The Cemetery

If you double-click on this image you'll see the headstones for Smithers Cemetery right across the creek from my parents' dock, where I shot this picture one recent misty morning.

Cemeteries have always been fascinating to me. As children, Middle Sister and I would swim across this creek, usually at low tide, to mill around the graves. This ought to be proof enough that there was very little to keep a child entertained around here in the days before DVD's, pPods and Wii bowling. OK, so they're iPods. It so happens I'm more familiar and comfortable with pea pods.

Anyway.....

Just down the way from this cemetery lived our friends. Friends who had ponies.

One day Chesapeake Bay Middle Sister, Chesapeake Bay Woman and Neighbor Friend rode these ponies bareback along the creek while the mothers sat safely indoors discussing the pros and cons of Dippity Do, Aqua Net, Hai Karate and Aqua Velva. Meantime, the children were galloping on wild ponies bareback and barefoot along the shoreline, with hardly a grain of sense among the bunch.

After taking the ponies on a tour of the grave yard, by which I mean to say that we perhaps trod unintentionally on the resting places a few dearly departed citizens, we eased the ponies back down the embankment towards the creek.

Once they realized the trail ride was over and feeding time was nigh, the wild beasts ponies took off running towards their stable, with nary a regard or consideration for the passenger(s) who may have been astride their withers.

And so it came to be that Chesapeake Bay Woman OR Chesapeake Bay Middle Sister OR Chesapeake Bay Woman AND Chesapeake Bay Middle Sister (because I can't remember) rolled off the rump of a horse directly into the creek mud. (It may have even been The Friend. Rest assured someone fell off a bucking bronco who couldn't wait two minutes for his handful of grain.)

One could say we got what we deserved for riding ponies on grave sites. Or one could say that if this was the worst that happened when our mothers were doing who knows what flipping through Avon magazines while watching Search for Tomorrow, we made out pretty darn good.

Tell me something you did when you were young that you cannot imagine happening today. (For example, the last time I saw children riding ponies in Smithers Cemetery and/or Queens Creek was this time: only when we did it.) Or, tell me about playing in cemeteries.

Or, please confirm that we led a bizarre life growing up in such a sheltered world, where the only thing to do was discuss Dippity Do with friends frolic unsupervised on horses with no saddles and no supervision, other than from the dearly departed.

Or, please let's just laugh nervously and never talk about this again.

Or just count how many times I use the word "or."

Congratulations for sticking with me this far. If reading this is even a fraction as painful as it is to write, my sincerest sympathies. As a reward, I offer the following:

A temporary reprieve from my incessant, relentless ramblings is coming...later this week. More details tomorrow on Three Ring Thing Thursday.