In the summer of 1970, my summer between kindergarten and 1st grade, my Mom returned to part-time work. Our town initiated a daytime program called recreation that took place at different schools and parks in town. My parents took advantage of their tax dollars to immediately enroll us in recreation, which took place on the playground of our brand new beloved school, Crescent Elementary. Recreation had morning and afternoon sessions. As it was free, many kids would just come in the morning or afternoon or miss days all together. As we had nothing else to do, my older sister, Lauren, and I religiously attended every session of recreation possible. My attendance was crucial, as I planned on winning the trophy for “Best Girl in Recreation.” In the beginning of the summer, the counselors displayed two unengraved trophies; one for the best boy and one for the best girl in recreation. Whether you won an arts and crafts contest, a game of kickball, a game of checkers or Sorry or won the recreation talent show, you would earn a number of points for each win or participation. Each time you won a game, scored a run, or won a contest, you were supposed to record the number of points into a black and white composition notebook. Even though, I had a commanding lead by virtue of perfect attendance along with some other mad skills, I made a commitment that I would win the trophy at all costs.
While the other girls busied themselves with making arts and crafts or by playing house, these games were time consuming and wouldn’t enable me to accumulate points fast enough. The tote board wasn’t going to run up, while I was pretending to be a baby boy or the family dog. I needed to pile on the points counting each paper, rock, and each scissors that smothered, smashed, cut each opponent’s Rochambeau move. Tic, tac, toe got tossed, when I realized that unless you play with someone who still has a soft spot on their head, rarely did anyone win and I lost precious tallying it up time. While I’m sure my Mother would have appreciated matching planters hangers, I left crafting the macramé to Lauren knowing that if mine were even judged to be the best, I’d only accrue 5 points. Plant that losers! While Lauren busied herself with the art of decorative knots, I played 8 games of checkers, 3 games of CandyLand, and arm-wrestled all-comers. While I might spend time playing kickball, I was the only girl who could kick the ball into woods gaining a bona fide home run. I would get a point almost every time I was in the kicker’s box and led my team to victory earning me another 5 points. I would eschew the relay races knowing that my speed wouldn’t garner me any points choosing instead to participate in the hot dog eating contest, where I could beat, if not eat, my 45 lb. peers. While sign-ups for the talent show yielded 8 girls doing ballet, 3 tap dancing, 4 boys playing the trumpet, 3 baton twirlers, and 2 boys demonstrating karate kicks, I felt that my special brand of humor would stand-out performing stand-up comedy at age 6. My Mother helped me with my lines that were based on commercials current in the late 60s and into 1970. I slayed the audience with lines like, “Oh, my girdle is killing me!” and by squeezing my rear-end, while I said “Don’t squeeze the Charmin.” Not only did I differentiate myself from the banal trumpet renditions of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and twirls to “God Bless America”, but I brought the blue-ribbon home with the joke, Why didn’t the chicken cross the road? To avoid getting hit by the Partridge Family bus. Even though that 10-point win, resulted in me having a 70-point lead above the next girl, I still wasn’t satisfied wanting to leave my competitors in the dust.
I began padding my wins awarding myself an extra point for good pop-a-matic action during Trouble! I added a couple of points for the achievement of executing right-hand red and left-foot green in Twister! I awarded myself for altruism, as I gave another kid the car in monopoly. Of course as monopoly easily turns into monotony, I needed to make-up for lost time giving myself points for being the banker and for buying Boardwalk. I gave myself 2 points for having excellent vibrato, while screaming, “Yahtzee.” The die had been cast, morals had been thrown aside. I unintentionally made a minor one-point indiscretion, when I claimed that I had earned an extra run in whiffle ball, when my invisible man had already been called out. Fortunately, no one saw him go back to the bench.
All-in-all, this padding resulted in me gaining an unfair 10-point additional advantage. By the end of summer, I had an honest 76-point advantage winning working within the system or a dishonest 86-point advantage taking minor liberties. While I knew that I clearly was the winner in my heart, my little math embellishments caused me to feel a tad tawdry, when the counselor awarded me with my glittery gold trophy. The woman who must have served as the model of my trophy must have been molded after a goddess of beauty. She resembled the Statue of Liberty, but had a gilded exterior not green one. She held a wreath above her head in victory much like my honest 76-point victory. If the 10-point embellishment would have been part of the mold to make her, the mold would have afforded her flabby arms to make up for my deceit. The trophy had a killer figure and, were she human, she would have flaunted her double Ds perhaps being able to win her own trophy in a wet t-shirt contest. On her pedestal, my name was engraved along with the distinction of Best Girl in Recreation-1970. As I bicycled home on my hand-me-down pink Schwinn bicycle with its double rear baskets clutching my trophy in my sweaty little hand, I pondered whether or not I felt that I had earned my “Miss Recreation 1970” honors fairly. On one hand, the angel on my shoulder pondered that I still crushed all the other girls with my 76-point lead with every home-run I kicked, with every shoot and ladder I conquered, with every fiber of my being that successfully removed the water-on-the-knee from the patient in Operation, and with each time I correctly deduced that the murderer was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick. Yet, the devil on my other shoulder told me not to care that I had awarded myself points for letting others have the racecar in monopoly, when I preferred the hat anyway. The devil soothed me by repeatedly complimenting me for the best delivered articulation of the word “Yahtzee!” I had almost made it home anticipating my happiness in putting my first trophy on my dresser, when I took the shortcut. The shortcut was really the unpaved ¼ mile driveway of a family, who had a tree nursery that, years later, we’d drink and smoke in. As my internal angel and devil duked it out, I hit a sizeable rock, which caused my bicycle to begin a handlebar over back tire maneuver. During the tumble, my death grip on my trophy loosened causing her to land in the gravel just ahead of me. After I caught my breath, I crawled to my beloved trophy, which was lying face down in the gravel. When I picked it up, it’s beautiful gold coloring had chipped away the gold paint covering her protruding mountains majesty and on her nose. While I cried for the loss of my trophy’s beauty, I kind of understood that her damages were the penalty of my 10 unearned points. I drove her home and still placed the trophy on my dresser, after my Mom painted “Miss Recreation’s” boobs and nose with a gold shade of nail polish that barely masked her damages. I’d like to think that seeing the trophy’s boob and nose job each night might have set the rest of my life on the right course. However, it turned out that as an adult, when you pass through my own pair of chipped Double Ds to get to my heart, the false vibrato of “Yahtzee” can still be heard echoing from within.
Rubber Chicken 