by Cynthia Geer

Created on: May 18, 2010

The Clouds Don't Lie

I was eight years old the spring of 1968, when my neighbor disappeared for the afternoon. I was disinclined to call her my friend. She was usually a last resort to fall back on. If the neighborhood lie stagnant I would engage her to squander the time. I would entertain myself by asking her if her name was short for Marcel or Marcella. Expectantly she would respond with a partial tantrum, “no!” I would explain to her that no one has a name that isn’t short for a more protracted one. She would retort with a stomping of her foot. “That wasn’t nithe!” and accuse me of making things up just to upset her. When she would get upset she would regress to a toddler age and talk in a contrived baby voice that included an intentional lisp. Marcy’s traits exasperated me. There was something about her that invited my mischievous sense of humor to surface. The freedom of choice in a child’s mind can be dangerous especially to others.

The day I remember most vividly was a sunny day in mid July. I was lying on my front lawn focused on the white fluffy clouds gracefully changing. The deep blue backdrop pulsed the white clouds closer to me. I heard the slapping of Marcy’s patent leather shoes running on the asphalt. She stood over me blocking the view of a dissipating cloud that resembled a turtle with a rabbit’s head. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I was relaxing. She asked me if I wanted to come over to her house and play Barbie’s. I told her I had more interesting things to do. Her attire could have landed her on the Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa label. She even had braids to complete the illustration. She asked me what interesting things might I be doing. I told her that I had planned to fry ants on the cement with a magnifying glass. She asked if she could help and I responded by telling her she could by not getting in the way.

I had on my usual denims with reinforced knees and my Charles Schultz sweatshirt. It had a sketch of Snoopy and Linus sitting behind a rickety booth with a sign above their heads, “psychiatric help 5 cents.” I had no idea what the word psychiatric meant. But wearing this sweatshirt with this large word imprinted on it made me feel especially smart. The white rubber toes of my blue Ked’s sneakers were stained green from the many hours of playing outside. The sense of freedom I felt being outside was exhilarating. As I was standing up from my

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>