The Smiths lived in a really nice two story house three cornfields away to the north. Gene and Marilyn Smith were Catholic and had three kids when I first met them, and then had a fourth child later. Dawn was a two years older than I; Tony was my age, and Steffy was three years younger. Timmy came along when I was about eight or nine.
Gene and Marilyn were loud and colorful, and they always had the best things. Gene was a plumber and must have made a nice chunk of change because he could afford that nice two-story house, a very nice yard with a lot of flowers, an in-ground pool with a big, tall fence around it, and all of the coolest toys.
I remember one summer, Gene bought a moped for Tony and I happened to be there when they were riding it. Tony was riding it all over the yard, being the daredevil that he was. It looked so easy and so fun that I just had to try it, which was probably the best bad idea a person could ever have. Naturally, I got my turn. Naturally, I mistook the gas for the brake, and naturally, I flipped the dumb thing over. I didn't get hurt, but I've had a healthy respect for two-wheeled motorized vehicles ever since. Tony, however, did not have a healthy respect for me, and I was teased about this all the way through our school years together.
I spent many hours swimming in the Smiths' pool, which was a miracle given that, #1, my parents didn't seem to care too much for the Smiths (but my parents never had many good things to say about anyone) and, #2, my parents were so overprotective, I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone that they even suspected of being a shifty character. The fact that they let me splash around in the water with people like The Smiths without even staying to watch is, frankly, a bit hard for me to believe now.
Somehow, though, I was able to spend a lot of time with the Smiths, and I was able to spend a lot of time in their pool. Obviously, I didn't spend as much time in their pool as they did. This was so apparent because of my total inability to make any graceful movements in the water. Tony was always very quick to point that out.
"You call that swimmin'?!?" He would laugh his obnoxious Tony Smith laugh. "You're just splashin' around! Don't you know how to swim?"
We had this conversation every time I tried to swim in their pool. Every time, I would splash ungracefully, and every time, he would laugh at me. To this day, when I try to swim, I remember that I really can't swim because Tony Smith said so.
When the pool got boring, or it was too cold to swim, we would play Engine Engine Number Nine in the front yard:
Engine, Engine Number Nine
Going Down the Chicago Line
If the Train Should Jump the Track
Do you want your money back?
And then, there was:
Bubblegum, Bubblegum in a dish
How many pieces do you wish?
And my very favorite, because of the fantastic mental images it conjured:
My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.
My mother punched your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood?
I always chose green.
We would also play freeze tag, or TV tag, or some other kind of tag, or hide and seek, or we'd pretend we were spies (sometimes we really were spies, spying on Dawn who would get mad at us and tell us to grow up).
If totally necessary, Marilyn Smith would let us play inside.
In spite of what my parents said, I thought Gene and Marilyn were really nice. They both laughed and smiled a lot, and Gene always had some kind of joke to tell that I didn't really understand. Marilyn never failed to gently touch one of my springy curls and sweetly tease me that she was going to cut them all of to keep them for herself. She loved my brown ringlets.
But Marilyn Smith had rules, too. For instance, we weren't allowed in their living room because it was to stay clean just for company, and we weren't allowed in their parents' bedroom because...well, because it was simply off-limits. I did sneak in there one time, though, because Tony had told me that they had a sink that was made just to wash his parents butts. I didn't believe him, so I snuck in one time, just to see if it was true. And sure enough, there it was. Right by the toilet. It was a toilet-looking thing made just for washing butts, which I now know was a bidet.
But I would have to say that Tony's biggest claim to fame as far as I was concerned was the booger. Tony was the kind of kid who was obsessed with bodily functions, even more so than most boys his age. Tony was the only kid I ever knew who would try really hard to smell his own farts, admitting with no shame whatsoever that he did it because he liked the way his own farts smelled. He liked to brag about any kind of sound, fluid or goo his body produced, and that, of course, included boogers. If Tony found an exceptionally large or gooey booger, he would not for one second hesitate to show it to the closest person, except for his sister Dawn. Dawn was very mature and only tolerated, with a very low patience level, the antics of her annoying little brother, and, in turn, the antics-by-association of me. So, if there was a choice between showing Dawn the booger and showing me the booger, I would win every time. I think.
The thing that was different about Tony was that he didn't get embarrassed when anyone mentioned bodily functions. In our house, no one EVER said the word "fart," though my mom was the queen of gaseousness. And if I were to be caught in school with a booger hanging from my nose, I would simply have died. But not Tony. No. Tony would just laugh and pull it out, maybe even measure it, and show anyone who was nearby so that they could all appreciate the fineness of his great big boogers.
One day, when I got on the bus, there were no seats anywhere, except for next to Tony. Now, I played with Tony during after-school hours mostly out of sheer boredom, but when we were on school property, I really would rather not have seen or been seen with him. What do you expect? He was embarrassing, for crying in the mud! But I was also a fairly nice kid, so if his was the only seat left on the bus, I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.
So, I sat down next to Tony and started talking to him when I noticed that he had something stuck in the top of his blonde hair. Being the nice person I was, I reached out for it, this thing that was stuck there, right on the top of his head. I took hold of it and pulled, and it was cold, sticky and rubbery.
It was a booger.
I was so totally grossed out, I could have puked. I shook the disgusting thing off of my hand and stared at Tony with repulsion. He just laughed, as if he had placed it there himself, just so I would find it and pull it out of his hair. And maybe he did.
To this day, when I see something in a person's hair, I either point it out to them, or I let them discover it themselves. I never, ever, ever touch it.
