Judy P's Tickle Trunk

Campground bikers.

I am reclining in the screened vestibule of my tent, away from the blackflies and out of the hot sun. There is a group of boys playing on their bikes. They shout at each other in the same sing-song style I remember from my own childhood; half chant, half taunt. They are gentle boys really, but on their bikes they become warriors with an aggressive grip on the handlebars. Their shoulders braced for impact, they race down the slope of the sideroad leading from their campsites, screeching to a halt at the bottom and spinning out. Success means stirring up the greatest dust cloud and landing with one foot on the dirt, the other remaining on the pedal in a cavalier stance, the bike half on its side. One, two, three, four they come, until the complete group is congregated on the main road. The technique is mastered after several descents and they move on to the grass, pedalling fiercely down the slope, at the last second popping the front wheel onto the road and spinning out on the gravel. One, two, three they come, and the last, the pocket-sized boy, the little Tom Cod of the group, shouting “I did it!” Now there is little satisfaction in being able to do something that the littlest amongst them can do so the the biggest boy ups the ante. He pedals to the top of the grass and then races at full throttle down the slope. Instead of spinning out in the dirt he crosses the main road and hurtles straight through a dense patch of alders. There is a flurry of leaves as he comes flying out the other side with a look of “Holy *%*#, I can’t believe I actually did that” and he loops back to end in a triumphant spin-out on the road. Number two boy bravely replicates the performance. Number three chokes at the last second and brakes to a full stop just shy of the bushes. And then comes Tom Cod, feet flying, teeth set and a look of fierce determination. He pedals furiously like a racer on the last leg of the Tour de France but his little legs pushing his little bike are unable to achieve the necessary momentum and he enters the stand of alders and brings up solid. The leaves rattle, then grow still in a dendrological diminuendo. All is still for a second, then a small groan rises from the bushes and Tom Cod staggers forth wearing a look of horror. He flings his helmet with one hand and clutches his nether parts with the other as he falls into the grass and rolls himself up into a ball like a frightened hedgehog. Boys one, two and three, after their third expedition down the slope, reassemble around Tom Cod. “What’s the matter, you pee yourself?” one sniggers.  Apparently the boys had been heading back up the hill and had not witnessed the event. “Let’s run him over” jokes boy number three and they circle the unmoving boy like cartoon cowboys circling a stagecoach. Their diminutive friend doesn’t move a muscle and the boys lose interest and head off to their next challenge. Tom Cod sits up and rocks like an abandoned baby primate. Ah, how resilient are small boys. Like a spring swimmer about to take that first frigid plunge, he rallies his strength and courage, lets out a war whoop and leaps back on his bike. After a few hesitant peddles his feet regain their confidence and he races off to catch up to his companions.

Watching the boys at play, I was reminded of a summer when I was a child of five or six in Lewisporte. My friend and I were playing with my older sister June in the old sawdust piles down by the abandoned sawmill on the waterfront. Dianne and I knelt and scooped sunbaked sawdust with our hands, speculating as we dug deeper and deeper what we might find (buried treasure like lost golden rings or bejeweled crowns, a Beothuk skeleton, or China – the place, not the tableware). June, being the athletic one amongst us, was rolling down the slope; her arms flat by her sides, her body as straight and rigid as an Olympic diver coming off the high board, her long pony-tail flipping round with each revolution. Then “whump”. We looked up to see June stretched out by a post, not moving. Now it happened that our favourite winter game was ‘ambulance’ in which we would ride our coasters down the steep slope by Lewisporte Wholesalers, crash into the concrete wall of the building and play dead or injured. The other players would make shrieking ambulance sounds and come to our rescue; loading us onto a toboggan to tow us back up the hill until it became work. Then the victim would jump up and trudge the rest of the way to the top on his own while another player would take a turn crashing. We were excited. June, who frequently organized the younger kids for games, was obviously initiating a game of ‘summer ambulance’. Dianne and I quickly morphed into medical personnel and turned on our sirens “nyeeeeer-a-nyeeeeeeeer-a” and raced to the scene like small actors in a spontaneous improv. “She’s dead” I declared matter of factly, assuming the lead role of doctor before Dianne had a chance. “We’ll have to bury her before she rots”. We set about scooping out a shallow nine-year-old sized grave. As we worked we grunted and exchanged serious medical remarks: “she must have been hit in the temple, Mom said that’ll kill you instantly” and “the operation was a success but the patient died”. We rolled June into her shallow grave, ecstatic that she was being so cooperative and not trying to boss us around in our little drama. We laid her out on her back in the fashion we imagined one would lay out the dead (neither of us had yet seen a real corpse in a coffin) and scooped just enough sawdust over her to cover. Fatigued then, we sat back with an air of satisfaction and waited for June to rise from the dead. Time passed. Not a twitch or a flicker from our recently departed. We were discussing our next move when in a flurry of elbows and knees,  ponytail and sawdust flying, June burst forth from her grave. She coughed a couple of times, scrubbed the sawdust from her eyes and with a perfunctory flick of her disheveled hair, she staggered up the slope of woodchips towards home. “She’s some good at playing ambulance” I thought with pride.

It wasn’t until recollecting the game as an adult that I realized that she had probably been knocked unconscious. How differently that day would have played out had she injured herself more seriously or had we buried her deep enough to be smothered. As would the day have been different for the boys on bikes had they decided to call Tom Cod’s bluff and actually tried to run him over. Yes, it’s a fine line between pleasure and catastrophy or between good fun and a day gone irreparably wrong. It is by the veritable skin of our teeth that most of us made it to adulthood.

(c) Judy Parsons 2011