The rest of the school year ended up being mostly calm. There were no big challenges to overcome after the start of the school year excitement. I became closer friends with the boy who challenged the flash flood water that fateful end of summer day just after school started since we could more candidly share our experiences together. We were honest about how it impacted us. Furthermore, I had my own close calls and experiences to share and so did he.
As fall chilled and turned into winter, our neighborhood started to prepare for Christmas. My mom that particular year decided to keep it simple. However, I will add that my mom went nuts with her choice for a Christmas Tree. This year, she chose an all-aluminum tinsel tree, and well, it was pretty darn (damn) ugly. But it was all the rage for that year from what I was told. It even came with a rotating color wheel, so the tree was always changing color. My brain hurt just from watching it change color.
I think that this poor decision making for the Christmas Tree along with some other choices over the holidays was totally related to how many screwdrivers my mom had in a day. And knowing how to lobby for taboo gifts when the time was right was becoming a talent of mine. If my mom agreed to something, my dad would not disagree.
So, for Christmas I got a BB-Gun. This was a taboo gift. It came with a lot of conversations about safety, what not to do, and how to take care of it. And I was not the only boy in the neighborhood that got a BB-Gun for Christmas. Of course, we were always getting into trouble because we would ignore the rules set forth by our parents from time to time. It was inevitable that one of us would hurt someone with our “BB Gun.” That someone happened to be me.
One day another new friend, one of the boys from across the street who moved into the two-story house, came over to my house to play. We were in my garage shooting at toy soldiers that we had stood up on the floor. It was my turn to destroy an enemy soldier. I took careful aim at my target. I slowly squeezed the trigger and felt the kick of the wooden stock move into the crease of my shoulder. I heard him scream and quickly looked up to see him with his hands over his face.
The BB had ricocheted off the floor after hitting the target soldier and hit his glasses square in the middle one of the lenses. Thankfully he wore glasses. Otherwise, my shot could have seriously injured him. He could have lost an eye, and it would have been my fault.
His mom was furious and so was mine. My dad took my BB-Gun away for a month. I wasn’t upset with the punishment. I knew that I had broken the rules and that I could have really hurt him. From that day onward I was very careful when shooting my BB-Gun. Thankfully he wore glasses.
Spring came quickly because the daytime temperatures were rising precipitously. I guess Father Winter decided to bow out early this year. Our little group of neighborhood boys returned to the creek to hang out and just be boys during our spring break. And I felt that this was a needed break this year. All of us were experiencing something new.
I remember we began talking about newly noticed changes to our faces and our bodies. Our voices were also changing. I pointed to this thing on my face and one of my friends called it a “pimple” whatever that was. I was about to learn more about these changes, and I don’t remember being happy about it. And they we not happy either. To be blunt, we were beginning our early years of puberty and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
And then the school year ended. It was summertime and the desert heat and monsoon season were going to start soon. On Memorial Day Weekend we headed to the public pool for swimming fun. My friends and I did not have bathing suits. Our bathing suits were our blue jeans cut into shorts for the summer. So, our blue jeans lasted for an entire year.
When the next school year started, we would get new blue jeans, and the cycle would start all over. To be honest, to this day I still love wearing cutoff blue jean shorts. Or blue jeans with holes in the knees. An old pair of blue jeans becomes super soft and very comfortable over time. Plus, our blue jeans were part of our memories for that year.
As the summer fun progressed my skin was getting a darkened olive tan color because we were at the pool almost every single day. There was no sunscreen talk during this time. And we boys worked very hard to get the best tan for the start of the new school year. Our tanning effort was for being noticed at school. And at the end of summer this year we were all starting Junior High School.
One day my close friend and I were riding our bikes to the creek to hang out in the shade. I remember it was just before the 4th of July holiday. The shade of the trees protected us from the bright sunshine and cooled our skin. The little pond water provided a cooling sensation to our feet as we dangled them from the log where we were sitting. We would spend lots of time at this favorite spot of ours. And he had a special connection to the creek.
It was starting to get late and the sky off in the distance was darkening from the shadow being cast. Well, that is what we thought until we got to our bikes by the trail and noticed that the darkness was because of a giant brown cloud covering the ground just a little distance away from us. We jumped on our bikes and began to peddle as fast as we could towards our neighborhood. We knew what was coming.
Because this brown cloud was moving very quickly towards us it was time to make a move to hunker down. We were not going to make it to our neighborhood. We saw a small mound near the road. We jumped off our bikes quickly and ran to it as fast as we could. We got to the mound and laid face down on the side of the mound opposite the direction of the brown cloud that was now almost to us. We held onto each other to make a human rock with our backs opposite each other. The wind that was about to engulf us was filled with sand and dust. And there were tumbleweeds rolling towards us as well.
We were about to be overrun by a big sandstorm and there was nothing we could do. We knew to pull our shirts up over our face so we could breathe. By covering our faces, we knew our exposed skin was about to be sandpapered. To feel your skin slowly, and then quickly, abrased from your body is very painful. But it was more important to breathe. In a sandstorm you can quickly lose the ability to breathe if you don’t protect your nose and mouth. Losing the ability to breathe can quickly take you from this world.
We were now in the solid part of the storm experiencing that extreme noise of the howling winds passing over us while being covered in fine sand grains and dust as fine as powdered sugar. We were fortunate to find this mound to hide behind for protection because it gave us some cover from the dangers of the storm. Plus, the tumbleweeds became airborne and blew over us, never touching our bodies. Never tearing at our skin with their thorns.
The sandstorm began to calm down and then it disappeared. The sky was beginning to return to blue with some brown spots still hanging around in areas. We survived. Time to go home.
We dug out our bikes and headed home. Our heads were covered in sand and dust. Our exposed skin was roughed up and would need attention when we got home. I told myself that I did not want to take a bath that night. It was going to hurt. But I knew that I would have to.
And I knew that my mom was going to come after me with that bottle of Mercurochrome, the only known medicine to her to treat scrapes and cuts. I believe that this medicine was created to torture the youth of America back then.
This was not my first experience with a sandstorm during the summer monsoon season. With past sandstorms I had always been near the house when one would roll in. This time it was different. It was the first storm I had experienced in an open desert away from any shelter, and I was completely exposed to the fury of the storm.
After this experience I was now hopeful that the rest of the summer would get back to normal with continued swimming and skin darkening. I think I was hoping to become more popular at school. And there were now some new dark hairs showing up in places on my body where they were not before. Puberty was moving very quickly. I just didn’t realize how quickly.
And then…
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