JustMattHenry.com: gossip, life and humor

I could not fall asleep to save my life last night. I don’t know if I was still pumped from the Ladies free skate last night (gay) or still full of adrenaline from my exam earlier in the evening. either way, when i can’t sleep, i love to retrace where my mind wanders, and this is where it took me last night:

i used to live on a street called Orleans St. in an older part of lakeridge virginia, that connected at either end with Sturbridge Drive to create what we always called “the block”. like as in, “we’re going to ride around the block!” so i thought it might be fun to go on a tour of that block and meet some people along the way. imagine i’m five and i’m on my bike (no helmut–we didn’t need ‘em).

first of course, i have to stop three houses up and pick up my friend Whitney. I remember we didn’t use phones back then. if you wanted to see if someone could play, you’d walk up the street, knock on the door and ask whomever answered if “whitney could come out and play”. didn’t matter that it was 9 a.m on a saturday, i just walked up and knocked on the door. between whitney’s house and my own, there was donna’s (our babysitter who looked like Belinda Carlisle) and then the Utz’s but not the ones you are probably thinking of.

so now whitney and i are on our bikes and we turn left onto Sturbridge, heading down hill to a pipestem on the right. a pipe stem is like a random driveway that ends in three or four houses tucked back behind the houses along the streets. for some reason i had a lot of friends who lived on pipe stems. it’s like a cul-de-sac without the sac. down that first pipestem lived the Blackburns and they were awesome. always up for playing soccer or huge games of kick the can. plus, one year we built a mini golf course in their back yard.

but no one was home, or because it was 9:15 on a saturday morning they chose not to answer the door. so whitney and i continue on, down a great big hill and turning onto a cul-de-sac on the left where this kid adam lived. i knew adam from kindergarten and he had red hair and lots of freckles. he also had the largest collection of smurf figurines i have ever seen. and i have seen a lot of smurf figurine collections.

but he wasn’t home either, so went across the street to maggie’s house to see her hot brother who we always thought may have killed someone at some point in his life.

where sturbridge reunites with Orleans st., we turn left and oh, there’s the basketball court under the powerlines! this was where my mom would walk to to access the trails that ran down under the powerlines, to the creek where a beaver attacked my dog, all the way to Omisol Lake. which is weird because if you continued on past Lake Omisol, continued along the power lines, past the mattresses and crumbling chimneys filled with beer cans and used condoms, you would eventually get to the creek that flowed near our other house (the one i sort of grew up in–3rd grade on).

a few more houses after that, we come to another pipestem where this kid ryan lived, and no one was really friends with him, but he had a trampoline so we used him for it. the house next to his in the pipestem had two near-all-black german shepards named prince and king who scared the shit out of us…but we could face that fear in order to jump on the trampoline. on the other side of Orleans st from Ryan’s pipestem, lived Cheryl who was really fun, but later, in high school turned kind of crazy. i’m not talking like fun crazy, but like real crazy.

a bit further up, we find Mrs. Duncan’s house–who is one of my mother’s best friends. their yard had like two fruit bearing cherry trees which we used to climb and eat from all the time. BEWARE THE CHERRY WITH THE WORM. there is nothing worse than finding that one. the duncans lived on the corner of Orleans st. and a cul-de-sac whose name i can’t remember. I remember a bunch of nuns also lived on that cul-de-sac.

then continuing on Orleans right before the big hill to my house, we pass Jake’s house and Jake was this little dog who seemed to always run free and he would chase you on your bike as you passed and next to his was Mrs. Kostalucki’s house and she was my kindergarten teacher. she’s probably dead and buried now, but one time i ran over her dog’s foot on my bike. my bad. next to her house, there were the petruskys who i think had ducks? someone had ducks in their back yard and i think it was them. The Petruskys rented out a room to this guy that would always come out and ask you to punch him in the stomach and it always felt like he had a thick piece of plywood under his shirt because his stomach was hard as a rock. he also always seemed to have a beer in his hand.

finally, up the hill–wait, let’s walk our bikes cause my legs are tired–and we’re almost there. oh, shit, there’s that red headed Evans boy who lived next door. LETS BOOK! (that means, let’s get the hell out of there before he sees us).

sigh. well, that was fun. it’s 9:30 am. what should we do now? let’s just go around the block again.