In my mind, roller skates didn’t quite cut it.
When I was in primary school, I lived next door to a boy I decided should have been my brother and kitty-corner from a boy who I was thankful was no kind of relation at all. They each had one thing that I coveted.
The boy next door had a Radio Flyer wagon. He knelt in it with his left knee and pumped himself all around the block (and-even-across-the-street-don’t-tell-our-moms) with his right leg. He hauled all kinds of important “stuff” in that wagon but one thing he wouldn’t give a ride to was me! Oh how I wanted a little red wagon of my own. I had roller skates, but they just weren’t quite the same.
I still remember looking — but not touching!
The kitty-corner boy (who was sort of mean) had an electric train. Once he let me watch him run it around his living room. But would he let me manage those controls, myself? “Not on your tintype,” as they used to say. Then he got his arm caught in his mom’s washing machine wringer (how dumb can you be?) and broke it and, somehow, we never got back to playing with that train.
A gazillion years later, I was so pleased to learn that among the boxes of “things” that came into our house when Nyel and I married was an American Flyer train from Nyel’s long-ago days. Every Christmas we’d talk about getting it out and setting it up — but we never did. Nor did I this Christmas. Maybe some day…
My Little Red Wagon! – A Most Practical Gift from Charlie and Marta!
But what did happen this Christmas was that I finally got my little red wagon! Charlie and Marta gave it to me — ordered it through Jack’s Country Store and Charlie picked it up when he came for the holidays! He wrapped it while I slept in my nearby bedroom and I wondered for days what that huge package under the tree might be.
It’s not a Radio Flyer. IT’S EVEN BETTER! It’s made of red canvas and has a metal frame that collapses on demand. I can put it in the car to take it shopping or I can use it in the garden to haul “stuff” or bring in more than two sticks of fire wood at a time from the woodshed!
So, I think this is it! I’ve officially entered my second childhood! Yay!
Well, DANG, CUZ!!! You really Got It All!!! And what wonderful kids you have who actually Got You What You Wanted!!! Happy New Year, Sydney of the Renewed Youthful Endeavours! Love, KK