It's A Wonder She Can Walk

When I was around 7-8 years old, we lived in a little town in Louisiana called Vidalia. It's on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi river across from Natchez, Mississippi.

We lived in a corner house on Charles Street across from Calvary Baptist Church.

The house had a big yard, especially on the side against the intersection of Charles and... well, I don't really remember the name of the intersecting street there. Hey, I was only 8, give me a break. It's not important anyway. (Big Brother would have been about 10, and Big Sis about 13.)

Big Brother was about 2.5 years older than me, but way bigger and stronger. So he got pretty bored playing games like football with me.

One of the few games we could entice Big Sis to play with us was kickball. But that was an iffy proposition in itself. She didn't want to do it that often.

One day, Big Brother and I came up with a great idea. (Well, I say we because I took part in the scam, but I think Big Brother came up with it.)

We got the shovel, and went out to the side yard, and dug a hole where we normally laid something to mark first base in our games. The hole was narrow, but a couple of feet deep.

Then we carefully laid some pieces of cardboard or something to mark three bases and home plate. Oh yeah, and to hide the hole at first base.

Now, the hard part.

We had to talk Big Sis into playing a game of kick ball with us. Since we were going to play Big Brother and I against Big Sis, we had to spot her some points and let her kick first, to sweeten the deal enough that, A. she would even play, and B. that we could get her to kick first and enact our nefarious plan.

Now normally when you 'pitch' the kickball to a kicker, you roll the ball in such a way as to make it bounce just a widdle biddy bit, so that hopefully the kicker makes a bad kick that would favor you and your team.


But this time, due to the hole under first base, Big Brother rolled her a nice, smooth, slow ball.

BAM! She nails it.

We half heartedly move toward the ball, mainly watching as Big Sis approaches 1st base.

Bloop! Her right leg almost disappears.

She starts yelling.

Big Brother and I are dying with laughter.

Needless to say, Big Sis didn't want to play any further.

I can't even remember if we got in trouble for this prank, but I have to assume we did. I can't imagine we got away with it with no repercussions.

And as an adult, I marvel that we didn't ruin Big Sis's right knee. I think that what saved it was that, as she approached first, she slowed down really slow to see if she needed to stay there or if she had a chance to advance.

If she had had a killer instinct and tried to fly around first to see how far she could get, we probably would have ruined her leg.

Adults always caution kids by saying, it's funny until somebody gets hurt.

As adults Big Brother and I always laughed about this event, shaking our heads about how lucky Big Sis was not to have a life long limp.

We were able to laugh, because nobody got hurt.