It started out like any other summer day in southern California; hot, sunny. I'd like to say it was a gorgeous day with a bright blue sky, beckoning kids to run and play, and fill their lungs with fresh air; it wasn't. Remember, I said this was in southern California. It was hot, it was sunny, but the sky had it's usual sickly grey tinge, and if you decided to run and play for too long, your lungs would burn for the rest of the day.
I didn't wake up that fateful day thinking of ways to do away with my sister or anything like that. She was older, and therefore, bigger and stronger than me. Oh don't get me wrong, there were times that I wondered if there were ways to get rid of obnoxious older sisters, but this wasn't one of them.
It all began easily enough when we went to play at our best friends' house. Rene, Philip and Tracy were siblings who lived just down the road from us. We practically lived at their house whenever school was out. In the middle of the endless city that is the Los Angeles area, they somehow managed to secure a gigantically large yard. I'm not joking, we lived on a lot the same size as theirs, except that three houses shared our space along one long drive-way, as well as a huge field behind the three homes. In this way, we lived a wildly free country like upbringing in the midst of staggering suburbia.
Our favorite past time often revolved in some way around digging huge holes. We were determined little kids, we didn't just dig little holes and give up. Oh no, not us. A hole wasn't big enough for us unless you could get a few kids hidden in it to usher surprise attacks on unsuspecting passersby.
Pairing deep holes with one of our other favorites, the tire swing, was a unanimous hit with each and every one of us. Entire days were spent digging this hole large enough to fit a couple of kids down inside. When the hole was finally large enough to squeeze three of us into, and at least up to my arm pits, we deemed it ready. Let the games begin! Oh yes, that was a glorious hole! We made up quite a few exciting games with that one. In one of these games, four of us would run around in circles while the fifth person got up onto the roof of the play house (our traditional launching spot for the tire swing), and swung down at maximum velocity, trying to hit the four on the ground. Yes! You heard right. The object of this thoroughly crazy game was to run around in circles and dive into the hole before the person on the swing could plow into you with the force of a speeding locomotive. The only thing shocking about this game is that no children were maimed for life. That great game led to one other that we enjoyed. We would take turns getting into the hole, and the object of this game was to pop up out of the hole right before the tire swing came whizzing through the air overhead. I can still remember the sound of the swing whistling slightly with its great speed as it passed by, and how menacing the dangling feet of the person on the swing suddenly seemed. We had great fun with that game for a few brief moments, before someone, I think it was Tracy, got hit in the face. Her usually laid back Mom came out to ascertain our wild shenanigans. Impossibly, her face turned the exact same color as the blood flowing down Tracy's face. Before we knew it, our beloved new toy was now covered back over again, and we were warned quite sternly, not to dig anymore holes.
One of our other ways of playing with holes involved large pieces of plywood. We were all great Star Wars fans, so we had all seen how the good guys would come out of underground hide-outs in order to make surprise attacks on the enemy. One day, we decided to dig a shallow hole large enough to lay down in. Philip, being the evil master-mind to most of our antics, got to go first. He laid down in the hole, and we were instructed to put the wood over him. About this time, Rene and my sister, Tammy, came out to see what crazy thing we were up to. Philip leaped from his hiding place with a wild roar the likes of which I can only describe as deranged mountain man mixed with grizzly bear. Even Tracy and I were not quite ready for this great show of loud surprise, and all four of us went running madly away. When we each had recovered our wits, we were more than eager to try our hand at this latest game. My older sister Tammy was the lucky one to go next. She got down in the hole, only this time we dug enough dirt over the top to completely hide the wood from view. She could've pushed the wood off at any time to get out, but for all intensive purposes, she was literally buried alive. Unfortunately, my friends' dad came out to check on us at about that time, so I never got my chance to try out the hole. We were quickly sent home with a phone call placed to my parents, and my friends were forced to fill this hole in also.
That was at least a temporary end to our somewhat successful career as hole diggers.
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