Cactus
Night is Rising on the World
Resipiscent Records

I was a competitive swimmer when I was a child. A card carrying member of the Amateur Athletic Union from the age of eight. But I missed a whole summer of meets and medals one year when I had a little mishap on Sugar Creek Road.

Those were the days of barefoot summers and when I was that young I rarely wore shoes. I'd spend hours, morning to sunset, running around in the back grassy fields behind our row houses with the neighbor kids. That is until that fateful day found me falling.

When my friends came over to see what had happened, they saw the culprit laying alondside me, stubborn and bloody. A garden rake was left out in the tall grass, teeth facing the sky and it's grimace awaiting my tender young foot.

In the cartoons when this happens, the victim simply catches the handle of the rake in the back of the head with a 'thwayyyng'. But, in my sugar creek reality, it stayed put and went right into and almost through my poor little paw.

No swimming for me for a while. What a miserable kid.

Copyright © 2006 Alice Kenner