my childhood home

There are many things that I remember about my childhood home, but I can’t draw you a picture. The house was a two-story, blue house that was on a side street in Indianapolis. We lived right behind the elementary school that my brothers and I attended; in fact we used to walk to school. The middle school was behind our house also, but at the bottom of the hill. The second story of the house was like a basement and that is where we, the kids, had our rooms. My baby sister and I had our own rooms and my two younger brothers shared a huge room, this room was the size of a family room or something. The upstairs of the house is where the living room, the kitchen and dining area, and my parents’ room. There was also a room that we turned into a playroom.
This house has so many memories and emotions for me. I loved the fact that my brothers and I always had playmates. There were a lot of kids that lived on my street, and near my street. We were always outside playing. We were the only house that had a pool, so there were always kids over at our house. My stepmother babysat a bunch of little kids so we “big” kids would hide outside with the other kids that we played with. I think besides myself there were only two other girls, the rest were all boys. The other girls and I were little tomboys running around. We would play football, go fishing for crawdads, play cops and robbers, and other silly boy-type games. We would spend hours in the pool. My stepmother had to set time limits because we would sleep in the pool if she let us. From the between the time when we woke up and when we went to bed, minus the times we were eating and whatnot, we would stay in the pool. We had a big deck on the first story and the second story of the house. You wouldn’t know this now, but my dad worked in construction as an electrician and was very good with his hands. He built the deck by himself while we kids would try to help, but I think we actually just got in the way.
We had a pretty good sized backyard, especially for living in Indy. The yard was about an acre and I think we used every inch of it. Besides the pool being back there, we also had a big wooden play set thing. It had a slide and the top was like a fort. The bottom of the “fort” had a sandbox. There was a rope for us to climb on, and to hurt ourselves. The top of the “fort” had a yellow tarp to help protect from the weather and sun. There was also a shed in the yard. The shed was used for storage, but there wasn’t much in there. My brothers and I took it upon ourselves to turn it into a clubhouse. I guess we decided that having must of the yard wasn’t good enough. My brothers would move the stuff in the shed to make room for us to move around, and I would clean. Have you ever tried to sweep dirt off of a dirt floor? Let me tell you it is impossible. But still, everyday after school we would be out there. One time, while we were taking a break, we started to dig a hole. Our plan was to get to China. I think we got about a foot or two deep and we ran into really hard clay or something, and we couldn’t dig any further.
I could go on forever about the house that I grew up in. A couple of years ago a tornado went down the street and a bunch of houses were destroyed. The house I lived in was totally missed by the tornado though. The house itself wasn’t that important to me. In fact, I drove by the house a month ago and even though the house still pretty much looks the same, I don’t get the same vibe as I used to when driving down the street. Now all I have are the memories that I keep close to my heart.