Thirty First (dig it bitches!)

I am from moving and getting along and “don’t be that way.”

I am from casual cruelty and uncomfortable affection.

From military line-ups to determine who ate the cake in the freezer.

Roaming free all day through out the closed military base, which we were forbidden to enter.

Hiding in the tree house that Mr. Sloan built, covered with crude crayon drawings of male genitalia.  (I guess female genitalia were too much of an internal mystery to the artist to get depicted here.)

Burning model airplanes in the gutter when no one was looking.

Making “perfume” from flower petals and mom’s Dippity Do.  Got in trouble for that one.

Looking around to see who might be watching before swinging out over the abyss on the tire swing.  Hoping that someone would notice and comment upon how extremely high I had gotten, the highest they had ever seen.

Keeping quiet when mom was in one of her moods and needed a dark room, saving my needs for later, or preferably until I had forgotten them all together.

Hiding on the roof of the house reading books until someone removed the ladder that had been set against the house for several weeks, listening to the cicada’s rhythm of singing ebb and flow.  Knowing that I wouldn’t be spotted unless I desired to be.  Trying to ignore my desire to be spotted.