Happy Love Day

***Warning, the following contains a very random memory that attacked my brain on the way back from lunch today***

When I was about 13 or 14, the summer before I started high school, every day during the week my cousins, brother, aunt, and I would go to the playground. The walk from my grandma's house to the playground was an interesting one. It took us about 15 minutes because at the time my cousins and brother were young, the youngest being 4 and the oldest 7 or 8. We had to walk through a housing project known as Ruffin Road. The name about sums up the area. It was pretty rough, the ditches were usually filled with empty beer bottles and trash, condoms, torn clothes, and discarded toys. Weird combination.

But we trudged away anyway, mostly because there wasn't much else to do. We had one car, a small Buick, and there were 7 of us. You do the math on that one. We could've taken the bus downtown, but with all those kids it was hard. So, we went to the playground.

We would leave home around 10:00 AM, any later and you'd run the chance of drug dealers and prostitutes being in the way, plus it would get hot and we'd want to be back in before noon to put the kids down for naps.

Once there, we all had a routine. My brother and cousin played with the other boys there, my aunt and I would take turns pushing the girls on the swings or catching them on the sliding board. After everyone was settled into their activity, I did what I loved the most at that time, I played basketball. And I played hard. Against myself and against any boy who was willing to play me. I had no idea, until a few years ago when we were all reminiscing about these days, that it was such a big deal for my cousins. They had a girl playing basketball. On a public court. In the middle of the projects.

The only thing that would break my playing and the playing of everyone else at the playground was lunch. Free lunch got served anywhere from 11:30-11:45. The city provided free lunch for kids at the local playgrounds. It was never good, but for some reason we were all addicted to getting it. Most of the time it was just a sandwich, juice, and honey bun. Really nutricious, gotta keep those poor kids growing strong you know. But what I remembered today when this thought came dancing in my head was how much we all shared. Everyone would sit in the shadiest part of the playground and spread out their feast. A breeze blowing, we'd eat the edible parts of the sandwich, gulp down the juice and devour the honeybuns. The days they had donoughts were the best. There were some kids who would try to take more than one lunch (the rule was one lunch per kid and you couldn't take it off the playground). They'd sneak the food in their pants or on their bikes. For them, it was probably the only meal they would get that day. We would take whatever we didn't eat and trade or give it away to one another. Why the city had a lock down on food- crap food, is beyond me.
Some days, they gave us popsicles.

We only went to the playground that one summer. My mom said she had bad feelings about us being there, and sure enough, months later a kid was shot on that court. But what I remember are the hot summer days, the heat rising from the court, and lunch.