[an assignment for my descriptive essay class, regarding a sound from our childhood]
Spring was humid and sugar-coated. We drank hot May moisture through our pores and discovered the rebellious side of our sixth grade independence by walking to the park after school without the parental attachment of walkie-talkies. We waded into the river behind the dugout barefoot in spite of them, unconcerned with their cautions of broken glass and slippery moss.
We kicked off last summer’s flip-flops in the damp shade and plucked wide blades of crabgrass as we sat beside the baseball bleachers, bored, but with purpose. We were free, as far as we were concerned, and homework was the last thing on our minds; while we were there, there was nothing to remind us of obligation. Laughter echoed from the playground, poking at the small crowd’s subtle attempt for silence behind home plate, a small bubble of silence that was sliced instantly with the sharp but rounded plink! of the metal bat as it sent a baseball soaring above the cheer of the proud parents who were oogling towards outfield. We watched, but we mostly fished penny candy out of soft brown paper bags from Rambo’s and pried absentmindedly at their remains that were glued to our molars. We invaded the playground and didn’t touch the “lava” as we jumped from wooden platform to wooden platform and chatted in the branches of the cherry blossom tree.
Rambo’s General Store had been in business for over fifty years, yet the penny candy hardly ever sat for more than fifty minutes. Elbows pressed against the counter, we leaned forward while Annette patiently pointed at the glass candy jars in their dusty shelf cove, matching our eager descriptions with the accurate flavors and shapes and colors of the Sour Patch Kids that were always sorted into separate containers. There had always been packaged M&Ms and Skittles at the reach of small fingers, always flashy candies with plastic toys resembling characters of the newest Disney movie like they were the tabloids of the candy counter, but we'd rather watch our pennies weigh out before our eyes. We watched as she slowly pulled out each jar and removed the heavy lids that clunked like glass clogs on marble. The metal scooper rattled against the inside of the jar, chiming sporadically and creating an abstract melody closely resembling the perpetually amateur results of my few xylophone lessons with Mrs. Thompson. The lids were returned to their nests, each graze of glass against glass ringing heavily like bells made out of thick ice.
We didn’t know it was a pastime; we just did it. We walked, we giggled, we basked, and walked some more; we paid with pennies and nickels, hardly paying attention to scores or chores or the setting sun. We were drunk on spring and vitamin D; we were made delusional by the floral breeze and woke up with the sweet anticipation of afternoon singing from tree branches in the form of birdsong. I sat in a dazed existence of eternal present tense with surround-sound summer, knowing nothing of the borderlines of childhood or the word expectation.
