{"id":226,"date":"2005-01-04T22:13:26","date_gmt":"2005-01-05T03:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.50.194.231\/~vqplgdbg\/?p=226"},"modified":"2005-01-04T22:13:26","modified_gmt":"2005-01-05T03:13:26","slug":"how-on-earth-did-i-survive-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"How on earth did I survive childhood?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back here<\/a> I spoke of some of the perils of childhood. Specifically in relation to frogs. <\/p>\n

Now, if you are a kid and you want to ride a bike, you have to have elbow pads, knee pads, a helmet, a pair of gloves, and an operating permit to sling your leg over the seat.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, however, there were times when my alleged bicycle had pieces of plywood taped to c-clamps as a seat. Often, when sitting heavily back on this contraption, I wondered if impaling one of my buttocks on the bare metal tube would be less painful. <\/p>\n

More to the point, there were a lot of circumstances where I made do with what was at hand, plaything wise. Oh, i had the normal contingency of refrigerator boxes, metal barrel hoops, and a quarter would buy you a solid pound of green army men, plastic so cheap and waxy you only had to sit them in the sun to bend them into innumerable (and often immoral) poses. I loved green army men, and at one point our driveway was paved with a combination of green army men and shingletab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Long before the Shingletab went down, though, we had a gravel drive. Well, there was some gravel in it, anyway, though it still required regular mowing.<\/p>\n

Dad finally managed to scrape together the scratch to lay down some gravel, and the guy came out with a bigass bomberfull, which turned out to be, rather than the crush&run we originally wanted, a bomberload of river gravel.<\/p>\n

As a driveway, it was a dismal failure; as a source of entertainment for a 7 year old, it was pure heaven. <\/p>\n

The river gravel was perfect slingshot fodder. I would search for specific flat stones and save them for skipping at the lake. And then, one day I saw the stones wet for the first time. We’d come home from mass in a late summer rain, and those stones, wet for the first time, were magically transformed- agates, quartzes, several different types of granite, the colors and the patterns were awesome.<\/p>\n

Mom wasn’t by any means a neglectful parent, but I had a lot of freedom, for the day, I was just not allowed out in the rain. I also tended to get myself in trouble anytime I used the garden hose.<\/p>\n

So on any given summer afternoon, sun blazing down on the indiana countryside, I could be found sitting cross-legged on the edge of the driveway, next to dad’s 1960 Ford Comet,<\/p>\n

Licking rocks. <\/p>\n

You see, you had to moisten them to make sure you were getting the really cool looking ones. I’d put them in a big pile and then sit them on the ledge outside my bedroom window so I could sit and stare at the cool colors on rainy summer afternoons. <\/p>\n

I did this for more than a year, as I remember, then dad brought in a bomber of shingletab and changed the game forever.<\/p>\n

I think it probably explains a few things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back here I spoke of some of the perils of childhood. Specifically in relation to frogs. Now, if you are a kid and you want to ride a bike, you have to have elbow pads, knee pads, a helmet, a pair of gloves, and an operating permit to sling your leg over the seat. Back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}