Honeysuckles and Other Such Matters

When I was little I lived in a house that had a tennis court in the yard. I say this not to brag, because while having a tennis court sounds posh it was rather run down with cracked green paint which exposed the black, gummy tar below. Also, I am not a world class tennis player, which means I might be making up this whole story.

Anyway, I spend my tricycle riding days on the tennis court, driving around the chalk drawn roads my sister and I had created. We created a delightful metropolis complete with highways, homes, and shopping malls.

While I remember little of many things that happened during this time in my life I do remember these key moments:

:Near the honeysuckle bush by the stairs, I said my first swear word when my foot fell through the wood staircase and my tricycle crushed me. I had picked up the word from my sister, thinking it was the word you said when things weren't going how you wanted them to. This incident would later come back to haunt me when I swore at a friend of mine on my soccer team. Years later she would tell me it was the first time anyone had ever sworn at her. I don't remember the incident, but I don't deny it happened.

:There was a rosemary bush planted right where the net met the end of the court. This caused riders to off road for a moment to avoid crashing into the net. The rosemary was always covered with bees.

:I remember the weird smell of the big leafy plants that bordered the bottom of the stairs. I deemed these plants the bank where I would collect my money to pay the tolls on the road.

:I got really mad at my sister for chalking express lanes for her bike, saying I couldn't use them because a tricycle wouldn't fit through the lines. To mend this situation, I made the "tricycle express" lane. My sister proceeded to zip through my tricycle lanes. She explained that she could fit through the lane so she was allowed to use them too. I started crying and went in the house.