I was always stuck at the top of the see-saw (only we called it teeter-totter). I had been a gigantic baby but turned into a small child, and my best friend, Kelsey, was a year younger than me and twice as big. We played on the see-saw until her legs got tired of lifting us up and down, at which point she would simply sit there and refuse to move.
I would demand that she let me down, and she would reply with "No way, gozo, I'm the biggest."
My comeback was always "No way, gozo, let me down!"
I'm not sure where 'gozo' came from. My father liked to call me bozo, and so it's possible that it came from there. "No way, gozo!" was my favorite phrase, and I said it loud and often.
Eventually, after I had screamed and yelled and begged and demanded imperiously, Kelsey would let me down. Only by let me down I mean that she would throw herself off of the bottom of the see-saw, leaving me with no time to brace myself for the fall.
It was always the same. I would crash to the ground, yell, roll over backwards, cry, and then punch her in the face. As I said, I wasn't too big, so being punched in the face by me, especially when I was crying, was never a very scary thing. I've never done it since, and even then I never did it to anyone else, but at the time dropping me from the see-saw was an offense that deserved face-punching.
After I hit her she would push me down and cry, and I would offer to race her to the swings. I'd take off running before she got back up off the ground, and as she'd yell after me that it wasn't fair I'd toss back "No way, gozo, I'm just winning!"
Actually, I still do that part. Except I usually forget to call people gozo.
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