I remember the window

Took in some self nostalgia today.  Nothing to do with the present life, or my life with Tony.  Or the past 10 or 20 or 30 years.  Nah, today was real nostalgia.

I walked down the street where I spent ten years of my life, from five years old to fifteen years old.  

Had a chore to to in the area so diverted to the street and went for a walk - so much has changed, yet so little has changed.  Walked passed the house when I spent the best years of my childhood.  No 15.  It looks almost exactly the same.  

Here I was, walking down the street of my childhood almost fifty years later, with the curiosity of any adult revisiting their childhood home, and I remembered the window.  

The bedroom window; the one that I used to jump from when I was sent to my bedroom, either as punishment for some child indiscretion or sent to because it was my bedtime.

On those light summer nights I could not sleep; or on the times when I was in the room for punishment I could not sit and sulk for being dealt such a punishing blow as being sent here.  Both were boring and there were so many more exciting things I could be doing.  So much playing to be done.

Heart in my mouth I would quietly pull down the latch to the window, push the window out as wide as it would open, climb onto the sill and then leap – hands out in front, leap and land firmly with both feet on the firm grass below.

 

From landing it was always then a fast escape from our home, running through the gap in the hedge to the house next door, knock on the door in the hope that one of the five neighbouring children could, or were allowed, to come out and play.  Usually they were.

So here I was, almost fifty years later, rewalking the street of my urchin childhood, taking the nostalgia trip, taking in the rewards of memories, reliving the past. It was fun.

That's when I remembered the window.  That bedroom window.

I walked along the footpath in front of the house, along to one side of the house front so that I could have a clear view of that bedroom window down on the side wall.  I estimated that I would have jumped from that window at least fifty times, maybe more during my childhood tenure of being a five to fifteen year old.

There it was, the window.  I was astounded, aghast and horrified.  That window had to be at least eighteen to twenty feet from the ground.  Surely not!  Surely it is.  I looked, relooked, blinked, reblinked.  Yes, it is at least eighteen feet from the ground.  Glory be.

Clearly the nutrition of that time and the milk we had to drink each day at school from those small little glass bottles had fed me enough calcium to strengthen my bones to become sheer rods of steel. 

For never on one of those leaps to happiness did I ever as much as twist an ankle or hurt a knee.

Yet only last week my neighbour’s son of nine had jumped off a jungle gym not more than a metre from the ground and broken his ankle.  And his mother is fraught with anger at the dangers of jungle gyms.  

Phuff!  They clearly don’t make children, or mothers, as strong nowadays as we lot were made back in the 1950's.

Ohhh.... that makes me sound sooooo old.  Guess I am.