The Polliwog Fields by Jeremy Owen

Author:Jeremy Owen [Owen, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventures from Astoria
Publisher: Masters Productions Publishing
Published: 2020-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

BGIV

Before the age of ten, I had been kicked, punched, stabbed, impaled, lacerated, knocked cold, and shot, all of which happened while playing the board game Monopoly. So, as you can imagine, family fun night was always approached cautiously and with trepidation, to put it mildly. Of all of us brothers, Jarod was particularly prone to a little-known syndrome called BGIV: Board Game Induced Violence. Jarod had always been the kind of kid who if you pushed too far was likely to bite you. Not so different from Dad’s old stray dog Hobo—or a real hobo, when you think about it.

None of us had ever heard of autism at the time, so we just thought that Jarod, like that old dog or an old hobo, from time to time got worms or something and sort of snapped. All of us kids were kind of quirky in one way or another, and I think Grandpa Owen might have been right when he used to say he wasn’t sure there was a prize piglet amongst us.

We used our quirks to entertain each other the best we could. Our friend Richie got his foot cut off by the train that runs past the river. When he was over, we would have one-legged or three-legged races, depending on how many kids we could round up. Mom used to say we should celebrate people’s differences. We took that to mean that it was okay to make fun of each other as long as everybody got their equal share of being made fun of. If a kid had a lisp, he got to be Daffy Duck when we played Chase Daffy Duck. If a kid was a bed-wetter, he got to be the Swamp Thing when we played Chase the Swamp Thing.

If a kid was, let’s say, autistic and my little brother, you could wait until he wasn’t expecting it and sneak up behind him. Then you’d shove your thumb into his bellybutton and grab him around the waist with your other hand and hang on tight while counting aloud, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi.” That way, you could see how long you could ride the bull while he tried to buck you off. We called it the “bellybutton scritch game.” To be fair, he played too. It was a great source of pride for whoever was the champ at any given time.

Another game we played was pirates, complete with sword fights. We used Mom’s darning needles for swords. That game wasn’t played too much after we thought we lost one of the needles, only to find it dangling out of Jarod’s right ear.

We played a game called “rock fight.” The name sort of says it all. That one ended with my left ear all bloody and another trip to the emergency room. Rock fight was an outdoor game anyways. Since we lived in Astoria, and the word “Astoria” is more or less synonymous with the word “rain,” we once again found ourselves stuck inside playing board games.

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