question of the day #2 - 03-29-02

what games did you play when you were little?

i don't recall any games as such. there were the usual sports - basketball, football, baseball, kickball, tetherball, warball. the last being a sort of religion. all starting in second grade or so. i don't remember much before that.

i recall being five and racing a friend across the lawn, swinging my arms in imitation of a swimmer, thinking that "swimming" through the air would make me go faster. we lived in urbandale at the time, a suburb of des moines. there were corn fields and soybean fields a couple of blocks away. a few years ago i happened to be driving through des moines again and tried to find the house. those fields had been turned into strip malls and apartment complexes. odd finding someplace so dimly remembered so utterly changed. i never found the house again.

games, though. private games? driving through eastern nebraska from one relative's house to another for the holidays i would imagine a giant stepping lightly amongst the farmhouses and feedlots as they rushed by. careful not to trip over powerlines, not to crush anything.

at night on the highway in lincoln or omaha or at intersections out in the middle of nowhere i would follow passing streetlamps with my eyes. with my head tilted back against the seat i could follow a light as it raced past out of view, then flick my eyes forward again to catch another. it created a rhythm, following every third light or so that way, depending on how fast we were going.

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