Recess on the Road: A Pardon from Adulthood

I am in the backseat of our van, sitting in a tiny, hollowed-out cavern of stuff.

We are traveling to Tennessee and Kentucky this weekend where I will be performing my one-man shipwreck at theaters where, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a standing ovation like a few nights ago. Although to be fair, the ovation was moving toward the exits. Also, they weren’t clapping.

So anyway, my wife is driving. My cousin Randa is in the passenger seat. And here I sit, trapped in the backseat. Boxed in by hordes of cardboard crates, musical instruments, hanging clothes, T-shirt containers, and one female mannequin torso whom I have nicknamed “Dolly.”

Dolly models our T-shirts at the merchandise table after shows. Dolly is extremely shapely and very talented. Currently, due to our overpacked vehicle, Dolly’s talent is shoved directly in my face.

Sometimes, Dolly is my only friend in the backseat. I have long conversations with her because she understands me. Although, sometimes I worry about her. I think that on some level, deep inside herself, Dolly feels hollow.

Meanwhile, Jamie and Randa are blissfully unaware that I am having conversations with foam-core representations of female thoraxes. They’re far too busy talking.

That’s mostly what female persons do on long road trips. They talk. I realize this statement is a broad generalization, but as is so often the case, I don’t care.

Currently, Jamie and Randa are eating their Chick-fil-A salads, and talking with the trademarked hushed whispers females use whenever gossiping.

Sometimes I chime in from the backseat to ask the ladies who they are gossiping about. This annoys them. They assure me they AREN’T gossiping, they’re just TALKING, so mind your own business, dammit.

Then they tune me out.

And I go back to hanging out with Dolly who, as I say, is very talented.

This is the glamour of life on the road. Occasionally, I will open my laptop and try to get some work done on writing projects. But most of the time I just nap. I’ve gotten very good at taking naps in moving vehicles.

Then, I am woken by Jamie.

“Let’s stop and stretch our legs,” she says.

So, we pull over.

We try to pull over frequently on long road trips. Namely, because we’ve read about how blood clots caused by sitting too long can be dangerous to your health. Also, we’ve heard that people who sit too long get hemorrhoids.

We pull over at a country church, outside Dunlap, Tennessee. Ebenezer Baptist Church.

The church is small. The parking lot is empty. And there is a playground behind the church that looks like it was erected during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

“Look!” says Randa. “They have a good swing set.”

She is right. We inspect the playground equipment. This is not your run-of-the-mill swing set. This is a top-shelf adolescent entertainment apparatus.

“Should we swing?” says one of us.

“I don’t see why not.”

And so it is. The sun is shining. The weather is perfect. Why not?

True, we have no business doing something so juvenile and frivolous. True, we are all middle-aged people who, at some point in our lives, have undergone elective orthopedic surgery. But, in our defense, it is a “good” swing set. And life so rarely gives you such an opportunity.

Swinging is my favorite. I love to swing. As a kid, I used to spend entire days on a swing set and never get tired. My imagination would go wild. My heart would feel lighter. I would make big plans for my life on swing sets.

I had my first kiss on a swing set in first grade. I jumped off the swings and got the wind knocked out of me. Whereupon the Little League coach would jiggle my limp body by my waistband. I don’t know why coaches do this.

And do you know what? Every time I sit on a swing set, it all comes back to me. Youth. Joy. Lightness. Innocence. Carefree feelings of yore. Moreover, I always—always—say the same thing to myself whenever I sit on a swing.

“I forgot how FUN this is!”

Something happens when you use a swing set. First, you feel the familiar and pleasant sensation of your stomach dropping into your bowels with each pendulum movement. Then, you instantly drop about 30 years. Your emotions show on your face. The worry of time and the stress of life vanish.

At which point, you start saying dumb things which people cannot help but say on swing sets. “Look how high!” And “Watch me!” And “I’m gonna jump!”

Once we are emboldened by the joy of swinging, we decide to play on the slide next.

Time slows down. For a moment, I forget my age, name, and rank in life. For a moment, I forget everything.

When I was a kid, playground slides were the holy grail of playground activities. They were steep, treacherous, and made of highly polished zinc aluminum. That metal surface would sit in the blazing sunlight all day collecting billions of units of thermal heat, just waiting for hundreds of little thighs to scald.

At recess period, whenever innocent schoolchildren would unwittingly use the slide, usually wearing shorts or skirts, our screams of agony could be heard for miles. The backs of our bare legs became like fat sausages on a Lodge skillet.

Today, thankfully, companies manufacture playground slides out of much safer, heat-dispersing rubberized plastic. Granted, you can’t slide as fast anymore, but you still retain your ability to reproduce.

So, Jamie, Randa, and I take turns going down the slide. We laugh and cackle. We holler and shout. We lose all track of schedules. And as motorists pass, sometimes they slow down and start dialing on their mobile phones.

But I don’t care.

I don’t care because, sometimes, I’m afraid I spend so long being an adult that I forget how it feels to be otherwise. I don’t care, because a very wise soul once told me that you don’t stop playing because you get old. You get old because you stop playing.

Dolly. It was Dolly who told me that.