Popsicle sticks bombs, baseball cards in bicycle spokes. Eggs and rotten tomato wars were just a few of the childhood memories of the kid who still resides inside of me. Every so often, I'll embarrass my grandkids by dancing the way we used to when the twist or the limbo were in style. They would beg me to stop, but that just fueled me even more, doing the Watusi and the frog.
I loved fooling around with them, like when I told them I'd take them for ice cream and come out of my room in basketball shorts, white knee-high socks, and sandals. They said they wouldn't go anywhere with me dressed like that. Oh, good times.
I treasure the inner kid in me because there are a thousand memories I can look back on that bring joy to my heart and put a big smile on my face. I still like Saturday morning cartoons and reading cereal box labels. I laugh at the funny pages in the newspaper, and even after all these years, you can still buy a plastic egg of silly puddy that I flatten out and press onto a comic character.
I still make paper boats that I keep handy for when it rains, and my rubber wader boots stand tall waiting for me to put on and wade through the flooding waters in the street and in my backyard. I never grew tired of waving to the engineer and the conductor as a train roared past me just yards from my boyhood house, where I still reside.
My daughter once told me how much the grandkids liked visiting me because there was always something crazy to do that beat playing video games. That had always been my goal: to show them how to make paper boats and popcycle bombs, and our favorite was putting baseball cards in the spokes of our bicycles, then roaring through the neighborhood like a pack of wild bikers.
Water balloons, snowball fights, games of hide-and-seek, and my attempt at Twister that almost sent me to the emergency room.Swinging on a rope and letting go to splash down in the creek. and finding night crawlers in the darkness of night with a flashlight put in a can, saved for first light, when we fished for hours.
Penny candies like fireballs and peach pits, Long pieces of white paper with colored candies somehow glued on them, root beer hard candies, and wax bottles filled with different flavors. Double bubble gum and licorice in red or black. Gooden plenty and milk duds, tootsie rolls and taffy suckers, all those and more at the corner general store sitting in glass canisters waiting to fill our paper bags for a penny each.
I could go on, and on reliving my memories and bringing them back to life, but at some point, I have to return to reality, even if I don't want to. I suppose one day I'll have to be content to watch my grandkids do all the things I taught them to do as I sit on my porch waiting for the ten o'clock train so I can wave to the engineer and the conductor, who smile and wave back.
I treasure the inner kid in me because there are a thousand memories I can look back on that bring joy to my heart and put a big smile on my face. I still like Saturday morning cartoons and reading cereal box labels. I laugh at the funny pages in the newspaper, and even after all these years, you can still buy a plastic egg of silly puddy that I flatten out and press onto a comic character.
I still make paper boats that I keep handy for when it rains, and my rubber wader boots stand tall waiting for me to put on and wade through the flooding waters in the street and in my backyard. I never grew tired of waving to the engineer and the conductor as a train roared past me just yards from my boyhood house, where I still reside.
My daughter once told me how much the grandkids liked visiting me because there was always something crazy to do that beat playing video games. That had always been my goal: to show them how to make paper boats and popcycle bombs, and our favorite was putting baseball cards in the spokes of our bicycles, then roaring through the neighborhood like a pack of wild bikers.
Water balloons, snowball fights, games of hide-and-seek, and my attempt at Twister that almost sent me to the emergency room.Swinging on a rope and letting go to splash down in the creek. and finding night crawlers in the darkness of night with a flashlight put in a can, saved for first light, when we fished for hours.
Penny candies like fireballs and peach pits, Long pieces of white paper with colored candies somehow glued on them, root beer hard candies, and wax bottles filled with different flavors. Double bubble gum and licorice in red or black. Gooden plenty and milk duds, tootsie rolls and taffy suckers, all those and more at the corner general store sitting in glass canisters waiting to fill our paper bags for a penny each.
I could go on, and on reliving my memories and bringing them back to life, but at some point, I have to return to reality, even if I don't want to. I suppose one day I'll have to be content to watch my grandkids do all the things I taught them to do as I sit on my porch waiting for the ten o'clock train so I can wave to the engineer and the conductor, who smile and wave back.
Mike 2026
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