Boots Filled With Warm Memory

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Cowboy Boots Filled

With A Warm Memory

            A photo-essay showing playgrounds starkly empty due to COVID-19 caused my heart to sink with sadness, but a black-and-white image of a lonely swing set was a time machine that made me laugh. I figure we can all use a dose of levity during these trying days, so here is a social-distancing memory from the 1960s.

My best friend Dan and I were in kindergarten. In our imaginations on this day, the swing set was our airplane and we were paratroopers fighting in the Cold War. We would pump as high as we could and then, at the zenith of the forward surge, launch ourselves airborne.

The danger of a broken leg or chipped tooth from this human-catapult game only added to our recess revelry.

After a few landings behind Russian lines, I had to go to the bathroom. Naturally, I ignored nature’s call. I figured I could hold out until the bell rang.

This became more difficult with each ensuing parachute-less landing, sometimes in a tumble, on the blacktop. Wearing hard-heeled cowboy boots rather than rubber-soled PF Flyers made the impact all the more jarring to my legs and, in turn, to my bloated bladder.

The end-of-recess bell still had not clanged, but I could hold it in no longer. I pumped my legs on the swings one last time, rose towards the clouds, released my grip at the perfect moment and soared far into enemy troop territory.

I then raced inside Classroom 2 to its single-person restroom. The smooth soles of my cowboy boots skidded to a stop on the tile floor and I turned the doorknob …

… LOCKED!

I felt a stab of panic. My five-year-old mind had not anticipated this perilous possibility. Frantically, I danced the I-Have-To-Go-Number-One Texas Two Step and knocked on the door. A girl’s voice said the restroom was in use.

“Hurry up,” I urged and danced faster.

Seconds passed like minutes.

“Hurry, pleeeease!” I pleaded.

By now my bladder was like a balloon hooked to a water faucet and rapidly being filled to the bursting point. Finally, the toilet flushed and its whooshing water was music to my ears – and like Pavlov’s bell to my bladder.

More running water in the sink.

“No, don’t wash your hands!” I thought. “There’s no time!”

I knocked yet again and begged with full urgency: “Please, pleeease, let me in!”

CLICK! At long last the door unlocked and swung open. A girl exited and I rushed in.

For unpracticed kindergarten fingers, a pants zipper can be as difficult to solve as cracking a safe. Before I could dial the opening combination, Hoover Dam breached and warm waterfalls cascaded down both my legs.

Remarkably, not a drop of the five gallons of pee spilled onto the floor. This was because two-and-a-half gallons filled my right cowboy boot and two-and-a-half gallons poured into the left.

Events then took a turn for the worse. Before I could sneak out of the restroom and get help from Miss Bower – dry pants would be nice; a disguise even better – the recess bell rang and in stormed the rest of the class.

Knock, knock!

“Go away!”

A long moment passed as I remained sheltered in place.

Knock, knock!

Through the locked door and through tears: “Tell Miss Bower (sniffle) I need her.”

Like nurses and grandmas, kindergarten teachers are angels on earth. Miss Bower came inside, hugged me, and then escorted me – Squish! Squish! Squish! – down a mile-long hallway to the office to wait for my mom to bring dry clothes and shoes.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a photojournalist around.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …