Random Childhood Memories

Okay, so I'm up early and fooling around with my blog. Most of you probably never noticed (unless you have a blog yourselves) that in the comments section there is this random question: "lionnesses have no manes, how do they know when they have grown up?" I was growing bored with my answer ("when they've been screwed over by a lion") and wanted a new question. I kept trying to get a new random question but I had a problem with most of them, either they were too dumb or too out there or too "I'm just not that creative without a cup of coffee."

This is where this post comes in. One of the questions was something like "what would you call the ballet of children dancing through the water sprinkler?" I still don't know what I would call it, but I sure remember doing it. Do you? We had this automatic sprinkler system in the front yard and I would beg my dad to turn it on so I could run around in it. The begging would go on for what seemed like hours to my childish mind and then he would usually give in. And I would call my little friends and we would dance around in the sprinklers for a while until the cold of the water and the smell of the well water and the mud from the yard would make us quit. But what a dance in the mean time, huh?

Before we got the automatic sprinklers we had one of those rainbow stream things -- Dad didn't seem to believe much in the round and round ones. I wish I could replay that sound because that's the only way to really describe them. The "shh shh shhh" sound. The streamer ones, they were silent. It didn't really pay to stand still with those because the water would hit you suddenly and then you just kind of stood there shivering while you waited for it to come back again. You had to dance through the thing -- back and forth, back and forth.

I have a lot of memories of my Dad growing up, many of them with him being a little grouchy and a little drunk but all in all -- he's been a good dad. A lot of parents didn't like you mudding up their lawns (especially in upper middle class suburbia) and ruining the grass with the over-watering but he would give in a lot. And that's pretty cool.