In addition to weeding out the “stuff” from my home, I have been combing through my computer as well. When I bought a new computer a few years back, I was told the older versions of Word take up twice the space of the newer versions. Therefore, as time permits, I’ve been zipping thru my older writings and either re-saving them as “.docx” files or trashing them altogether—quite a tedious job!
While doing this mundane chore, I found some older Posts you may enjoy.
Cassie was so excited! She’d gotten the most radical Barbie of all while visiting her grandparents’ house this past week, and she just couldn’t wait for Suzie to see it. She ran all the way to Suzie’s house and asked if she could come out to play, chattering on about her new doll the entire time she waited for Suzie to finish her chores.
“Suzie, just wait till you see it! It’s totally radical!”
“Why didn’t you bring it with you to show me?” Suzie asked.
“You know how my Mom gets about me bringing my new things outside.”
“Yeah, I do,” Suzie replied, “but that’s just plain stupid.”
“I know, but she thinks it’ll get ruined if I take it outside. So hurry up and finish your chores so we can go to my place to see it.”
“Yeah, but she won’t let us in to play.”
“Maybe she will if we promise to be quiet.”
“You know she won’t; she never does.”
“Well, let’s go to my house so you can see it anyway,” Cassie insisted. “And if she doesn’t let us stay, what do you want to do today?”
“We could ride our bikes down that big hill we found yesterday. Remember how cool it was with the wind whipping through our hair?”
“That was really cool, but we can’t do that all day. Besides, it takes longer to get up that hill than it does to fly down it.”
“I know, but maybe we’ll run into some kids from that neighborhood and make new friends,” Suzie said. “Let’s just go see your Barbie, and then we can decide what to do if your Mom won’t let us stay.”
“Okay.”
When they arrived, Cassie called out, “Hi Mom! I just want to show Suzie my new Barbie—the one I got from Grandma and Pop-Pop for being so good all week while I stayed at their house. We won’t be long.”
Cassie’s mother yelled back from the kitchen, “If you come in, you’re in for the day.”
“But Maaaa, I just want to show Suzie my new Barbie doll!”
“Okay, but you come in, get it, and bring it to the door so she can see it. Then bring it right back to your room. I don’t want the whole neighborhood traipsing through the house.”
“Mom, it’s not the whole neighborhood. It’s just one person, and I was hoping Suzie could come in so we could play for a little while.”
“Don’t talk back to me, or you can stay in your room for the rest of the day and Suzie can go home.”
“But Maaaaammm, you never let us stay and play here.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
Disappointed, Cassie replied, “Yes, Mother.”
Cassie had been inside all the other neighborhood kids’ houses—even the home of that fancy woman who wore fuzzy slippers, made you take your shoes off and asked you to put on a pair from the colorful line-up at her front door—but no one was ever allowed into hers. Her mother’s rule was absolute: “If you come in, you’re in for the day.”
Sheez. Cassie would get a new doll, new clothes, or a new game, but no one was ever allowed across the threshold to see it or play with it. She always had to go get it, bring it to the door so her friends could ‘look’ at it, and then march it right back to her room before heading back outside.
It wasn’t that they weren’t popular. Both Cassie and her brothers had neighborhood kids knocking on the door all the time, asking them to come out to play. They would leave with their friends shortly after breakfast, and most days, Cassie didn’t return home until dinnertime.
She could always tell when it was time to head back because of the mother next door, Mrs. Kurtz. Having grown up on a farm in Ohio, Mrs. Kurtz’s own mother used to call the farmhands in with a heavy dinner bell. Mrs. Kurtz used a similar bell to call her boys home nightly. Cassie always knew she had just a little bit of extra time after she heard that bell clang.
Everyone in the neighborhood laughed every night it rang, watching the Kurtz boys go running from all points of the neighborhood. Their folks didn’t give them much time to get home either—maybe five minutes flat. Word was they’d get a whooping if they were late. Needless to say, they weren’t late too many nights.
~ End ~
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