Team Gray!

“Hit the duck. Win a prize. Hit the duck. Win a prize. Hit the. . .” droned Karl in a monotone. Karl Hammarskjöld wanted to be a carnival game. “Somebody just hit him to get him out of our misery!” I yelled. I didn’t really like scatter, but it was a change from kickball, which we usually played. My strategy was to avoid the ball. I couldn’t throw, so I couldn’t hit anybody, and they usually caught my ball if I tried to throw it at someone. Karl’s strategy was annoyance and taunting. He didn’t get out (of the house) much. POW! Zeke slammed the ball into Karl’s thin side. “I gotcha, I gotcha! I’m number one!” Zeke was nicknamed shriek by the Millers. Wham! Alex bit the dust. Everybody knew better than to throw in the direction of Westnedge. Jim Miller breaking his leg in the same place three times was legendary. No matter what, you just didn’t run out into Westnedge!

Legend had it that Jim broke his leg playing on Andrea’s swing set the first time, trying to stop the swing from going too high. It had healed, and then he rode his bike down Glenwood. No one rode their bike down Glenwood either, if they valued their life. The Inkster bridge, which was straight and short was scary enough for Charlotte and me. Glenwood, with its twists and turns, and wooded steepness was suicide. Only Evel Knieval jr. would attempt that. After Jim’s leg healed a second time, he ran out into Westnedge and got hit by a car. The constant sound of traffic reminded us that we lived on the third busiest street in Michigan. A ball thrown out there was more likely to be abandoned than for necks to be risked running after it. So, standing with your back to Westnedge was a pretty good place to be during scatter. I would stand there, or in the Miller’s driveway, which was pretty far removed from the lot. Too far away for 7 year-old arms to throw accurately. Whoops! Charlotte slipped and Zeke hit her with the ball. That left just Zeke and me. I threw the ball as hard as I could at Zeke, and . . . he caught it. Game over. “Ok, let’s play sardines!” I said. “YEAH!!!” Charlotte, Sam, Alex, Karl, Andrea, Jenny, Sean, Ken, Grace, and Betsy agreed.

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Sam was It. He liked us to count for days to give him enough time to hide. We had to be firm about counting to 30. We usually started sardines somewhere around the Miller’s house. Either in their yard, or their driveway, near the Vicar’s house. They had a big yard around their whole house, plus another little alley behind it, where blackberries grew. You could get to Mrs. Freidman’s house from this alley, or you could go through the woods, past the Hammarskjöld’s house. There were good hiding places in the woods by the Hammarskjöld’s, or behind the Vicar’s house. Anywhere in the woods was good, actually. Sam liked to hide under his side porch. Everyone knew this. Part of the fun of sardines, though, was to find it secretly, so no one went looking for it together. When I got to Sam’s hiding place, Alex, Zeke, and Grace were already there. I hid with them, trying not to talk or giggle. Charlotte came next, followed by Karl and Betsy. Jenny was the last to find us. She was ready to hide when, “I wanna play!” Nell came out to join us. Nell wouldn’t just join the game. “I wanna be It! PLEASE? Let me be It!” Jenny was not much older than Nell, and she didn’t want to give up the chance to be it too easily. “I’m It! It’s my turn to be It,” she insisted. “I’m telling!” Nell escalated the whole exchange. “Mrs. Urban, the big kids won’t let me be It!” Mrs. Urban sided with Nell. “Let Nellie be It, children. You’ve got to include her in the game. Play nice!” We counted to 20 while Nell hid. Then we went down to the Hammarskjöld’s yard to play on the jungle gym. Even after they moved, we called it the Hammarskjöld’s playground. They built this huge jungle gym in their yard and had all the wood chips down on the ground to catch our fall. When they lived there, we would play on it usually without Karl. He was an only child who mostly kept to himself. His parents didn’t mind the neighborhood children playing in their yard; in fact, they’d invite us in for snacks sometimes, too. Man, that was the most fun jungle gym ever. It had a long section of bars that you could climb across with your arms. You could also jump five bars and still have plenty of room to climb some more. You could also hang upside down, do chin-ups and jump off the top. We didn’t see Nell for half an hour. “You guys,” she whined, “I won, because nobody came and found me. Na, na.” A smile was passed around the group as we let Nell believe that. “Let’s go to my house and play peek around the corner,” Char said. A big chorus of “YEAH” broke out as we trooped back down the alley.

Char got to be it first, since it was her idea. She stood at the east corner of her front yard and covered her eyes while we ran down the Westnedge side of her house towards her. She pulled her hands off her face and peeked around the corner. Everybody froze in their tracks. She covered her eyes again as we came hurtling towards her. She abruptly peeked again. “UMPH!” Zeke stumbled forward two steps while the rest of us froze. “I saw you move, Zeke! Go back,” Charlotte ordered. She covered her eyes again. A large group of us was poised to pounce. We sprang forward to tag her, when. . . she whipped her head around the corner and we landed in a heap at her feet. “I saw Angie, Sam, Alex, Grace, Jenny, Nell, Sean, Ken. Get back!” she roared. Zeke was laughing at us. Now he had the advantage. Char covered her eyes again. Zeke tiptoed up to the corner and tagged her before she could uncover her eyes again. He eagerly seized his opportunity to be it.

“Oh man, that’s the whistle! Time to go home,” Zeke cried. We had a whistle; the Millers had a bell. Mrs. Urban would just call Sam. Every family had their way of calling the children back home. The whistle signaled the end of games—for now.