Clubhouse

When David was a kid, he built a really cool fort with his friends Chris and Shawn Rhoton. They were our neighbors on WCR 68. The older kids would walk back and forth between each others' houses and they would have all kinds of adventures together. I was always a bit jealous about this because I always wanted to hang out with David and his friends. As you can imagine, a ten year-old boy does not want his little sister following him and his friends around all the time.

At the end of the driveway in the field, the older kids built a really cool fort. As I remember it, it had log walls and they hammered old pieces of sheet metal on the walls to keep out the wind. I don't remember specifically what they had in there I would try to sneak into the fort all the time, but they would never let me in, of course!

One day I followed David down the driveway hoping to be allowed into the fort. As usual, the older boys didn't want me to go in with them. There was an old pile of wood with lots of rusty nails sticking out of them and I decided to try and balance on them while the boys were doing whatever it was they did in their secret clubhouse.

I was wearing foam flip-flop shoes and I stepped on a rusty nail and it broke through my shoe and went into my skin. It hurt, bad. I screamed really loud and David ran out of the clubhouse. He pulled the nail off my foot and tried to calm me down.

The clubhouse was almost a quarter mile from our house, which was a pretty small trailer at that time because Grandpa was building the house at that time. David picked me up, and even though he was just a kid, he carried me all the way home. I can remember his voice as he tried to calm me down and hurried me home to mom. I don't remember what happened after that, but I was glad to be safe at home.

When you have an older brother, you get left out quite often, but you also have someone that is there to protect you and will make sure that you are safe.