“Oo-Oo-E-E-Ah-Ers”

  For this creative exercise, (which I hope will tone my creative muscles), Professor Lara Tupper asked us to, “Map a place you know well.” For this workout I decided to pull a line from my second story to furthur explore. I feel that this will shape up fine.

The line I am referring to said this, “They don’t know that I had a childhood dream of playing right across the street from her house.”

The view from the dream is as if I’m standing in her driveway looking across the street at myself playing behind a bush. The drawing that was produced is a crude rendering of the elementary school both my love and I attended as prepubescents, Lloyd Road Elementary. The “view”, if you can call it that, is supposed to be a bird’s eye view from above Tracy’s home.

Tracy’s home is represented by the sloppy rectangle with the sloppy heart inside of it with the sloppy triangle representing a roof on top of it. There is an arrow protruding pointing to the spot where the dream took place when I was in second or third grade and attending the Road named after the Lloyd Family. However, the road in the scribbles that is supposed to be a drawing is not Lloyd, but rather Cambridge Drive.

In interpreting this drawing I have started at the closest layer to the observer, Tracy’s Mom’s house, otherwise known as Patty’s Home. I then mentioned the road. The closest object, and perhaps the only clearly identifiable object in this ink vomit is a patrol car. This patrol car is in there because in my town, Matawan (which is Native American for “Where two rivers meet”), the local law enforcers park their cars in this spot quite often in order to apprehend law breakers and teach them lessons the hard way.

Just behind the patrol car is a fence with an opening that leads to the park. The little dots represent the gravel which is the texture of this terrain.

The next object in the next layer are out of place monkey bars that should be squished in towards the left in the playground with the poorly drawn draw bridge and slide which all the little monkey kids regularly, well, monkey around on. I was once a monkey kid and I loved it. Hey, hey, we’re the monkey kids, and there is a LOT of monkey kidding around.

Just beyond the jungle gym where the monkey kids work out is where the big boys play. It’s the basketball court. Men play there too in this town. I’m sure girls and women do too, I just normally play with the guys. I can dunk on the far left one because it is a little lower and has a bent rim. In fact, now, after the slamtastic dunk, I hang on the rim like a postpubescent monkey.

Directly to the right of the out of place humanzee/chuman bars is a fence that leads to the baseball field adjacent to the field which was regularly used by my friends and I for some tackle football. Also, this is the same field that was used for what was creatively called in my childhood, Field Day! Field Day is a cross between the Olympics and the early 1990’s televison show Wild and Crazy Kids. In other words, I should have chosen other words to describe the scene. Anyway, I thought Field Day was the funnest day of the year back then. Now I would have thought it was the most fun day.

Smack in the middle of the basketball hoop and the batting cage of the baseball field is what was supposed to be steps leading down to the street and across to the school. Looking at it now it looks like some kind of stereo system or something.

After you take the stereo system down to the street and cross it, LOOKING BOTH WAYS FIRST YOUNG MAN!, to the right is the school itself. I tried to draw a flag in the far corner, a flag of the American kind.

The next layer is yet another basketball court which was recently added. It was recently added, but only because something else was subtracted, THE ORIGINAL JUNGLE I USED TO, “OO-OO-E-E-AH-AH” IN! This jungle contained a slide in which I would throw myself off the top of in my 1^st through 4^th grade years. After this I would then feign death, or if not that, at least a mangled still alive corpse…. to impress the girls of course.

It also contained a tire swing that about five of the other monkeys would get into right before one of the grown up monkeys, the Lunch Aids, would spin us and spin us and spin us into the pleasant, peaceful blur. Although, some of the monkeys apparently could not handle the peaceful blur as the Lunch Aids proved ineffective because those unfortunate OO-OO-E-E-AH-AHer’s would lose their lunch.

To the direct left of the addition is the Forbidden Woods and to the direct right is a drawing of the pavement path that leads to behind the school where recess was held and even MORE basketball hoops of varying sizes are and games like Keep Away were played. And, that’s it. The End.

12/07/07