Saturday, December 19, 2009
3:10 AM
Badminton
When I was little, my parents bought a really nice badminton set complete with nice net and everything. Such things were never the norm around our house so that was a really big deal to me and I was inexplicable fascinated by the whole game, but especially that little red-tipped birdy. (I refuse to call it by it's former name as it makes my skin crawl) We actually only had a handful of get-togethers wherein the adults and bigger kids got out in the yard and played while the burgers cooked on the grill but those few times were very special to me and I remember them quite fondly. One summer, my parents kept the net up for several weeks after a party so Jeff Adams and me, OR, Rhonda, Pat, Bernie, and me would get the equipment out and play. I was too little to be very good at it (about 3 or 4 when we first got it) but I always got to play some just the same. They taught me how to hit the birdy just right on the weighted red part to make it sail and I got pretty good at that part. I had to climb over into Mrs. Erickson's yard and Mrs. Hardy's yard many a time to retrieve one of my misguided hits. Hitting, I could manage. AIMING, well....not so much. LOL It would be a few more years before I mastered that particular developmental skill.
Good, sweet, innocent times before the damn broke and all hell rained down upon the heads of the little family on Madison Street.