Tag Archives: Five and Dime

Balloons

Balloon: (n) a brightly colored rubber sac inflated with air and then sealed at the neck, used as a children’s toy or a decoration.Dictionary B

Merrilee was one of our high school cheerleaders.

If you’ve forgotten, holding that position is similar to being a goddess. So an invitation from Merrilee to come to her home and participate in any activity whatsoever was a shortcut to social Nirvana.

Merrilee was having a birthday party for her friend, Judy. She contacted me to come over and help her blow up balloons. It crossed my mind to tell Merrilee that I had never blown up a balloon before, but fortunately I caught myself before committing high school cultural suicide.

So I went out, bought a small package of balloons from the local five-and-dime, sat in my room and practiced. I actually reached a point where I was able to get to the first stage of balloon-blowing-up–what one might call “the initial plumping.” Reaching that plateau, it gets a little easier.

But you see, here’s the problem: I practiced too much.

It was a hot day and by the time I got to Merrilee’s house, I was already light-headed from balloon inflation.

She smiled at me and said, “I know you’re going to be the best at blowing these up.”

My chest puffed out so much that I was sure she saw it, so I grabbed balloons and started blowing.

I wasn’t even ten minutes into the process when I became so dizzy that I thought I was going to pass out. I broke out in a cold sweat. I knew this for a fact–whatever happened, I needed to make sure that I remained conscious.

Apparently, I was beginning to turn “shades of ill” because Merrilee asked me, “Are you alright?”

I wasn’t, but reassured her that all was well. I started gulping big, deep breaths, which seemed to help my lightheadedness.

I thought I was about to escape the moment, when suddenly, uncontrollably, I threw up.

It was an unplanned vomiting, which I certainly would have stifled if I could. Fortunately we were outside and I ended up merely decorating the grass.

A pall fell over the gathering. At length, Merrilee said, “O-o-o-0-h.”

That was it.

Everyone jumped away, and it was agreed by a consensus of the conclave that I needed to go home.

I did.

It took a solid month for people to stop kidding me about the balloon escapade, and truthfully, to this day … I don’t know if it totally has been scoured from their minds.

 

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Adjacent

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adjacent: (adj.) next to or adjoining something else.

It was a big chunk of three-story, square brick building, sitting right in the middle of our little town, holding within its confines a trio of completely unrelated businesses. The only thing they shared in common was that they were adjacent to one another.

The building looked like it had been constructed by about forty-five Amish men with only a break for lunch in between bouts of mortaring. It was simple.

My parents’ little loan company was located in the center, with a hardware store to the right and an optometrist‘s to the left. Our eye doctor fellow only showed up two times a week, driving in from Columbus to take care of the bespectacled in our community.

The hardware store was always open, but never busy. As a boy I often wondered how they stayed in business. It seemed the only commerce was the pop machine in front of the store, which was frequented by everybody on the block, since such contraptions were a bit of a rarity at the time.

Directly across the street was the town green, wherein sat another brick-chunk building, dubbed The Public Library.

For many days and in many ways, this little parcel of business and commerce was my stomping ground, playground and home, as I patiently waited for my parents to finish the dribble of business they did, often loaning money to people in our burg for anything from motorcycles to stud bulls.

Beneath this massive construction was a basement that connected all three businesses, and when I y worked up my courage, I went down to the spider-web-infested terrain, hoping to discover some treasure I might be able to sell, in order to acquire enough coinage to stroll up the street and visit the local Five and Dime for treasures often beyond my comprehension.

The town was so small that actually, everything was adjacent to everything else. And like so many pieces of my life, the older I became, the more it seemed to shrink and become insufficient to my expanding boundaries.

But Samuel’s Hardware and Bremen Optometry will always be in my mind the quintessential definition of adjacent.