When I was a kid, my parents didn’t allow me to climb up on the roof, and that really pissed me off, because there wasn’t any reason for it, frankly. It was just another of their stupid rules designed to keep me from enjoying my childhood. It’s not like we lived in a three-story mansion with peaked dormers and lots of interesting architecture that I could have explored around on… it was a nearly-flat one-story bungalow that was a straight shot from one end to the other. Hell’s bells, I could have run from one end to the other, jumped off, did a double somersault and landed in the hollyhock bush and jumped out without a scratch, so what’s the big deal? I had more of a chance of getting hurt by falling off the monkey bars or the top of the slide at school, for Christ’s sake!There’s nothing up there I could hurt except for the TV antenna and the wind had already pretty much blown it down anyway. We didn’t even have a chimney. It’s true that the electrical and telephone lines did extend from the power pole to the roof, but after the Nuttall kid got electrocuted, I knew better than to touch the power lines.
Truth is they didn’t have a single valid reason for forbidding me to go onto the roof. I’d already heard my fair share of lectures regarding what the neighbors might think and the cost of emergency room visits and how sad it’d be if I broke my leg and couldn’t play baseball and even how fragile the roof shingles were if walked upon. I guess that’s why they only last forty years, huh?
I could have retrieved a few of the roughly twenty or thirty balls I’d thrown up there just to see if they’d roll all the way through and down the downspouts—they didn’t—and I would have had a great vantage point for finding out when Joyce Nuttall (the college student who lived two doors down) was wearing her bikini while getting a suntan so that my dad could find an excuse to go down there and help her fix something.
In fact, climbing on the roof wasn’t really all that dangerous when compared to other statistics like getting bit by a rabid dog or accidentally eating rat poison or having one’s skull crushed by a submerged rock while diving off the cliffs into the water at one end of the rock quarry pond, and we did that stuff practically every week with little more than an ass-beating if our parents found out.
But, I wasn’t allowed on the roof, no matter how hard I pleaded. Maybe that’s why I wrote ‘fuck’ on the shingles of our house and dug up the asphalt at the edge of the driveway and threw about half of the rocks out of the window wells and put dog crap in the mailbox and left the lid open on the freezer chest in the garage and…
9 comments:
I hear ya. On the other hand here's a sad fact about myself: before I discovered a tall tree with a convenient branching system for sitting, reading and having my elbow supported while I did both of these things, I spent a lot of time baking with my books on the black shingled roof of what was euphemistically called the family "cottage".
This accounts for the baked texture of parts of my brain. At least, it's the most convenient explanation I've found for use in mixed company with small children.
(speaking of which: are all the relatives and dogs potty trained? I mean the ones scheduled to descend on my place on Thursday?)
I thought I was the only one who wrote on the roof?
Hey, you should feel lucky. The only place I was allowed to play was on the roof. Funny how that ladder kept disappearing as soon as I got up there.
So... the skull crushing on the submerged rocks part... Are you sure about that? because it could explain a lot of things... :) :) :)
My parents told us to not jump on the roof, so we took a ladder, climbed to the top and started jumping from the roof to the trampoline. We did it like every day, and nobody ever got hurt. Well, any more hurt than you'd normally get from a trampoline. My dad got more hurt when he decided to jump on it drunk.
lord have mercy... if id have only known you then....... you know me,, always had a taste for a trouble maker..... even as a child.....
"neighbors might think"
Ah the mantra of a small town.
All the things that could
have been except for those
damn neighbors.
Did you go out at night
and pull up all the plants
in the garden??
Or leave the windows open
so the furnace kicked in?
and how about.....never mind
I do not know the statute
of limitations on that one.
( snort)
lfmty
klk
Let's all meet on your roof now and party!
Lee-- Your euphemistic approach is laudable, and I'm sure all the children who read my column thank you. As for the 'baked' texture of your brain, at least *yours* isn't half-baked, like mine.
As for the visit, I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel... it seems the government is loathe to issue passports to card-carrying Democrats.
Scot-- Oh, no... there are an entire generation of roof-dwellers in our midst.
Shirley-- Ha! I'm sure that deep-down your parents probably didn't hate you. heehee!
Nan-- Well, there was that one time... but, within a week most of my memory had returned and eventually I quit standing up in Mass and screaming "Get your Hot Cross Buns right here, get your Hot Cross Buns right here".
Noah-- My childhood was forever altered by not having access to a trampoline. In fact, I may be alive today because of it...
Paisley-- Well, there can be little doubt that we'd have been a match made in heav-- well, made *somewhere*. Now, where did I put that damned Time Machine???
Kaylee-- So you were a wild child, too? I was a 'garden grabber' without peer... All the old women in the neighborhood would stay up late and sit on their back porch just waiting to fill my ass with rock salt. Ah, those were the good old days, huh?
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