Hide-n-Not Seek

Every neighborhood has them, the bullies and the bullied. Unfortunately, the person who bullied me the worst lived at my house. My older sister was the antagonist in my early life story, beginning with trying to bite off my big toe when I was five days old. I don’t remember it, but my mother likes to remind me every once in a while that I should be thankful to have ten toes.

It only got worse from there; daring me, at three years old, to climb on top of my mom’s 1951 Oldsmobile, where I fell onto the gravel covered driveway on my face, splitting my forehead into a nasty gash, requiring five stitches. Big Sis made friends with the mean boys next door and gave them a wet towel to slap me across the shoulders with when I got out of the wading pool, leaving welts up and down my scrawny back. She pulled me off the front porch by my ankles onto the rose bushes my mother had tenderly raised, blaming it on the mean boys next door. Who was I to tell mom differently? I was only one and couldn’t talk.

My sister, being the perfect little angel she was, never seemed to get into trouble for all her antics. When we moved to our new house on the hill she continued her barbary toward me, never being called out on it. If you’re older than dirt, like I am, you’ll remember with fondness that neighborhood game, Red Rover. Who, in God’s name invented that cruel joke of a game for children? I suspect it was the same person who invented Dodge Ball.

Red Rover was one of my sister’s favorite games, because she was one of the big kids and no one pushed her around. I was always the last to be picked for that game…or any game, for that matter. I was five years old and smaller than the three year old who lived across the street. I also cried easily, which made picking on me all the more fun. My sister’s favorite Red Rover tactic was clotheslining me if I ventured near her intersection. Never one to shirk from giving a game my all, I would put everything I had into speeding across the lawn to the other side and diving into the gripped hands of the other team. Always the optimist; ‘This time I’m going to help my team win!’

Then, while trying to catch my breath as I laid on the ground with a bruised windpipe, reality caught up to me. ‘Kid, sorry, but you’re three inches shorter than the three year old and twenty pounds lighter. You’re never going to win this game.’

Thank God my father outlawed Dodge Ball in our yard after I came inside with a round, red welt on my stomach from a well-aimed hit from my dear older sister. My mother found my whining annoying and thought it would do me good to get roughed up. To my dad, though, I was his ‘Dolly’, and no one better mess with me while he was around.

One of our favorite neighborhood games was hide-n-seek. We always played that in the yard across the street, flanked by our favorite climbing trees and woods. It was almost time for the streetlights to come on, so we had time for only one game that day. I’d been thinking of a perfect hiding spot for days. I was the only one who could fit into it and I was deliriously excited about playing the game with the best spot ever.

The garage had been built into the hill, leaving the roof overhang almost even with the ground on one side. While everyone else was streaming to hiding places away from the front yard, I headed over and double-checked my spot under the roof, and found that it would hide me completely. I crawled in under the rafters, giggling at my discovery, as I anticipated finally winning a game of something- anything.

Mind you, I was the neighborhood scaredy-cat, afraid of just about everything that breathed or moved. There were spider webs galore and rodent poop under the roof, which ordinarily would have sent me screaming away. But, I held onto my emotions in exchange for the big win I was sure to have coming my way. I could not stop giggling- it was so perfect.

Half terrified and half full of glee, I held my position under those rafters forever, it seemed. I kept hearing, “Found you!”, “Found you!”, over and over again as I holed up, waiting for the win.

Soon it became quiet. When I finally looked out from my hiding spot, the streetlights were on and it was dark outside. Waiting a bit longer, to cement my victory, I counted to one-hundred and crawled past the poop and the creepy-crawly spider webs, brushing my hair and face from the invisible insects that may have crawled on me.

It was eerily quiet in the yard. No kids running around. Nothing. Just me and the cobwebs that clung to my shorts. I ran to the front door of my friend’s house and heard laughter from inside. Opening up the door, I smelled popcorn and heard the sound of The Disney Hour coming from the living room. When I ventured into the room all the kids from the game of hide-n-seek were lolling on the floor, munching on popcorn and watching The Jungle Story together. The show was half over and no one invited me to come in and join them.

Embarrassed, feeling like an intruder, I turned around and walked home alone, tears falling down my face. No one, not even my sister, had noticed I hadn’t come inside when ‘Allee, allee, infree’ was called. No one had even tried to find me. When I got home all my mother said was, “Did you walk home alone? I told you to never do that.” I didn’t say a word about the unfairness of the hide-n-seek game. I just went to bed, feeling invisible.

Not to worry. I got my revenge. My older sister used to gobble her Easter candy up the minute she saw her basket, while I, on the other hand, savored each sweet one piece at a time each day until it was gone. I always stored my basket on the top shelf of my closet, and my sister always found it, hogging my candy as soon as she saw it. The next Easter after that unfortunate game of hide-n-seek, I picked out all the good stuff and hid it under my stuffed animals, leaving only the black jellybeans for my greedy big sister. Steal those, you dirt bag!