Memories of Spring

When I was a kid, I loved going to the park. Usually it was to play football with the other kids from my school, but I was in love with jumping off swings and sliding down slides as well. Of course, that lumps me into a massive group with about ninety percent of other children. Let's be honest though, if that many kids like something, then it must be pretty awesome, right?

My favorite time to be outside was in the Spring. To me, that was the premier time to go to the park and swing or slide in the usually humid city of Houston, Texas. There was nothing quite like swinging so high that you would partially fly out of the swing on your way back down because of inertia and momentum and all that other scientific lingo. Talk about a rush! Amazingly, I think I could count on one hand the number of accidents that have befallen me as a result of being crazy on a swing.

Another thing that I really liked to do was make my way to the highest point on the playground and look down at everything. Back then, and even now, it was hard for me to understand the fear people had of heights. Of course, the fear of falling from heights is a much different matter. Anyway, I remember I would climb on to the top part of the slide and stand up and look out at everything that I could see. I would then proclaim myself the "King of the Playground". Sometimes I would substitute "king" with other dominant words such as "Ruler", "Czar", or "Ultra Dominator". All of them were great fits though, so it didn't particularly matter to me which ones my friends decided to use.

After a long afternoon of "ruling my domain" I would usually find a nice big tree somewhere and lay down underneath it. I would stare up into the branches usually looking for squirrels (which were more common than mosquitoes it seemed) and birds. This, of course, resulted in a great deal of bark falling into my eyes, which I'm still convinced has something to do with the sad state of my ability to see these days. More often than not I would fall asleep for twenty or thirty minutes and then wake up wondering why all of the blankets had been pulled off of me. It usually took me about a minute to remember where I was and what was going on.

Those were definitely the "care-free days" that most people long for. Not much to care about besides a page of math homework and wondering when the next time I'd get to play Mega Man was. To me though, Spring Time equaled Park Time. Nothing quite like it.