What a crazy post title. And yet it's something that I lived as a child. I loved, and I mean loved with a capital L swinging in my hammock when I was a child. Initially the hammock was between two trees close to the front door and there's a whole story about my best friend, Jenny, losing her tooth in that swing, but this is about the years later when the swing got moved to the back yard.
I loved that hammock. I loved it because it was an occupation, practically, when I got home from school during my late junior-high days and early high-school days. I would take the cordless phone out to the back yard and sit in that hammock sideways, not the traditional laying down orientation, and I'd swing and swing and swing some more.
Part of the reason the swinging was as satisfying as it was was that the two trees were slightly too close together to facilitate a good hammock swing. The hammock was, as a result, more of a sling than it was a nice place to lie about, look at the sky and enjoy relaxing. But I was a child and I had no interest in relaxing. Today, there's nothing I want more than to relax, but I'm pretty sure the word, "relax" wasn't in my vocabulary when I was in my youth.
So I'd sit sideways in the hammock and I'd swing. I had to have the phone with me because I was a tween or eventually a teen and there were BOYS! If you noted the capital letters that the word boys was treated with, you have observed an important fact--boys were of utmost importance at that age.
Let's get back to after school and my typical routine. I'd gather up my cordless phone, a phone from Radio Shack that I remember with utmost clarity, and I'd go out to the hammock, and I'd start to swing. I loved swinging. Let me give you an example of how much I loved swinging. I had a swing with two chains that I attached to a single S-Hook on a tree when I was young. Wait, how do you swing on a swing that's just hanging off a tree, you might ask. And I have an answer.
You get in the swing, and then you push off the tree with your feet. You can't swing in the traditional sense because there's a big tree right in the way. But you can rotate around the tree left and right. You can push off, with enthusiasm, and you can do a sort of bounce left or bounce right and you can make a lot of fun from a single tree and a swing with both chain arms connected to a higher point up the tree. And if you're good, you can do 360 degree rotations as you sweep left our right. But that was when I was younger, before the hammock days.
So I'm in the hammock, and I'm swinging for hours. And we have new neighbors. We found out much later as we got to know those neighbors that they wondered if my parents had a retarded child who went out to swing each day. Oh, how I laughed at that.
But it did make sense. I went out to the hammock and I sat there for hours swinging. I would talk to my girlfriends and boyfriends on the phone and my social life as a pre-teen and teen was quite expansive, but it was mostly played out via that hammock.
I also remember that physically I would swing forward and look left, swing back and look forward. And I'd do that again and again for long periods of time. Why? Because I was looking for my love, crush, boyfriend, you name it, to ride up the road, on the left, on his bike. Sometimes, I was even lucky enough to see him.
The Big Boy Update: Where's the Shire? The other day Uncle Jonathan took him up for a nap. He came down and asked me if my son was a hobbit. What? He said he was asking "Where's the Shire?" Oh, Ah! I told him he was asking for his "fass sire" or pacifier. By the time we went upstairs to give him a pacifier, he was asleep
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Turn around. Last night my son was turning around, or dancing, or just being a kid and I expressed how he was doing a good job turning around. He said to my daughter, "turn around" and lo, she did. She started turning around in place. Her comprehension of things and ability to put requests into action is continually impressive. She understands so much more than she can communicate.
Someone Once Said: Life is too long when one is not enjoying now.
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