Best Childhood Memories.

I can't lie, this is a toughie for me. Just the other day I was talking to some friends about where I grew up and our childhood and it made me reflect on our old neighborhood Edinburgh Estates. I could have spent hours talking about all the things we did and the people we knew and so when I read Peg's blog about Childhood Memories I realized there is now way to cover it all or this blog would drag on for hours so I will try to tell one or two stories that stand out to me.
One memory in particular that always makes me smile involves the time Mom and Dad made a new rule about leaving your shoes in the living room. It seems that one day after tripping over shoes left in the room Dad made a rule that any abandoned shoes would be thrown out in the front yard and the guilty party would have to go out in their socks to get them back. This could really if you don't discover this until the next day and they are covered in dew. One day I was sitting in the living room when dad got home and he looked at me and said "get your shoes out of the floor or you know where they go." It was then tat I informed him that those shoes belong to Bill, to which dad growled back "then throw them in the damn yard". Now you have to realize that this had all the elements of a great opportunity. Dad gladly takes all the blame, I get to do the deed and Bill is the one who's gonna suffer. It was nine year olds dream come true.
As I stood on the front steps holding the shoes I decided to not just toss them over the bushes, but I was gonna set a long distance record. With any kind of luck there would be grass stains and maybe even make the street. I let the first one fly and it went all the way to the curb. The second one actually landed in Mr. Webb's yard. This insured a cross country trek to find both shoes. This is however where the fun ended. As the second shoe left my hand I saw something out of the corner of my eye that scared me to death. You guessed it. It was Bill..... bare foot and running. At that point it didn't matter that dad told me to do it. I was doing the deed and loving it and he was gonna kill me.
I think I actually made it to Mr. Webb's yard before the shoe did but I was still too slow. I'm sure whatever he did to me when he caught me seemed a lot worse because I was nine and all, but at the time it was like a near death experience.
The point of all this is simple. These are the kind of memories an only child will never have and they are the greatest times of our lives. I love to tell people how tough it was growing up with four older brothers always picking on me but we all know, Growing up in a big family like ours was the greatest gift we could all have. I could tell these stories all night but for now this will have to do. I too want to thank Mom and Dad for the best childhood a kid could ever have.