Oct. 03, 2002 - 18:07 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Later On

When we were visiting a home where kids somewhere near my age lived, early in the afternoon we would play Pachesi, try to work wire puzzles and things like that while our dinner settled.

Most scuffles were quelled earlier. Seems that among boys there has to be a melee. I don't really know why, didn't seem to be to establish a pecking order, the oldest of the bunch was usually the biggest and strongest.

Then there was a period of playing Catch, Tag, Statues, Hide And Seek and games that often worked off excess energy requiring a breathing spell a time or two.

Sometimes being an audience before the grown folk and trying to understand what was being said occupied time pleasantly. Made us feel we were actually doing something other than just resting.

The shadows would begin to lengthen to the extent we could not ignore them and realize that our play would be at an end soon. It wouldn't take much to set us off into a riot of romping, cartwheeling, wrestling among us boys, and mostly a bunch of out of control physical activity that was speedy, vigorous, noisy and probably did various of our muscle groups a world of good.

As we sensed that going home time would be soon, the noise and activity would radically speed up.

Simple frolicking, roistering stunts which would inevitably lead to total, unwound, rundown fatigue but would speed up again when we heard one of the adults say, "Bedtime is around the corner," or some such thing.

I can remember asking Dad, "Do we have to go Dad ?" The answer would be a cryptic, puzzling thing without a quoted time but boiled down to something similar to Later On . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog