Hey you kids, get out of that JELL-O tree!

This week has been a tumultuous roller coaster ride of emotions so I apologise for not blogging. I won’t get into the details because this is “light and flaky” not “heavy and depressing”. Whenever I get this way though, I look to fond memories from the past to make me smile. I present to you now a story of childhood innocence gone awry.

My grandparents lived on a street that dead-ended in a farmer’s orchard. As they lived on the Niagara escarpment there were peach, plum and apple trees along with a small vineyard.

We five angelic children loved our grandparents dearly. We also loved pools (what kid doesn’t?) and mischief. As they had no pool, and we could only entertain ourselves so long with the plastic bowling set provided, we opted for a spot o’ trouble.

Finding ourselves in the orchard late summer, we were presented with a veritable smorgasbord of fruit. We’d rip a bunch of grapes off the vine, eat one or two, throw the rest at each other and move onto the next.

We continued to pillage and plunder until our little bellies were blotted and our clothes nicely stained. Who needs paint balls guns when you have rip grapes and rotting plums? Needing a bit of rest, we each climbed a peach tree, perched on a branch like crows, lazily picked at peaches taking the occasional bite and dropping the rest to the ground below.

All of a sudden, my four cohorts fell from their trees like rotten plums in a high wind and fled for the cover of the vineyard. I had ignored one of life’s cardinal rules when I sat with my back to the farmhouse – never turn your back on your enemy. I sensed something was amiss but it was too little, too late, too slow. It must have been all the fruit pumping through my body that slowed me down. When I looked down I came face-to-face with an angry farmer armed with a big white club. It looked like a chunk of a picket fence that he ripped off as he came out of his house. That is how my mind remembers it. It was likely a pitch fork or rake. But I remember a white piece of 2 X 2 for some reason. Perhaps I am trying to ease the pain of this traumatic memory by projecting The Rock from “Walking Tall” into my mind. He could chase me up a peach tree any day!

I don’t remember much after that. I likely wet myself and hit the farmer in the process. There was a lecture from the farmer and a passionate confession of guilt to our parents and grandparents. Keep in mind that both sides of my family are farm folk, the salt of the earth as it were. Tears or not we found no sympathy. There was a return to the scene of the crime and compensation for the farmer in the form of our allowance.

The ultimate punishment came later that day when five little pigs, who had stuffed themselves silly with fruit, lined up to use the bathroom. Plums = prunes. Need I say more?