neighborhood adventures

Sarah McDuffie 2/12/09
Adventures Right in my Back yard
Even growing up in urban Atlanta, I have always believed that can magic exist any wear. My neighborhood was filled with block after block of beautiful old houses that were made back in the civil war. The blocks are all connected by ally ways, which felt like my own little secret garden that I could play in. There were always a lot of children on my street, but there were never my age. My two older sisters had lots of friends on the street. They would all go ride their bikes, but I was never allowed because I was to young. Even though my street felt very safe to me, my parents would worry. The bad part about living in the city is once you left the street you were on a very busy road and right next to some very busy bars as well. I was never allowed to go further from where I could hear me mom yelling, unless I told her where I was going. I loved and still love my neighborhood for its beauty and the doors of creativity that it opens for me.
One day I noticed that I had new neighbors moving in only two houses down from me. I also noticed that they had a little girl with blonde short hair like a boy and she was rather short. I saw her playing in the yard with a funny little rat looking thing. It would scurry around while she would fallow it on her hand and knees and grab it right before it made an escape. I told my oldest sister named Laura what I had seen and that I wanted to see what the girl was playing with, but I was to scarred to go over there by my self. Laura quickly grabbed my hand and we
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started walking down the street. By the time we were getting past the second house and coming upon the lawn with girl, she looked up, grabbed the rat and ran into the house. I remember feeling embarrass that we had come all this way for her to run away from us. Right as Laura and I were turning around to go back to the house the little girl returned back through the door holding her older sister’s hand in one hand and the rat in the other. This was the first time I met Hannah. Hannah was a small girl who was a tomboy just like me. The rat in her hand was actually not a rat at all, but a ginne pig named Brownie because that was Hannah’s favorite dessert at the time. Even though Hannah was half my size her creative mind was bigger than any one’s I have ever met.
Hanging out with Hannah became a daily thing. After school I would run down to her house or it would be the other way around and she would run down to my house. We would play endless, inventive games. One of our games was playing in the ally. There was always some sort of weeds growing there. The weeds would be our crops and we would be the farmers. We would spend hours pulling out these weeds that looked like a wheat plants to us. We would wash them in a bucket. Then we would bundle them together, tie them with a string and put them in a cooler. Once that was all done we would make up different people to come buy the wheat from us. After pulling out enough wheat we started noticing other little plants that grew in the ally. Such as little weeds that if you pulled out they looked and smelled like onions. We also found wild strawberries that we never dared to
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eat. We would find all sorts of berries and wild flowers as well. With all our different crops we would take them down to Hannah’s basement. This is where we would smash them up and put them into little bottles. They were our magical potions, that could cure anything and I’m pretty sure they are still there today.
Hannah was the most, picky eater I have every met. Her diet contained of pizza roles, apple juice, and Butterfinger chewy bars. She would never ever put a fruit or vegetable in her mouth without wanting to gage. Even though her diet was very strict she still wanted to be a chief. Most days after school she would come over to my house and make me food, but she would never try it herself. Her favorite thing to make was nachos. She said that if she ever owned a restaurant she would make these nachos and call them the McDuffie’s special.
It would always upset my mom that Hannah would not eat the super that she would prepare. Instead she would bring her pizza roles down to our house and eat those instead. I would always complain how Hannah never had to eat her broccoli, but I did. This is when is my mom started to notice that Hannah never had any rules. Hannah’s parents never had any control over Hannah’s actions. She was a wild child and I was a goodie toshoes because of this there was a lot of conflicts. The first time this became a problem was when Hannah wanted to cross the busy street. Hannah and I were getting older and my mom would finally allow us to go walk down to CVS. If you walk out of our street and take a right you can go straight down to CVS without having to cross the busy street. We though it would be fun to
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take our allowance which was a whopping five dollars and roller blade down to the CVS, where we would buy candy. We had a good time skating down and getting our favorite candy bar “Butterfingers”. On our way home Hannah decided that she wanted to cross the street because there was a yard sale. I was to scared, because I had promised my mom that I would not cross the street. No matter how hard Hannah tried to convince me that we would be fine I couldn’t help but feel the guilt of betraying my mom. Since Hannah wasn’t going to go alone we ended up back at my house.
This was just one of the many conflicts I had with myself. Weather to fallow Hannah’s lead and go down a dangerous yet fun path or fallow my mom and be safe. No matter what side I took Hannah and I were inseparable. At one point Hannah basically lived at my house and I considered her one of my sisters. Even though Hannah had no rules and I had plenty. Hannah had a hard relationship with her parents and I had a close one we connected through our imaginary games. Our playful games kept us together and made us have the strongest friendship ever. I’ll never forget the time when we dressed up funny and congregated the whole neighborhood to have our very own Mardi Gra. We got all our neighbors to dress up, ride bikes and through beads to people in cars that passed by. My memories with Hannah are my most, fondest memories of my childhood. Our games will always stick with me and because of that the magic in our imagination will always be in my heart.