Life with Fred & Lucy, Part 6: Don't Break the Baby

                                                                

                            Baby Lucy, the youngest of the siblings                                           

Okay, from the first five episodes, I’m guessing that you’ve figured out that my siblings and I were a wild bunch of tots. On the few occasions that we had free time to ourselves to play, we played hard and sometimes dangerously.

                                                       

                                                                    

To set up the scene of where we did most of our playing, I’ll tell you about my father’s storeroom. Except for our kitchen, the living room and the bedrooms were on the second floor of our two-storied home. What was originally the living room on the first floor was now being used for stock. My father had boxes and boxes of can food lined up in neat rows that took up the entire room. There were small walkways between the aisles. The boxes were stacked almost to the ceiling.

                                                               

                                                                    

 Get the picture? My siblings and I had our own Himalayan mountain range to explore

                                                              

I was seven years old and Lucy was only six months old when my father bought the store. My job was to watch over my little sister. In the old days, no one wore helmets or knee pads.

 

                           Michael, Lucy, Mom and Jane in background                                                

Kids back in the old days, played hard and fast without worrying about the scrapes and bumps that come naturally with childhood. We were survivors; we loved adventure. By the time that Lucy was three years old, I took on the responsibility and job of teaching  Lucy how to have fun via mountain climbing with her crazy siblings.

                                                                                                                                                    

My parents were so busy in the store that they had no idea what the hell we were doing. They assumed, wrongly, that we were maybe playing hide and seek in that big old stock room. Ha!

                                                                        

Jane who was nine and Michael who was five at the time would climb the boxes until they reached the very top; only a few feet from the twelve foot ceiling. They would then pull up  Lucy as I pushed her from below. Once we were all on the top of the stacks, we began to jump (I kid you not) from one stack of boxes to another.

                                                              

God must have had his entire army of Guardian Angels watching us crazy kids as we risked limbs, and most likely our lives, jumping the entire length of the room; stack to stack. We never did fall or drop the baby, but our days of mountain climbing ended one day after my father walked into the stock room. Look at the picture above. My father had that same expression as he caught me in the act of passing Lucy over to Jane's side of the mountain.

                                                                     

“What the %*#@* are you goofballs doing? You’re going to #%**@# break that baby. GET DOWN, NOW!!!

                                                                         

Needless to say, I received a spanking and lengthy speech from mom, which in my opinion was worse than the spanking.
                                                                                  
We were banned from the stock room; unable to climb the Himalayans. But, it wasn't the end of our adventure. We kids were rather resourceful when it came to our play; resourceful and dangerous. My parents, always busy in the store, never learned about us playing firemen on the roof of our first floor addition.