Two Little Feet Pounding on My Shoulders

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Two Little Feet Pounding on My Shoulders
“The Family Years”
Bob Warkenton
Blustery cold winds scattered burnt orange leaves through the neighborhood. Sweet scented air broadcast rain was coming down the northwest storm track from the Gulf of Alaska.
“Hey, Dad! Can we go to Craig Park?” Kyle’s excitement was motivating. He was demanding for a five-year-old.
“OK, let’s load the bikes in the back of the truck.” I said.
With the year’s first rain coming, I thought, a trip to the park will keep him exercised through the rainy days ahead.
We were out the door dressed and primed for an excursion to see swans, geese, and ducks by riding our bikes up and down the hills. A trip to the park would include a visit to Kyle’s favorite haunt—the playground. A joyous place with swings, climbing bars, open and closed slides, and where the gleeful sounds of children laughing, screaming and shouting could be heard.
Craig park is in a forty-acre valley surrounded on all sides by gentle rolling hills. A lake in the middle entices a variety of migratory waterfowl to spend the winter. Concrete bike trails lay grey ribbons up, down, around and over the hills.
On top of the most northerly hill is a large kid’s playground; our ultimate destination after biking to almost exhaustion.
As we neared the playground, Kyle rode up keeping only one foot on the left pedal. He abruptly dismounted, letting the bike fall sideways to the ground.
This was my chance to relax and watch as I sat down on a bench.
Kyle had limitless energy running from one play feature to another, then another. He jumped into the swing, pumping himself higher and higher. Leaning far back and kicking out his legs, he held on tightly with his little arms. Just as I was going to let out a fatherly word of caution, he bailed out of the swing as it neared the apex. Kyle flew through the air landing on both feet then tumbled forward. Getting up he ran to the enclosed slide. This was a slide of highly polished aluminum covered with a narrow light green fiberglass tube.
Sliding down over and over again, Kyle could not get enough of the thrill.
“Come on Dad. Come try the slide with me!”
I didn’t respond at first. Looking around there were three other mothers watching their kids.
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I guess nobody would mind me sliding down the enclosed slide with my son, I thought.
Dark clouds were building and rain was in the air soon to come. I walked over to the slide. A ladder went up seven feet to the opening. Kyle had just launched himself down as I took the first step up the ladder. The rungs were sticky making my hands smell like sweet candy flavors. Getting to the top I positioned myself to go down the slide. Kyle was already on his way up behind me.
“Go Dad!” shouted Kyle.
Arms positioned at my sides, I started to move down the polished aluminum surface ̶ which was also very sticky from gum and candy. The inside of the tube smelled of kids. I made a mental note to shower when we got home.
The tube was very narrow. I had to keep my arms pressed at my sides to go down. About half way down the fourteen-foot-long slide my bulging wallet caused my pants to bunch up. My pants gathered up and plugged me inside the tube. With my arms flat at my sides I couldn’t maneuver up or down. I was stuck!
Just when I thought my predicament couldn’t get any worse, Kyle came sliding down landing both his feet on my shoulders. Panic gathered like an overfilled balloon, ready to explode in my brain.
“C’mon, Dad!” yelled Kyle, both his feet resting on my shoulders. “You’re too slow!”
Fighting extreme anxiety, terror and the panic building within my psyche, I calmly said, “Kyle, I’m stuck. Carefully wiggle your way back up the slide and get one of the moms to help me.”
Kyle’s intentions were good as he started pounding his feet on my shoulders pushing me deeper into a total plug.
“Don’t worry Dad, I’ll push you down,” he said helpfully as his kicking got harder and faster.
“Stop Kyle! Stop! I’m getting even more stuck! Just back yourself out and get a mom to help me.”
“I can’t Dad, the slide is full of kids in back of me!” yelled Kyle.
The other children were now all shouting and complaining. The slide was plugged with kids. One of the moms close by watching, got up to investigate when she watched six kids go into the slide but nobody exiting out the bottom.
The kids were hollering. The noise inside the narrow tube was deafening. I was beginning to shake uncontrollably!
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My thoughts went back thirty-five years earlier. I was playing with two neighbor boys who lived across the street. We were playing in their finished basement that had a floor of linoleum. A huge woven carpet over the cold hard floor made a cushioned playing surface that kept our feet warm. The carpet was fifteen by twenty feet sitting in the middle of the floor.
The parents were just leaving for the market and told us to be good. They gave promises of cookies and ice cream if we did. We nodded our heads in unison. The parents left to buy groceries.
With the parents gone, the brothers started whispering and giggling hysterically. They were older than me by a year and three years, and had no problem tackling me and forcing my arms alongside my body as they rolled me up in the carpet.
My screaming and crying went ignored as they laughed rolling me up tighter and tighter in the carpet. When they finished, I was pinned in the carpet with my arms at my sides, hardly able to take a full breath.
I couldn’t move at all. I was in tortured darkness, tightly wrapped with my arms at my sides within the carpet. The laughter of my two friends disappeared as they ran up the basement stairs then outside to play.
The parents arrived home hours later. They found me in the carpet a sobbing mess. The mother comforted me with warm hugs, giving soothing words of assurance. The dad went to get his strap to belt the two boys for their insensitive actions.
This has haunted me all my life, and to this day, I’m highly sensitive to being in tight situations. Being stuck in the tube slide brought this memory back hard, forcing me to relive my worst nightmare again.
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Overwhelmed while reliving my horrible dark past, my mind’s rewind button was put on pause by a concerned voice coming from the bottom of the tube below me.
“Hello,” a pause, then, “Hello, is there a problem here?” A mother was bent over looking up at me stuck half way down the slide.
“I’m sorry, I’m stuck and can’t move up or down.” I said sheepishly.
Moms always have a knack of getting things handled in an emergency. She immediately directed and supervised all the kids out of the slide. I could hear other mothers now starting to gather around the slide. They were discussing options about what to do with me. The first mom to look up the slide said, “Okay, all the kids are out, what can we do to get you out?”
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I described my desperate situation and told her I was going to try and wiggle backwards to move my wallet down to unbunch my pants. Very slowly I painstakingly moved myself back up toward the opening. As I got closer to the top my wallet slid down and my pants became smoothed out. Reporting my success to the kind mother, I told her I was now going to turn sideways and finish sliding down the tube. It worked!
Just as I came whooshing down the slide, she moved her head, and out I came!
The other mothers, seeing I was free and clear, made quiet comments to each other while shaking their heads as they gave me furtive glances of shame.
My relief was extreme as I looked back at the perturbed hens and said, “Thank you all very much! Sorry for the bother!” They just stared back in response.
Nodding my head politely, dismissing myself from the moms, I turned to Kyle, “C’mon Kyle, time to go before the rain starts.”
We jumped on our bikes heading back to the truck just as the sky closed in over us with black clouds. The raindrops of the first fall storm began falling.
We had an interesting time that day. Kyle was not impressed by the events and did not relate them to his mother. She never did learn of the embarrassing situation that unfolded that day due to my poor judgement. Kyle’s memory was just a flash in the pan regarding our visit to Craig Park that fall day. He remembers nothing of that day, now many decades later.
The End