet.

From there the creek wound its way around for blocks, probably 15 feet below the level that the school and the local houses were built on. The sides of the valley were covered in trees, bushes, and at one point a rockslide of 10 to 15 huge Han Solos frozen in carbonite sized slabs of gray concrete. Stuck in the dirt where they had fallen, these slabs were excellent for climbing on, and one in particular was positioned perfectly as a slide.

Numerous club hideouts were constructed in the creek, as well as several nicknames for it.  I have a distinct memory of trying to sketch out a logo that renamed it the “Danger Zone” This memory also includes humming the Kenny Loggins chorus of the same name while trying to strategize the best places to take cover from someone lobbing grandees at you if you had just been running at top speed.

So I wrote this note that said “You’re the greatest thing since sliced bread” rolled it up into a cigarette sized tube and wedged it into part of the wire frame of a patio chair at the restaurant that I planed to take her to on our date that night. I’d also taken one of the napkins from the restaurant and written “feel inside your chair” on it. I figured I’d switch out her napkin for the one I’d written on once we got there.

When I went to pick her up she was talking on her cell phone with some guy she went to college with. She kept mouthing to me that she was almost done but eventually she handed me the tv remote and disappeared into her bedroom. I watched King Of the Hill, The Simpsons, and half of her Lost Boys dvd while listening to her laughing at his jokes thru the bedroom door.

Crunch

When I was little I used to put lots of sugar in my cereal so that I could have a few spoon fulls of nothing but sugar and milk once i got to the bottom of the bowl. I won’t say that I don’t do that now, I just don’t eat cereal that much any more.

they leave the lights on at night in school, but nobody ever sees us inside. We’re careful.

In elementary school I was in a club with 3 other boys. I guess I was in several clubs in elementary school, probably as many rock bands as I’ve been a part of as an ‘adult’ but anyway, I was in a club called “R.A.T.S!” which stood for “Running Around The School.”

What this meant, was that during recess, when everyone else was outside on the playground, we would sneak back into the school and see how long we could dart around the hallways without being spotted by a teacher. Usually, we could do this either till recess was over or until we came up with a cooler idea that required being outside again. We felt like spies sneaking around. Every day I forgot to bring my plastic periscope in from home and every day I kicked myself for it.

We were all sworn to secrecy, as R.A.T.S. probably broke more school rules than anything any of us had ever done. No teacher could ever know what R.A.T.S. stood for. If so, word would get out that we needed to be watched and we would never be able to sneak away from the playground unnoticed again.

In the end, a kid who’s name I can’t remember, who may very well be listed as my ‘friend’ on facebook today, pried out of me what our name stood for. I had written the acronym on various different shapes and sizes of paper and taped them down to my desk till it was covered. He wanted to know how he could be a part of whatever it was, and he wouldn’t stop asking. I think I finally told him thinking that the truth would frighten him away. As if to say “Look, we’re the BAD kids, you don’t want to get mixed up with us.” But it didn’t work. When he learned what it was, and that I didn’t want him involved, he promptly stood up, stomped up to the front of the class, and told the teacher on us. She stood up and repeated it to the whole class, what this kid had said, and asked if it was true.

I raced to come up with some good academic pursuit that R.A.T.S. could be an acronym for (We were the kids that wanted to wRite Awesome Textbooks Someday! or Recite Arithmetic Tables Spontaneously!) but sadly I’m 25 years late with those answers.

Our awesome logos came off our desks, recess became about siting on tires 1/2 buried in wood-chips and watching others play kickball. We were no longer super cool, and we never would have fun again. Well, not until the day that I had the local sports shop print up t-shirts for our awesome new club called “The Tigers.”