Playmates

Another Nablopomo prompt: Who did you play with as a child?

Surprisingly, I mostly played with my sister when I was little. I worshipped the ground she walked on, but as we are four years apart, I know that she tired of me following her around all the time. Whenever we moved, we returned to each other to play with, to hang out with, to listen to music together. Between those times, we went our separate ways.

In Colorado, I had a friend names Sabrina and one girl named Anne from school. Anne's mother wouldn't let her daughter play with me when she found out I had "headaches". My mother suspects that she thought I had epilepsy, but it was really migraines. Anyway, we played with kids at the City Park and the Rec Center, but we left there when I was six, so I didn't really develop any deep and lasting friendships there.

In Germany, I was friends with Lisa Morse, Jill Foreman, Cathy (I don't remember her last name). We played with the Stefan's across the hall. There were other kids, but mostly we played with them. And I was still following my sister around. On Sundays, we listened raptly to "America's Top Forty" on the Armed Forces radio and taped our favorite songs. There was a playground between three of the base buildings where we would play these mondo kickball games - literally like 50 kids would play. We would come and go in the game and wander off to play on the equipment, eat lunch, etc.

In Florida, I had friends in the neighborhood and friends at school. Bart Sloan, Drew Keriakedes, Thalia Smith, Tina Ritter, Dee Dee Small, Sandy Z. (can't remember her last name - her family had a teacup chihuahua). Nina Haanio lived in the neighborhood, too. There was my friend Cheryl and Missy and Mercedes Delory (all friends at school). We sometimes went skating at the skating rink near our house. We shopped at Winn Dixie and T.G. & Y.

When we moved to Oregon, I was too old to "play". Mostly, I met kids at school. I only ever really connected to one or two kids around my house. For years when we moved here, there were no kids around our house - we had fields on two sides, a busy street out front and neighbors we never saw who lived in the house through the rows of cedar trees. Oregon was the least kid-friendly place I ever lived. One time, I went to the park in the housing area across from where I lived. I was riding my bike. A lady stopped me, "Do you live here?" "I live across the street..." "Only members are allowed to play here," she pointed out in a very snobby tone of voice. I stopped riding my bike after that- it wasn't really safe to ride it on the busy street. I never went back to that park, either.