The Chronicles Of Chicken Lips: June 2009

My eyelids began to get heavy and I struggled to see as the light from the candle began to dim. Thoughts of turning in for the night crossed through my mind, but I quickly shook my head as if to chase them away. I was nearing the end of the book and was determined to complete it that night.

I began toying with the sheet of stickers I had been using as a bookmark and my mind wandered off. I absentmindedly turned the pages, not really reading the pages, as my thoughts turned to my uncle. Back when I was a youngster, he would tease me often for abandoning my studies in favor of the daydreams I loved. I would sit on the back porch, licking a spatula clean of any batter from some confection my aunt was always making, as I wondered at the sky until my mother came to get me for a bath.

She would try her hardest to scrub me clean with a checkered washcloth while I splashed about, pretending my cow puppet was hunting seals in the great blue, bubbly sea of the tub. After she finally managed to get me clean, my mother would pull me out of the bath and wrap a towel around me, telling me I should drink more water as she put Chap Stick on my dry and cracked lips.

Every night, as my father put me to bed, I would tell him I was hungry in hopes of getting one of the cereal bars I loved so much, but to no avail. He always brought me chips, thinking I would grow tired of chewing and fall asleep. But it never happened, instead, I would pretend the bag clip was a monster, trying to eat my father’s nose. He would play along for a while, but soon his long day would catch up with him and he would tell me to go to sleep as he took the bag of chips back downstairs.

I’m not sure how long I sat there like that with a wandering mind, but I thought it was strange that I had been thinking of people that no longer lived on this earth. “I guess things change.” I thought to myself, but I began laughing when I saw a cereal bar on the table next to my chair, “And some things don’t.”

I always look forward to when I get to see my dad, but that afternoon on a breezy, slightly chilly day when we went out to play softball at the park, I was filled with more anticipation than I ever thought possible. My twelve year old sister Piper, her three year old friend Haley, and Haley’s mom Danielle, had taken me earlier that morning to get three new softballs and a shiny, new, metallic blue softball bat with a black rubber grip. I loved the bat so much that when we got back to Haley and Danielle’s house from the store I took a nap with my bat wrapped up in my arms and my head resting on it. What I really loved about this bat was the promise that it represented to me. I hardly ever used to see my dad back then. When I did get to visit him at his house in Nevada, he usually had to work until it was too dark to see what he was doing. In the end it meant it was to dark to play outside and he was too tired from a long day of tree work. So one day I finally brought up to my dad that I wished we had more time to spend together. He promised me he would get off work early one day and come to the park with Piper, Haley, Danielle, and I to smack around a few balls for a while. From the day that he promised me until we got to the park several days later, I was overcome with a crazy excitement.

When I woke up from my nap on that fateful day, I was having a hard time containing my excitement as I dragged my bat around with me until my dad got off work. When I heard him pull up, I nearly leapt out of the window to show him my new bat, but, fortunately for him, I waited until he sauntered, bow-legged, up the steps and walked in the front door of the double wide before I jumped up on him as if I was an overgrown puppy, nearly knocking his forest green baseball hat off. I was grinning like a goon when I said “Look at my bat!”

“Cool.” He said with a smile. “I like the color.”

“Yeah, I like it too. When you turn it, it looks all sparkly and 3D.” I smiled back. Little did my dad know that I got that bat specifically because blue is his favorite color.

“Are you ready to go?” He asked, already aware of what the coming answer would be.

“I’ve been ready all day!” I replied enthusiastically, all decked out in a t-shirt, cargo pants, and tennis shoes.

“Okay.” He said with a chuckle, “I’m going to take a quick shower to wash off this sawdust and grease. Then we’ll go”

“Okay.” I said, still grinning like a goon.

“You better hurry,” Danielle said from the kitchen, “She might explode from all the excitement.”

“Okay,” My dad laughed, “I’ll try to hurry.”

When he came out of his room after getting dressed he laughed at me, still standing by the door, grinning and holding my bat.

“I guess you really are ready to go!” He said, laughing.

“Of course,’ I laughed back “I took a nap with my shoes on earlier!”

“She did,” Danielle chimed in, “She looked like a little kid on Christmas.”

My dad laughed again then said, “Well, I guess we’ll go then!”

A few minutes later we were out the door, piled in the car, and on our way, and I still couldn’t stop grinning. A few very long minutes after that, we arrived at every kids dream, “Clifford” park, with its huge fire engine red, chocolate brown, and sandy tan playground. The look-out towers stood tall against the grey-blue sky, the swings shifted in the wind, the slides just begged someone to slide down, the fire pole that made my hands burn just thinking about sliding down it, and the monkey bars that connected the whole thing seemed to call out to me, but I had other business to attend to first.

My dad and I moseyed on over to the baseball diamond, our shoes leaving dusty tracks in the infield dirt as the grass in the outfield waved gently in the breeze. My dad walked out to the pitchers mound as I excitedly approached home base. I dragged my foot over the plate to clear off some of the red-brown dirt then took my position and tightened my grip on the bat. “Ready?” My dad asked. “Yup!” I said back. He wound up, he threw, I swung, I missed. Actually, I missed most of the balls at first, but eventually I started hitting the ball nearly every single time, the ball and bat making a satisfying “plink” each time they connected, sending the ball on its way through the air down to the chain-link fence that separated the green grass of the field from the desert grass surrounding the park. We kept on going like that for a while, with each of us taking a turn at bat, until I hurt my foot sliding into third base.

We walked past the bleachers and through the metal gate back over to Piper, Haley and Danielle at the playground, where I immediately jogged up to the tire swing. I jumped on to it, legs over the outside edge and butt in the hole, making futile attempts at swinging myself around until my dad came over and pushed me in a big circle. The sky, playground, swings, and baseball field becoming a multicolored whirl as I spun faster and faster. I was having a blast, but I as usual, my stomach began doing flips and I started feeling a bit queasy after spinning around in circles for a prolonged amount of time. After the swing slowed to a crawl, I attempted to get out. I didn’t want to slide out, because I thought the swing might flip and throw me onto the ground. I pulled my legs up and dropped them into the hole of the tire, but I realized that way wouldn’t work either. Then the real trouble began.

I tried to pull my legs back up, but I couldn’t bend my knees and pull them through the hole, so it was a no-go. I thought, “Well, I guess I’m gonna have to flip out after all.” So I tried to flip, head first, over and out of the tire. I flipped over, but not out. I started laughing at myself and the predicament I had gotten myself into. There I was, stuck upside down in a tire swing holding myself up with my elbows, the wood chips digging into my skin. I realized I would be unable to get myself out and figured I should probably ask for help. I spun myself in the direction of my dad, my face turning red, most likely from embarrassment rather than blood rushing to my head.

“Hey, Papa.” I said as casually as I could for a person hanging upside down in a tire swing.

“Yeah?” He said, still looking away from me, not realizing the direness of my situation.

“Can you help me for a sec?” I said, knowing full-well from all my years of being his kid that he would begin laughing as soon as he turned around a caught a glimpse of me “hanging out” in the tire swing.

“Huh?” He said turning towards me. Then he did it, he laughed his deep baritone laugh, and he kept laughing, he was clutching his stomach from laughing so hard. Which caused Danielle to turn and look at me, and she began laughing at my unfortunate plight. All of their laughter made me laugh which made it very hard to support myself with my arms. My dad, still clutching his stomach and laughing, somehow managed to stumble over towards and he attempted to ease my situation. He tried to tilt the swing so that it would be vertical and I would just fall out, but his arms were so weak from laughing so hard, he couldn’t hold the swing up high enough, and he and Danielle began laughing harder. By this time I was laughing at myself because, although I’ve done some stupid things, getting stuck, upside-down, in a tire swing tops them all.

After my dad calmed down enough to regain control of his arms, he lifted the tire swing straight up, raising me off the ground in hopes that my own weight would cause me to fall out. The only thing we accomplished was pulling my pants down to mid-thigh, which caused my dad and Danielle to laugh even harder. I began to get a little worried because “Papa, Papa, he’s our man. If he can’t do it no one can” and he wasn’t doing anything more than embarrassing me beyond measure. He tried pulling the swing up one more time and I started to slide out a bit, but when my dad heard my pants ripping he couldn’t take it, he dropped the swing, fell over on the ground, and began laughing so hard his face turned purple. Fortunately, after my dads multiple efforts to get me out, I had slid out far enough that I managed to wriggle the rest of the way by myself. I quickly glanced around to see if anyone else was enjoying the show. Luckily for my self-esteem it was just us and the jack rabbits. Who I’m sure went home that night, told their families what they saw, and had a good laugh. I jumped up, quickly pulled up my pants, and brushed all the wood chips off of me, rubbing my sore stomach while my dad rolled on the ground laughing his little heart out.