Campfire Quick Write

Tuesday's QuickWrite-inspired by Kate Messner, Teachers Write!
My campfire story…(stories to tell around the campfire working on building our writing habit)!

My early childhood home was a tiny ranch across the street from a large, somewhat ominous looking colonial-full of three mischievous boys who were forever known as trouble makers! Truly, the look of the house matched the personalities of the inhabitants! The scent of trouble belched from its windows and doors quite regularly. The neighborhood children knew all about the “trouble boys”. Some how, who ever they played with got bitten by the trouble bug!

On this sunny summer day, my younger brother Mike and I decided we’d head across the street and venture in to play with the “trouble boys”-a mistake my mouth has regretted for the rest of my life!  As we crossed the street, we saw the boys playing in the pebble-littered, sandy black dirt where the pavement met the road. They had their dump trucks, buckets and the tall red tricycle. The tricycle caught everyone’s eyes! It was shiny, bright red and screamed “ride me”!

As the scene unfolded further, the boys made it their mission to demo how they could ride it down the 6 cement steps that led from the yard down to the street…when your legs are long enough to balance the bike on the steps like ski poles on a slippery slope it was an amusement-park-like adventure! Needless to say, being the Amelia Earhart adventurous little diva that I was, I couldn’t resist trying out the ride too!

After the boys made several passes down the steps, I decided to give it a try. I got on the tricycle and pedaled down the front walkway to the steps of doom. As soon as the trike started down the first two steps (wait for it) move in to slo mo here-I began to lose balance. The trike and I parted ways. It kept bumping and rolling and I flew off of it and landed face first with a mouth full of gravel at the base of the steps! There was screaming, crying, and bleeding from me, skittle girl who now had a knocked out front tooth, two fat lips And a scraped chin.

Mother came running and immediately called the dentist-he told her to rinse my mouth, wash off the tooth and shove it back up into my gums! I was rushed to the dentist’s office…I was served up with the fare of Popsicles and more popsicles for about 2 days until the swelling went down…those darn trouble boys-that darn trike, those short legs-it all spelled disaster from the beginning! And I have the black front tooth in my kindergarten picture to remind me that when I smell trouble, I should stay away!
Link back to some other campfire stories...