Some of you don't know me all that well; this post is dedicated to you. Enjoy.
When I was a wee little lady, I lived down the road from my cousins, two sets of cousins actually. Triple trouble. My house was right in the middle of the sets of cousins, so when my mom wasn't home, everyone would meet there. We had this sweet forest behind our house with a super huge tree that we would climb up and make castles out of its limbs. We also had a little creek right next to house that fed into a larger one down the road. Oh and we were also on a mountain, so closer to one cousin's house, there were caverns and a cliff. The other cousin's house had a pool and an amazing view of the city, something we didn't appreciate until we were older.
All together, there were 14 of us that hung out and reeked havoc on our neighbors. One of my favorite places to go was across the street. Up the hill, we were on the downward slope, there was a wooded area that we had made into another kingdom/hide-out from the parents when we were in trouble for pissing our neighbors off. On the other side of the woods there stood, in all its glory, an amazing house. When I say amazing, I mean that as an 8 year-old even I was stunned by its beauty. The architecture was impeccable, the slate and rock siding was so incredible that, when we played up there, we played the paupers. We knew we weren't worthy to even pretend live there.
I guess my dad went through a phase of making us watch the History Channel all the time to make sure we were getting a proper education, and the Nazi's were the main topic. Either that or an episode really stuck with me... I do remember having a fear that Hitler was still alive... good grief DAD! What were you polluting my innocent mind with?!
Anyway, there was this one time in particular that I remember like it was yesterday. My boy cousins, probably Patton, Nicholas, and/or Reed, and I were playing that there were Nazi's on the loose and Germany was being taken over (dun, dun, dunnnn)! By the way, Germany was this massive rock, and guess who lived in the beautiful house... that's right, Hitler. Since the old couple that lived there barely tolerated us, we were not allowed anywhere inside their house, or patio for that matter. I had gotten very into this game of "Catch Hitler" before I realized that I had an enormous fear of the cousin that was playing Hitler. The excuse we gave him to not have to hide out in his house, because that was not even close to being a reality, was that it had been infiltrated with spies for the other side and he had to go into hiding. Somehow we changed the rules to where it was okay that we magically became American's and the Nazi's we were previously, were somewhere in the woods trying to kill us. The cousin that played Hitler, my fear of him mentioned previously, told us the only was to kill him was to hurl rocks at him. Seemed reasonable, Hitler was evil and it would take a lot to bring him down. I was on a mission: KILL HITLER (stop)
Rocks were flying. I don't remember if it was me or one of the other boys playing with me that threw it, but we managed to kill Hitler. With Hitler dead, we now had my ailing cousin to attend to. Gash in the forehead, that's what the 8 year-old paramedics decided was wrong. How do you fix that? "Uhhh... uhhh... WRAP YOUR SHIRT AROUND HIS HEAD! ... Hmm, something about this doesn't look right. Do you think that looks like a turban?" Play it cool guys, play it cool. Let's leave the house in a single file. Walk through the woods, single file. Cross the street and actually look both ways, still in single file. Guy with the wrapped head, stay in the middle. We were very cautious kids... once we knew we did something we shouldn't have, or if we maimed another cousin.
We got in trouble, as always, but I took down Hitler. Even if he wasn't really Hitler, I knew at least the imaginary one was dead, and that was enough for me. Who would have guessed we would have walked into those woods as one terrorist and walk out looking like another?
