Spring and renewal!
Mondays after Easter Sundays were always special to me when I was a kid.
That meant if there were any playgrounds or empty fields within scurrying distance, they鈥檇 soon be populated by after-school kids indefatigably engaged in all manner of exuberant activities.
Allow me to unravel that. Everybody played hard in early spring.
Suddenly, with five exciting, fun-filled spring and summer months ahead, there鈥檇 be no time to waste.
Being inside during the spring and summer seemed downright unnecessary when I was 10 years old.
As if walls were an inconvenience 鈥� even if they might鈥檝e been an architectural requirement.
New years are always about the promises of, well, new possibilities.
But in my childhood years, early spring days were usually about getting dirty before dinner, and sometimes in our school clothes, and facing the wrath of our hard-working parents, who swore you were trying to put them in the 鈥減oor house.鈥�
Ah! That warning that something I might do could send the entire family into a devastating economic spiral.
(I鈥檝e always suspected my parents were exaggerating about my ability to send us to debtors鈥� prison based on my inability to keep my clothes clean. Privately, I thought that was hogwash.)
I also never questioned my mother蘑菇视频 admonishment that I could 鈥渃atch my death of cold鈥� if I didn鈥檛 keep all of my clothes fully buttoned while I played outside.
At least I never openly questioned it.
I probably should have though.
Now that I鈥檓 an adult, I know that I could run around outside on the coldest of winter days 鈥� shirtless 鈥� and still not catch a cold. That is until somebody who has a common cold sneezes or coughs on me.
Up on East End playground in Uniontown, the day after Easter, hardly anybody stopped dribbling and shooting long enough to cough on each other.
There was basketball to be played!
If there was a fresh coat of newly fallen snow, there would be brooms and shovels that were put into service to clear off the playing surface.
I never did the shoveling or sweeping, mind you. I鈥檝e been told that story through the (unofficial) East End Storytellers Collective.
That蘑菇视频 when generation after generation of storytellers first tell simple stories that grow until they became tales of magnificent young ragamuffins, dispatched to save the East End playground for posterity.
I may have been a ragamuffin, but again, I never truly swept or shoveled anything.
I wasn鈥檛 much for doing work when I was in my preteens.
Unless you call hard play work.
There were times back then when hard play led to skinned knees or bloody noses.
That was the price you paid for being an energetic child.
As far as my father was concerned, I could scuff my shoes, rip my shirt, or even lose my overcoat, but I鈥檇 better not come home in tears.
Crying was not permitted among the small fry in the Owens household.
To old Jack Owens, that was worse than coming home without some of my body parts.
(I know this from experience. One day I came home after I left one of my lips on the playground, and my father didn鈥檛 even notice.)
鈥淚f you cry, I鈥檒l give you something to REALLY cry about,鈥� he鈥檇 tell me.
Forcing yourself not to cry is one of the single most difficult things I鈥檝e ever done.
You try to do that sometime.
Good luck.
It蘑菇视频 not easy.
Parents of the 1950s had unusual ways of saying stuff for sure.
I鈥檝e vowed never to tell a child, 鈥淚鈥檒l skin you alive,鈥� if they don鈥檛 do what I want them to do.
My father used to tell me that all the time.
I鈥檇 lay awake in my bed (or even crib) wondering what life would be like if I didn鈥檛 have skin.
Would anybody notice I was skinless?
Keep in mind, in my entire childhood, my father never hit me.
He just made that singular promise to remove my skin if I did something he didn鈥檛 like.
That was painful enough.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.