Friday, August 15, 2014

Refrigerator Box Ride: a short story

when i was 5 years old, my family of 6 moved into a 2 story brick home.  my parents had bought 11 acres out in the middle of nowhere south carolina a few years before that and moved us out there to live in a trailer while the house was built right in front of us.
moving into a big home means you get lots of new appliances. it also means you get big boxes to play in. 
i have 3 brothers and i'm the third child of the bunch.  one day, my 2 older brothers thought it would be really fun to take the big refrigerator box and get in it themselves and make it roll down what we called, "the Cliff".  it was a place in the woods where the land made a significant drop - a slanted decline for about 30 feet. 
at least they told me they had gone down the Cliff in the big box - i can't really remember if they actually did or if they were just telling that to me and my younger brother to convince us to get in the box too and go for a ride.
"come on, it'll be fun!" they said.
i remember being not so sure.  but little brother and i got in and and closed the flaps of the box as best we could and before we knew it we were basically performing a sequence of forced cartwheels with a huge box around us.  when we reached the bottom of the cliff, i remember being out of the box with a bunch of dirt in my mouth.  i, of course, was extremely upset about the whole thing and especially about the dirt in my mouth.  i think all three of my brothers were laughing.  i walked up the cliff crying and found my dad in the yard about to cut grass or something.  i told him what happened, and he didn't really respond.  i guess at least he didn't laugh at me.  but that's all i remember and i'll never forget it.

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