Popsicle Sticks

It's officially almost summer. The sky is nearly always summer blue, my windows are thrown open to the sound of children playing, and a summer breeze kept me company on my walk last night.

I pretended yesterday that I was a kid and it was summer vacation. I couldn't pretend all day since I still had work with buckets of meetings and some errands that needed running (boo to being an adult!), but I did manage to read a book start to finish and I ate a large slice of honey dew melon and a popsicle for lunch.

When I was a small child I basically lived off popsicles in the summer. I would eat as many in a day as my Ma would let me get away with. My tiny mouth and my tendency toward painful brain freezes necessitated eating my popsicles slowly. I would sit on the front porch with the sun in my face and my popsicle running down my fingers to drip on my barefoot toes and get in the funny, plastic, green outdoor carpet we had there. I would try to lick as much of my popsicle drippings up as I could, resulting in a sticky face, sticky fingers, and sticky arms.

The best part came after the popsicle was gone. A quick trip to the small water spigot we had in our backyard fixed the stickiness and prepped my popsicle stick for things to come. I had all sorts of uses for my popsicle sticks but making tiny wooden spears was by far my favorite. None of these namby pamby pretend popsicle stick spears either. Some determination, a little bit of elbow grease, and a nice slab of sidewalk is all you need for perfect popsicle stick spears. It was an art form, grinding my popsicle stick at the right angle on both sides to get the perfectly pointed, surprising sharp, popsicle stick spear.

I used my popsicle stick spears to slay dragons and evil wizards, to protect the interests of my magic turtle (a small mound of earth in our backyard purposely shaped like a turtle), and to undermine evil older brothers and destroy the malicious plans of annoying younger sisters. All my foes were pretend, of course, and none of them resembled in any way living people.

After I was through with my popsicle stick spears I would plant them in the garden, sharp side down. I made little rows of them. Sometimes they would stay there til they started looking tired and worn out from sprinklers and sun. More often, my carefully planted rows of popsicle sticks would disappear after one of my parents or my Granny got serious about weeding. I never let such antics stop me. I would simply begin again, carefully planting my popsicle sticks, giving them the hope that someday, when the time was great and the danger was near, they would live again, defending the honor or their mistress and maintaining the peace and safety of her kingdom.