Playtime

Precie over at Writer At Work is running some contests this Month of May and right now she's on May Book Contest #2. This is how Precie describes her contest.

This week's contest assignment: Write about a childhood game. (Up to 500 words.)
Deadline: Friday, May 16, at 11 pm Eastern

What do I mean by "a childhood game"? Again, I'll leave that up to you. You may end up writing a fiction piece about kids playing, about adults reliving their past...You might write a poem about Twister or Connect 4 (yes, I realize I'm showing my age)...You could write a non-fiction essay waxing philosophical about Little League competitiveness or a memoir snippet about the first time you played Dodgeball or Break the Gate...

Again, your take can be positive or negative or ambivalent, serious or humorous or ironical, whatever approach you choose.

So as it's May I've written about a May game. The setting is 1976 in the grounds of a burnt out house near my home in Ireland. I want to make it perfectly clear that this is pure fiction ..........


Childhood Games

"It's a dinosaur."

"Where? I can't see it."

"There! Three horns ... it's a whatyamacallit? .. Triceratops."

"Oh yeah .. well kinda. Oooh now I see! Sometimes as the wind blows the clouds it gets clearer."

"Uhuh and sometimes it really messes a great one up. See there! A fella on a unicycle!"

"What! Now I know you're having me on."

"No look - the big circly bit is the wheel, the blobby bit's his body and there's his arms out to balance him."

"And what're those bits?"

"Uuum .. those are the chainsaws he's juggling."

Once we got the giggles that was it! We held our stomachs and rolled around in the long meadow grass surrounded by cornflowers and buttercups and a cacophony of insects. May will always be my favourite month to lie in the grass and stare at the impossibly blue sky. The breeze tossed perfect candy floss clouds around to play charades with my best friend Rose and I.

"Stop making me laugh or I'll wet my knickers."

"You said chainsaws - it's your fault!"

"Ah sugar! I can't hold it! Where'll I go?"

"Go up to the ruined house. No-one'll see you there."

"It's full of nettles and I saw boys there the other day, smoking. I don't want to have my knickers down around my ankles if they turn up again."

"Well go behind that tree then. I'll keep a lookout. You'll be grand!"

"Oooooh," I danced a jig to stop myself from going, "I hate going outside with no toilet paper - you always get drips in your panties."

"Pick a dock leaf - it'll get the drops off and if you do sit on a nettle it'll sort the sting out too!"

"DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH - I'LL BURST!" And I ran a funny little cross-legged run up the hill to the tall oak tree standing sentinel over the meadow that ran down to The Creek. I struggled with my uncooperative underwear trying to stop peeing before my dress and feet were out of the way of any wayward splashes and then ...... aaaaaaah release.

"HURRY UP THERE'S SOMEONE COMING!"

"Oh bum! How far away?" I don't think I could've stopped even if I'd wanted to. I searched the horizon and strained my ears always watching where the river of urine flowed and kept adjusting my feet to avoid it. This was a game I played often. I hated going outside but I was used to it. You had to be when your favourite hang-out was fifteen minutes from the nearest bathroom.

"Quick! Quick!"

No time for a dock leaf. Knickers up and I fled the site of the puddle! As I reached Rose, who was by now, crying from the laughing, I realised that, yet again, I'd been got.

"You're such a cow," I yelled giving her my best dead-arm punch.

"I can't help it. You're just too easy to get a rise off of. You'd believe anything!"