A Stormy Day in Southen California
When my parents decided that our family could afford to move to the nicer side of town, I was really excited we were going for it. Sure, I was going to miss the good old days playing with my friends, eating corn dogs with my dad at The Yellow Basket Restaurant and driving by the Mobil Oil Refinery and watching the big piles of "black sand" spill out of long tubes from the tall machines. But our new house had a lot to offer, so I was feeling good about our future.
As a 6 year old adventure seeker, I didn't care about the cleaner air, the prettier neighborhood or the great view we had at the top of the hill. I was jazzed about living in a 2 story house and the cool fountain that spilled into a small pond in the left corner of our backyard. Behind the fountain was dirt and plants. This was the perfect place to create my own primeval world! From the time I was little, and I mean real little, I had steadfastly collected every plastic dinosaur ever created. Now we had the perfect setting to travel back 65 million years with T- rex and his biggest and baddest rivals . . . game on!
A few months after we moved in, T-rex and triceratops we're engaged in an epic struggle between life and dinner. I noticed the water wasn't coming out of the fountain as fast as it once did. My sisters tried to convince me that I ruined it, but I just couldn't believe it had anything to do with the dirt I piled at the top of the fountain to create a more authentic jungle-like atmosphere of a muddy river poring into a dark and spooky lake. With the river not flowing right, I needed another strategy to avoid the dreaded B word . . . boredom, the silent killer of joy among our kind (children).
Back then, we only had six television stations to choose from. My thinking at the time was that if it made it on television, it must be good enough to watch. My next great inspiration came before the phrase "kids, don't try this at home" became vogue. I was watching Lucille Ball on one of her spin-offs from the famous "I Love Lucy Show." The character played by Lucy was stuck in the bathroom shower with the water rising to her neck. I never could understand why she had a panicked look on her face because a swimming pool for a shower looked like great fun to me!
I rushed home from school the next day, tore out of my clothes and slipped on my favorite (and only) swimming trunks. I ran up the stairs, turned on the shower in my parent's bathroom and was ready for an afternoon of wet and wild adventure. Since our shower didn't have a plug to keep the water in, I was forced to improvise. I grabbed a washcloth and plugged up the drain to prevent the water from draining out. I thought "Boy, wait until my three big sister's get home. I'll be the envy of the neighborhood!"
As the minutes went by, I noticed the shower not filling up as high as I expected so I cranked up the water full blast to get this party started. When my sisters came home, I heard some muffled yelling behind the closed bathroom door as I looked down at my prune textured fingers. I was shouting "Life Boy with mint, mint, mint (A soap commercial I likely saw one too many times), when the door suddenly flung open, I can only remember a few choice words, like "You idiot," "What were you thinking" and "Wait until dad gets home!" Wow, that wasn't the reaction I was hoping for.
Before I made the long and soggy walk down the stairs, I was struck by how wet the bathroom floor and the carpet in my parent's bedroom was. "How did that happen," I wondered to myself. When I finally reached the family room, I couldn't believe my eyes as drops of water fell from our ceiling like rain. That indoor thunderstorm would be a drop in the bucket compared to the force that would be arriving home soon and straight out of Inglewood where he worked, "Hurricane Dad!"
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