When I Was a Kid

I miss being a kid. My brother and sisters and I basically spent ninety percent of our respective childhoods behind the fence. There was this little wooded area where no houses had yet been built, and we would build forts, it seemed like the woods would go on forever, like it was impossible to explore all of it. A creek ran through the woods, ran through a tunnel under the street, and we used to see how far the it went, but it was impossible to reach the end and be home in time for dinner. In case we got lost (which is unlikely considering the fact that we were following a river), we left chalk marks on rocks to find our way back. I thought that must have been what the Indians did when they explored the area. We planned to build a dam so we could have a little pond to swim in during the summertime, which was one of those projects that never got finished, although we did end up swimming one day, fully clothed, and got into trouble soon afterward. We stripped down in the laundry room and laid our clothes out to dry on the driveway. There was this really deep part of the creek, the water got cold as you went deeper, and I used to wonder what creatures lived down there in the dark or whether it was even possible to reach the bottom. I remember when it rained a lot in the spring, we would have to wait for the rain to stop, but then when we finally went outside, it seemed like the whole world was covered in green, humid, dripping with sunlight.