My Saturday Slide

My Saturday Slide



I remember the park, its huge trees, armoured with shimmering green and gold, filtering the morning sun onto the grassy slopes of the Pirate Ship Park. We always used to go to the park on a Saturday morning, my brother, my mum and I. It was not a far walk, only about half an hour from where we lived. I enjoyed going to that park. There was something reassuring about it, like it kept reminding me that it was only Saturday and that school was on Monday. When you’re small the days seem to go forever, so even if you spend all morning playing in the park, you still have half a day left, and then, even after that you have another full day. Yet, this of course meant that school days went for an eternity, and even longer because time goes slower when you’re not having fun. But I didn’t mind. Playing in the park was the highlight of my week.

However, there was one Saturday morning when I wasn’t attending my beloved park. Instead my mother had decided she was too tired to walk across town and that we should all ‘take a nap’ instead. Now, I detested naps and so set about entertaining myself in the absence of my Saturday morning in the park.

I don’t recall whose idea it was (possibly mine), but on this particular morning my brother and I were conducting an experiment with our favourite toys. This experiment consisted of propping our bedroom window open and throwing out all of our most prized possessions as far as possible. As our bedroom window was situated over looking the lounge room roof, a large quantity of the objects ended up in the roof gutter.

For a moment we were both enjoying this newfound amusement, until my brother decided that he wanted one of his most treasured toys. After frantically searching around the room for Blinky Bill, he came to the conclusion that either he or I had disposed of the soft bear out of the window. This instantly led to tears. It was then that I realized my fault in throwing Blinky so carelessly away, for I had completely forgotten how attached my brother could be to him. And now, in the alarmingly loud condition that he was in, my brother would soon cause my mother to come barging through the bedroom door, very irritated by her sudden awakening and demand to know what was going on. I had to patch up this situation as fast as possible. So, after carefully reassuring my distressed sibling that he would have his Blinky Bill back in a jiffy, I approached the window to assess whether it would actually be possible to retrieve the soft toy.

Sure enough, I found myself looking upon Blinky Bill, trapped on the edge of the roof, not a few feet away. My heart got the better of me and I jumped to rescue without a moment’s hesitation. This was also a mistake. It was only after clambering out the window that the realisation of how steep the roof was and how long the drop dawned on me.

At my age I enjoyed slides and engaging them whenever I came across one. My favourite slide was at the Saturday morning park. The one that exited the crow’s-nest at the top of the pirate ship. That slide was very fun. The shiny metal made it slippery. You could slide down it with a great squeal of pleasure and hit the soft sand at the bottom so that it went up your pants and was itchy. However this situation was not like the pirate ship slide, there was no slippery metal but jagged brick tiles that thumped my backside all the way down. There was no squeal of pleasure, but a scream of horror as I went over the edge, clutching Blinky Bill to my chest. And sand up my pants was the last thing on my mind as I bashed against the lounge room windowsill.

Lying in the grass, whimpering, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for all those other toys I had thrown out the window. I knew this would turn out to be one of those unpleasant Saturdays wasted on pain, misery and a trip to the doctors. And more than ever, I longed for my Pirate Ship Park.