Um, Not a Story..

Hey guys! Thanks so much for all the positive feedback from this blog. I'm sorry my posts have been few and far between. I'll do better from here on out. If you have a memory, even if it's just a small one, please send it to me. Every now and then, I have trouble remembering, so a little memory jog would be great! Email me at courtneyaboyles@gmail.com.

Breaking the Rules... and Nick

I grew up fortunate enough to have cousins my age to double as my best friends. Lucky for us, our parents seemed to have all gotten together and decided to have kids at the same time. Five of us were born in three years time. Being a close family, every Sunday we went to church together, and we had lunch afterwards at our Grandma's house. Grandma lived in a big house all alone and was often a target for theives. One Sunday after church, we all arrived at Grandma's looking forward to cookies and transforming her garage into a skating rink. When we got there, Kool-Aid packages littered the yard, the door was broken down, and the microwave and stereo had been stolen (clearly the meth heads couldn't carry the console tv). After this happened a few times, Grandma decided to buy a smaller house "in the city". While we were sad to see our skating rink go and we could no longer refer to a room by the color of the shag carpeting, we were excited that Grandma was now going to live close to a conveinance store. One Sunday afternoon, my cousins Stacy and Marcus, my brother, Nathan, and I went outside to play in the back yard. Staying inside was never an option. Even if our parents didn't make us get out of their hair and go outside, we'd still have preffered being outdoors than in. We didn't have a lot of toys to play with at Grandma's. So, when she bought a small exercise trampoline, we knew we had gold. As with most toys, we grew tired of just jumping on the trampoline one at a time. Like I've mentioned before, my cousin Stacy was quite the gymnast. She was athletic and spunky while I was considered the nerdy, honor roll one. When the idea came about to create an obstacle course using the trampoline and swing set, I sensed trouble. I took a minute to consider the worst that could happen. Nothing came to me. I looked at the boys already setting up a course, and I looked at Stacy doing her stretches. I knew that if I was ever going to kick my good girl stigma, I had to ditch the sweater vests and have some fun. (I know what you're thinking, but sweater vests were so "in" back then). We took turns jumping on the trampoline and swinging up to the swing set bar and turning flips. It was a lot of fun. About that time, Nick Yoder, a boy who lived down the street, walked by. We weren't friends with Nick. He was one of those kids that at the age of 9, knew that Jack Daniels wasn't a guy his parents worked with. To Nick, "the S word" didn't refer to the word "suck" like it did to us. He saw the fun we were having catapulting ourselves over the swing set and decided to join us. Naturally, Stacy was getting the best results from our game, but Nick knew he could beat her. He jumped on the trampoline, flew over the swing set, but unlike Stacy, missed his landing. Nick was lying on the ground crying. I knew something bad had happened. I had to ride the same school bus as Nick, and he was a tough guy who never cried. Once, I saw him curse at the bus driver and welcomed the suspension that followed. As we all huddled around the sobbing lump that was Nick, I became quesy. I had never seen an arm bone break completely in half before. I had fainted when I was six and had my tooth pulled, so I really couldn't handle the sight that was clearly from a scene of ER in Grandma's back yard. Being the good one, everyone turned to me. What were we going to do? My dad had shot a cow with a broken leg to put him out of his misery. Maybe we should too? I'm sure the bus driver would appreciate it. No. Of course not. And if we told our parents, we'd be in trouble too. There was no way out of it. I went inside and told our parents what had happened. Strangely, my aunt ordered Nick to walk home to his mother. I was surprised that this poor guy was going to have to walk all the way home carrying his detached limbs. I thought about it for a minute, but decided that unless I was going to carry him on my back, there's nothing I could do. The rest of the afternoon, my cousins and I sat in Grandma's front yard in shame. We weren't allowed to play as punishment, but our parents didn't want us in the house annoying them either. After a couple hours of "the incident" taking place, we heard a loud string of profanities. We looked up to see Nick's mother driving him back and forth in front of Grandma's house. He had his arm in a cast, hanging out of his mother's van, flipping us off and introducing us to words we had never heard before. The next Sunday, I put on my sweater vest and laced up my goody two shoes with pride.