When you are young you don't think about dangerous things. You never figure that playing Forts with bbguns or hand made stakes would really hurt anyone. It was a game and if you got hurt you were just a lousy player.
We would play Children of the Corn and hide in the fields until some unknown passerby would come along or the people who owned it tried to hunt us out. Chopping down the stalks to make our little hovels before we set war against the others.
Rebels and Indians; Princesses and War in the Secret Passage beyond the gravel road of my Grandmothers house.
At other times we would play games that all children played then. Red Rover Red Rover, Mother May I, Simon Says, or Baseball.
But one of our favorite things to do was to find the highest hill. We would all race up to the top to be King of the Mountain, but when we got there we would forget who won; forget who lost. And laugh until our hearts hurt and lay down in the sun on our backs. After awhile one or two of us would put their hands over their face and roll down the hill. Then we would all go. You didn't think about rocks or sticks or bugs or even what was at the bottom of the hill in those times. You just covered your face and let go and laughed all the way down.
Sometimes I wish I had that same strength or ignorance. That at each time I struggle to get past one hill, only knowing there is another, to just forget about it all and close my eyes and lay down and just roll........
.... I wonder when I became such a lousy player.