Coping with Corona: Refrain from painting the dog

PLAINS TWP. — Remember those long ago days when you were in your house and you heard, “Yo, can you come out and play?”

A look at my mom or dad for the OK, and outside I went.

There were so many options — up-against was a game played with a rubber ball that we would throw up against a wall. A grounder or a fly ball caught was an out. If you caught the corner of the wall with that rubber ball — Home Run!

We would play that game for hours, never realizing the exercise we were getting by throwing that ball over and over and then chasing it all over the street.

We also played Stocking Ball in the street — baseball with real wooden bats and a ball made of old socks, sewn together by my mom. Looking back, it seems we invented a game that took Wiffle Ball a step further. Instead of using plastic balls and bats, we used wooden bats to hit that sock/stocking ball as far as we could — but really not that far.

And we did have Wiffle Ball games in my backyard. A double was on the lower roof, a triple on the upper roof and a homer was over the roof. A Wiffle ball was hard to hit because of the way it curved and dipped.

We made lineups of our favorite teams and we batted righty or lefty, depending on what the big leaguer batted.

We also played tackle football and we played traditional games like hide and seek, tag and Relieve-eeo. Don’t ask me for those rules, I can’t even spell it correctly.

And we went on adventures, walking along the creek all the way to the water dams on Plymouth mountain. We stopped and soaked our feet in the water and we observed all of nature’s beauty.

And sometimes we did stuff kids sometimes do. Like the day Chris Balita and I took a can of green paint and two brushed from his grandfather’s cellar. We walked up Reynolds Street and decided to do some painting. we pained the garb age can, the kitchen window and the dog, Blackie.

Luckily Mrs. Balita decided to look out her kitchen window to check on us, but she couldn’t see through the green paint. She came out and found us painting Blackie — we had his back and sides pretty covered in green paint. Chris said we could call him Greenie. Mrs. Balita was not laughing.

We had to scrub the still wet paint off of the window, the house, the garbage can and Blackie. It took a lot of soap and water, but we got it done. Mrs. Balita told me to go home and tell my mother what we did. Yeah, right. But before I could even begin to tell her, she knew because Mrs. Balita called her.

Chris was told to take a bath and stay in his room.

My cousin Claire reminded me of that story yesterday. Unlike my mom and Mrs. Balita, Claire thought it was pretty funny. She asked me why we did it. I really couldn’t answer that.

It was just two bored kids on a summer day looking for something to do. We thought painting the garbage can and a part of the Balita house was good. Blackie, however, now that probably wasn’t a good idea.

So if you have difficulty coping with the boredom brought by being self-isolated, read a book, watch a movie, play a game.

Don’t paint the dog.