Life, actually…

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LESSON FROM A DOWN SOUTH PLAYGROUND

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“Boy did I just about get smushed by that car!” This is Bob Crutchfield weaving his latest tale. We, his 1950s playmates, hang on to Bob’s every pronouncement. We are standing in the shade of a crooked tree in Bob’s backyard.

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Bob continues, “That car must have been going seventy-seven miles PER hour.” He pauses. Our attention is rapt. “Another seventeen seconds and I’da been a goner!”

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As a fellow kid I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of a car’s zooming along at such a speed on a small street that barely allows enough length to rev up to anything over twenty.

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I remind myself that this is Bob Crutchfield talking. Every factoid must be reduced to its realistic height when we listen to Bob. He is the neighborhood’s greatest exaggerator.

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We of course do not disapprove of Bob’s wild stories. After all, he is the only entertainment available in the blazing summer sunlight. If we didn’t have Bob, we’d be lying flat on our backs listening to bees, and scratching redbug bites.

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“I been shootin’ matches out of my BB gun,” Bob exclaims. This is profoundly interesting, since we sluggish mates of heavy humidity never think about loading anything but BBs into a BB gun.

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“I bet I can make seventeen matches in a row light up when they hit the sidewalk,” he says, loading and cocking. He’s right—with luck and aim he manages to accomplish two things at once, becoming both marksman and firebug.

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We wimpy kids don’t dare experiment with fire and mortar this way, so Bob is acting out our fantasies. Our parents and overlords disapprove of this kind of behavior, like dodging a speeding car or firing off kitchen matches or swinging from tree vines.

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Mind you, we generally know when Bob Crutchfield is fibbing for fun. He always uses the number seventeen. I finally figure out that seventeen is an ideal number for dramatic emphasis. You can stretch out all three syllables. Much better than a one-syllable number. And seventeen hundred and seventy seven sounds way cooler than any one-syllable number you can imagine.

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My sister Barbara is outraged one day when Bob accidentally shoots her in the leg with an unlighted match. The scandal lasts for weeks. But at least it’s something to talk about in a small world such as ours, where anything happening at all is better than nothing going on.

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Even after the pock mark on Barbara’s skin heals, the incident makes for something to re-tell now and again.

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I hope to this day that wherever Bob Crutchfield wound up, maybe he still carries scandal and harmless drama around with him.

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Just to keep us kids of summer amused, bemused and full of at least seventeen million moments of fond memories

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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