kids on fences

My friends and I snuck out at night.   I remember being a fencewalker:

”Meet me after dark over by the fence.  Bring toilet paper, ’cuz you know how we always have to pee once we get on the other side.” My neighbor planned our nighttime journeys on the tops of other neighbor fences.  I jumped out my window, landed on the ground outside my room, snails crunched under my feet, and barefooted my way down to where two fences met.  I hope she didn’t invite Larry, our dorky neighbor from down the street.  Loud and clumsy, he’ll wreck it.

   I’m stupid for coming, she’s a jerk for inviting him to tag along.  This was our game, not his.  We’re gonna get caught.  The two of us huddle.  She wore two piece beige pajamas with no slippers, blonde, spunky, smarter and braver than me.

”Come on, let’s go, forget Larry,” I urged. ”He’s not coming.”

”I’m here.”  Freckle-faced Larry with a lisp jogged down the street in his fire truck pajamas.  So I made a foot hold and hiked her up to the top of the six foot fence, and we crawled catlike on top of horizontal two by fours holding up the fence.

We own the whole neighborhood!  Larry, the stooge, kicked the fence trying to get onto the top board. Get a move on, or else go home.  In the second yard, she whispered,

”There’s that old lady, sitting in a chair, shhhh…!”  Larry knocked his slippers dragging himself inch by inch behind us.

”I’m afraid of heights,” he stage whispered.  I’m not helping you, idiot.

I made it to the third house, saw a woman in her kitchen look up through herwindow as if she saw me outside.  By that time I’d crept into an overhanging tree.

”She heard us! Let me outta here! My mom will kill me if I get caught.” The woman opened her back door, silhouetted by kitchen back light, walked out and pointed a flashlight.

I’m invisible, I’m invisible, you can’t see me. I’m just one of the dead leaves in this tree. I’m not even here. You don’t see me.   She scanned a beam up and down and it shined on me.  I held my breath for what seemed like a year, but she kept moving the light.  This is what it feels like in ”The Great Escape’ movie, sneaking out of a Nazi concentration camp.  She’s the guard and will shoot me if I twich.  I’m not here.  She shot the light across the rest of the yard and Larry laid flat on top fenceboard with his head down.   Maybe she doesn’t see him? We’ll all die.  She turned around and went back inside.

I’m free!! I’m free! I’m gonna live, and am so outta here…

”I’m backing up and going home,”I declared.

”I don’t know how to back up!”  Larry squealed in a pig-like whisper.  I hate you, and you can die on this fence for all I care.  Larry flattened as I steam rolled over him in his pajamas.

” I almost got caught. Did you see that lady?”  I centipeded back.  Forget the whole thing.  I jumped off and landed on wet grass, catapulted back up the street, vaulted through my bedroom window using the water spigot as a foothold.