Nap Ninjas

At some point, after my youngest brother was born, my other brother and I decided that we weren’t going to take naps anymore. We’d let our parents tuck us in and then we’d get up and play. Lots of kids do this around that age (we were 2 and 4 at the time) but, we one upped them all. Our bedroom window faced the backyard and we lived in a single story house. I knew how to open the window and get the screen off. We’d wait until our parents left and get up, climb out our bedroom window, and play in the backyard.

As a parent, I realize how insanely dangerous such a thing was for us. I mean, we had a baby pool in the back yard. It wasn’t really deep. There was only about 18 inches of water in it but, that’s definitely enough to hurt a 2 and 4 year old without an adult around.

We would take our shorts off and wade in the water. We’d run in a circle and try to make a whirl pool. We’d catch frogs and watch them swim in the pool. When we got tired of that, we’d play on the swing set. Because my Mom sold Mary Kay, she was gone during the day much of the time. My Dad went to school at night to get his Master’s degree so, he was the one home with us for much of the time during the day and he was the one putting us down for a nap.

Once, our bedroom window slid shut behind us after we’d climbed out. We got tired of playing outside and wanted to go back in but couldn’t crawl back through the window like we’d done before! So, we opened the back gate, walked around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell.

You can imagine how much my Dad flipped out when he answered the door and opened it to find the two of us, soaked from playing in the pool, sweating like race horses from playing on the swing set, dirty as all get out when he’d though we’d been sleeping like angels for the last hour. We'd been playing so quietly, that he hadn't heard us. It was like we were kid ninjas.

If my kids did something like that, it would give me a heart attack. It’s the number one reason why I don’t want a pool in the backyard. But gosh, it sure was fun when we were kids. A couple of times, we even crawled out the window at bedtime. I can remember watching frogs swim in the pool in the moonlight. But when we rang the doorbell, the gig was up. Our parents were on to us. They caught us in the backyard at least 2 more times before we gave it up.