Stomping Grounds

That phrase always makes me laugh inside.  I always get a mental image of the person going to whatever area or place that's their, "old stomping grounds" and physically stomping about in the parking lot or rotunda or second floor ladies room.  What an absurd image.

But that phrase came to mind today as we drove over to a birthday party my son was invited to.  The party was initially to be held at a park I had spent many hours, across many years, playing at throughout my childhood.  Now that I think about it, I probably did a fair bit of stomping in the sand when I was there more than thirty years ago.

I remembered what the park looked like very clearly, and then I took my children to play there this past summer.  The park has been redone with newer equipment and I can't get the image of the old park back in my head with certainty now.  Memory mutates so easily.

I remember one time much later on, when I was not a small child that I went to that park and got in big trouble.  There was this boy, you see...you saw that coming, right?  He could drive and he picked me up to take me out to dinner.  I don't know where we went, but I had to be home at a reasonable time.  We were well on schedule to get home when he suggested we go to this very park for a bit.

Okay, sounds like a good idea because we could be in the dark there and probably do a lot of kissing.  The park was close to the house and we only had a bit of extra time so that worked out nicely.  He was a gentleman and he wanted to make sure we could see to cross the little bridge over the creek to get to the wooden park playground so he left the headlights on on the car.

I don't remember if kissing ensued, it probably did, but when we went back to the car what seemed like just a few minutes later it wouldn't crank because the headlights had drained the battery.  This was back in the day when there were no cell phones but it was also in a time where we felt no concern walking the streets at night.  So we walked several blocks to the "Mini Mart" to try and get a jump for his car.

The guy I was with was very friendly as well as courteous.  He found someone willing to drive over and with jumper cables to start the car so he could get me home.  But not home on time.  I don't know if I was an hour late or just ten minutes.  I'd guess it was an hour or more because my mother or father (I think it was my mother) was waiting at the door looking out when we drove up.  I was dreading explaining because how do you explain you went "parking" at a park to do some kissing and were dumb enough to kill the battery on your car.

I remember explaining about the dead battery and I don't think my parents were too hard on me.  In general, I was fairly good about following their rules and respecting their expectations.  Or at least I hope I was.  They might think otherwise.

When I planned on writing this post earlier I had no memory of the dead battery and the boy from high school but as writing can do, as soon as I started typing that's what came out instead of the other things I'd been thinking about from that time and place when I was little.

The Big Boy Update:  ChickenFries spotted.  Yesterday morning when I was going through Starbucks drive-through he saw a McDonalds and called out, "ChickenFries!"  I didn't know he knew what a McDonalds looked like.  He wasn't able to eat breakfast and he was hungry.  Perhaps he was motivated to find himself some food on the way to the hospital and was just trying to help me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Face a mess, again.  She toddled right into a face plant in the street yesterday.  Today it looks like she's either got ketchup on her nose or a scrape that's gone red from her fall.

Fitness Update:  Finally my neighbor and I got back together to run this morning.  I think it may well have been three weeks or more since we've run together.  It finally worked out that I wasn't sick, her husband wasn't at the hospital, it wasn't twenty-two degrees outside and I wasn't taking a small toddler to the hospital early to have an abscess lanced.  We caught up or almost five miles.  And it was sixty-seven degrees! In January!  After an ice storm just last Friday.  It was great.

Someone Once Said:  Detailed instructions are the death of initiative.