Playing in the Dark

Lazy Fio is posting something she wrote a while back when she still lived in Austin:

Central air is a mixed blessing. The only time my neighbors and I see each other during the long hot summer is when we race from our air-conditioned houses to our air-conditioned cars

It wasn't always that way. When I was a kid, the old wheezing window units were all we had, and often it was cooler to sit outside, especially during the long summer evenings when there was a bit of a breeze. Sometimes my father would unfold two vinyl-webbed lawnchairs in the front yard and, toting their own chairs, the whole neighborhood would begin to drift over--the Hickses, the Paules, the Crims, sometimes the Scarboroughs--and their kids would join my brother and me in our nighttime games.

We ran recklessly about in the mysterious dark, calling taunts back and forth, emboldened by the nearby sound sof our parents' voices, the rumble of adult laughter. Somehow, out games were more exotic in the dark--and more desperate--we knew it was way past our bedtime and we could be called in any minite, whenever the adults' converstation drowsed down and they started packing up their chairs for the night,

Sometimes, I still dream about those magic evenings, when I am running acrosss the dark lawn, stretching my stride until it becomes longer and longer--three feet, six feet, nine feet, ten--and still I stretch, realizing that my foot doesn't ever have to ever again touch the ground, that my magical stride can stretch forever into the dark, sweet, summer night.