Would You Like To Play A Game?

When I was a kid my mother, sister and I used to frequently visit my aunt who lived out in the country in the southeastern part of Ohio. She had four kids. Nick was the oldest followed by Larry, Mary Liz and Bernard. My older sister Teresa and Mary Liz were close to the same age and so were Bernard and I. My sister Karen was the youngest.

When you get that many kids together it's inevitable that they will want to play games and were  no different than most. For a time it was friendly games like hide and go seek. After we grew out of that the game we wanted to play the most was called Hotbelt. I have no idea where the idea for this game came from or why we wanted to play it as badly as we did. I mean we would literally beg our parents to let us play and even though they didn't think it was a good idea eventually they would give in against their better wishes.

So just what does a session of Hotbelt consist of you may well ask yourself? There was a very large tree in the front yard that was the "base." As long as you were touching it you were safe. A belt was hidden in somewhere in the area, it could be behind the house, to the side of it but never too far off. The idea was that you could either look for it or find a place to hide. Once it was found you would have to make your way to the base. Sounds pretty simple right? Except of course that's not everything, there's one more piece of the puzzle left to talk about.

The person who found the belt would then try and catch the rest of the kids as they (usually) would run to the base. As they chased them they would whip them in the buttocks area with the belt. Seriously. This is the game we would beg to play. I don't think I'll ever understand what was wrong with us mentally but we always wanted to play it no matter how afraid we were (and I was quite afraid) of being whipped. My skinny butt got whipped quite a few times. Maybe that was when I first got an inkling of the value of being quiet and sneaky.

After everybody had made it back to the base the "whipper" would then go hide the belt and we'd do it all over again. We would play this game for hours. For some reason Nick and Larry always seemed to be the ones who found the belt. In fact I can't remember a single time that I myself ever found it. There was a reason for that if you can see where this is heading. It wasn't until many years later and we were all older that I found out that Nick and Larry were cheating. They would tell each other where the belt was hidden with the understanding that neither one of them would use it on the other.

With hindsight in now seemed so clear. Perhaps we were blinded by the stupidity of youth. After all, it was simple to reason that they were older, bigger and faster than the rest of us. I myself was short and skinny, two things that you cannot say about me today. Why wouldn't they always win against the rest of us? I tend to chalk it up to being naive. At that age you don't realize that people cheat, they don't always tell the truth or try to follow the rules. Sometimes they'll do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes they'll do things just to be mean just because they can.

Personally I'm kind of glad that I was so clueless, that it took more time for me to learn those lessons, some of which in just a few short years were drilled into my head in a rather cruel manner. Then the reasons for that treatment would be for where I lived, my lack of stylish or cool clothes or how I looked. Kids can be quite cruel when given ample opportunities. I don't think my cousins put a lot of thought into what they were doing, it was probably just funny to them and they didn't mean any serious harm.

No, I am glad I was able to hang on to my naivete,, to stay innocent and stave of the realities of the world just a little bit longer. The harsh knowledge of real life would come knocking altogether too soon. That's just the way it was and honestly it's part of what made me who I am today. Not every memory or story can have a happy ending after all and we aren't owed anything. It's what we do with it and what we learn that ends up being most important. Life is life.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

poem for my mother

while I was young
life was hell
falling asleep at night
listening to you rant
how i was no good
"i'll send you to your father"
even though you didn't
know where he was
for a bad grade
you yelled at me
then gave me the same
when i got a good one
the wrong lesson learned
it's better not to try
with my shared name
secrets passed over me
life lived oblivious
left out always excluded
is it a wonder
it took me so long
to learn my truth
recovery can be a bitch

reflecting on time
raising three young children
i see the difficulties
you had to live with
no help from the runaway
man that chose you
society looked down
it's long nose
the short supply of money
engulfed by life's demands
the pain and anger
left on your shoulders
is it any wonder
it came our way
spilling over the levy
overwhelming your defenses
you didn't know
how to cope
the world wasn't fair
life even less so
it's the only way
you knew to fight back

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Wonders Of Getting Cursed Out At Work

There's nothing like the always excellent experience of getting cursed out by an angry would be customer which did happen to me tonight. A young fellow came in after our release department was closed and wanted records released to him and didn't want to take no for an answer. It seems that our hours of operation was inconvenient for him and his situation. You see he doesn't have a car and had to walk here and he REALLY wanted these records even though I explained to him that our release department would have to be the ones to help him, especially since there were some legal questions that would need to be satisfied.

We were standing in the hallway and it didn't take long for the F-Bombs to start flying (from him not me) and then I told him to stop right there or I'd call security. This only prompted him to flip me off and curse even louder so I stepped back into the office and told them to call security. Once that was done his girlfriend started loudly cursing at me saying that I was a pussy for calling security. There were backing away down the hallway at this point and the further they got away the louder they got. Typical. By the time security got there they were long gone, presumably laughing about how lame I was and crowing about how they had showed me.

It made me think about where we are in society for people to think that this kind of behavior is not only acceptable but encouraged. It seems that everywhere I go if you honk your horn or make a gesture in frustration you are immediately met with vitriol of the vilest nature. What makes young people today think that they can get away with this kind of attitude? For one thing growing up now there are no real repercussions for acting like a complete and total idiot. There is no fear or respect anymore that was normally instilled when you were young. If I had done something like this at the same age the least I would have gotten was a sharp smack to the chops.

Instead the streets are full of young men and women in dire need of a reality check that society says we cannot give anymore because it's not civilized. We're raising a generation of jerks who thinks that their crap don't stink and who have no fear about getting called on their lack of manners and common courtesy. I know it's not all of them but it is a large enough number to be troubling. That's okay though, because karma is a strange thing and what comes around goes around. The knowledge that someday in the near future these two jagoffs will be on the receiving end of their own tongue lashings is enough to carry me gently through the night. Not that I'm over reacting to it or anything.

Published by Don Leach

When I Was A Child So Long Ago

When I was young I loved to go outside and play in the snow with my friends. We would stay out for hours building forts, having snowball fights and sledding. It didn't matter to us how long we were outside or how cold we got. All that mattered was how much fun we were having. We would come inside and get something to eat, more fuel for our body, so that we could go back outside as fast as possible and spend even more time having our fun.

Now I no longer have the shaded vision of youth. I am older and it seems more susceptible to colds and the flu. Where i once saw fun and games I now see work. It's not easy shoveling a long, double driveway while having the wind whip the snow that you just threw from your shovel back in your face. Busting your back to clear everything off and then going to work for over eight hours. It's not fun at all.



Sometime I lament that I have lost my childhood innocence, my joy at seeing things through those eyes. Everything always seemed so new and exciting, it seemed like you would never grow up and always would have fun. There were no thoughts of growing up, the stress of work or school doesn't register, the pressure of making a monthly mortgage payment does not exist nor does the idea that the person you love doesn't always love you back or forever. It's all about enjoying life.

Then you get a little older and life starts to show you what the future is like. You see families fall apart and all the pressures that you were so completely unaware of slowly creep their way into your existence. Little by little until suddenly you've forgotten what it was like to be young and innocent. If you're lucky you can have a child or perhaps have a sibling who does and you can see that child experiencing all the joy of discovering life and then maybe, you get to re-live a little bit of what it was like when you were that age.




The thought that I keep with me is that I am thankful that I did have that time when I was young because not every child in the world is that blessed. Some of them have to grow up very quickly and find out all too soon what life has prepared for them and it's usually not pleasant. At the time we may not realize how good we have it but there is always somebody else who has it worse than you do. Always. All I want to do now is delay just a little how long it takes for my son to lose his innocence so that he can just be a kid. Not too long, but definitely not too short either.