Childhood..

   I loved my childhood so much sometimes I wish I could go back to it, life was much less complicated then.
     There were four great big sugar maple trees in front of my grandmother's house. They were so tall  it seemed like they touched the sky.  My cousin, Little Fred and I picked the one closest to my driveway and built ourselves a shabby tree house which somehow seemed grander than it really was. We nailed  boards together to create a floor then nailed our floor to the branches of the tree. It was crude looking, but somehow it appeared grand to our young eyes. Grasping on to the lower branches of the tree we would climb up in that tree house and play for hours. When we decided to leave  we would swing down to the ground on ropes we had tied to the upper branches of the tree. Pretending to be Tarzan we would give the Tarzan yell as we swung to the ground. One day after I had been punished by my mother for whatever naughty thing I had done at the time I climbed up in that tree house and gave my dolly a good spanking.
     One of our other favorite play spots was in the woods. My mother had given us an old table and some chairs she no longer used. We dragged them down in the woods and placed them by a little stream. Being the female meant I had to play the role of the wife and my cousin was my husband. We picked wild pink lady slippers and decorated our table with them.  The memories of those happy carefree days live on in my heart.
    There were days of catching fireflies and putting them in jars. The jar covers had small holes poked in them so the fireflies would not die. We would excitedly climb under the bed covers  and watch the fireflies light up. when we were done watching them we would go outside and open the jars to allow  the lightning bugs to go free.
     Childhood had its own problems, most especially when I was naughty, which I had a tendency to be at times. O.K., it was alot, like the time I rode five miles on my bicycle to my cousin's house. My sister was babysitting me at the time.  I just got on my bike and rode into the sunset, as it were, since it wasn't really sunset, but you get the picture. My mother was none too pleased when she came to pick me up, of course I had to add on to my crime. My mother was having a great visit with my aunt. My cousin, Beverly, and I climbed into my aunt's car and decided to try smoking. We opened the ashtray and there to our wondering eyes were cigarette butts. You guessed it, we pulled out two, one for her and one for me. We each put one in our mouth, using the car lighter we lit up and puffed. After all what harm could there be, grownups did it so it must be o.k.. I'll tell you what harm, getting caught smoking, needless to say I got grounded and lost the privilege to ride my bike for a month. Did I learn my lesson, hell no, I was caught lighting up again. I decided I wanted to try a real cigarette that had never been smoked by anyone. I took one of my father's cigarettes from his pack. It must have been magic because  I had just started puffing when my parents walked in on me. This time I wasn't stopped, I was made to smoke the whole thing. As my parents looked on I puffed away. I began feeling rather sickly, then I felt a strange urge to vomit, I puked my guts out. I always maintain this is why I could never get addicted to smoking. As an adult  I gave social smoking a whirl, that would be smoking OP AKA other people's cigarettes. No matter how much I smoked in the presence of my friends I never had the urge to light up solo.  I finally gave up and left off smoking.
     I wasn't all bad though, I used to lay on my grandmother's lawn and look at the clouds in the sky. Imagining all of the people in the world I would envision them holding hands and loving one another. I didn't realize at that time how big the world was. My world was the one around me, the happy world of my childhood.
     Every childhood is fraught with some pain, the bully at school, the rejection of a friend, but all in all I like to hold onto the good memories, the ones where I skipped up the road  and rode my bicycle. The days of  playing  down  by the stream  under the trees, where I enjoyed the coolness on a hot summer day.
   Childhood is a place I hold onto, where I lived in a world I created, where everyone loved one another, a hope I still hold in my heart today.