Before fifth grade, we would build fires to roast marshmallows and hot dogs in the disused sandbox, watched over by the honeysuckles (and, I'm sure, mom from a window). We would have pinecone wars, but only when the season was right - fresh 'cones hurt too much. We would climb trees to see how high we could get; we would head into the woods and build forts from branches and detritus. Once, during a slumber party, we snuck out late at night to ride our bikes through the witching hour. A neighbor called the police on us, thinking we were casing houses. Maybe it was our hoodies. We were, at most, 8 or 9.
By fifth grade, the neighborhood kids my age had all moved away. The one up the street - his mom a single mom, divorced from a gay ex-minister but still active in the LDS, with three younger sisters - wasn't allowed to play with us off their property once his mother caught wind of our backyard roasts and called the fire department. She was a night shift nurse. Once, when we were riding our bikes along the busy two lane (double yellow) road that ran parallel to the train and past my back yard, we saw a squirrel dead from impact. He used the front tire of his bike to crush its head, fascinated by how its eyes bulged. I threw up. A cop pulled up and gave us a stern talking to about respecting animals - even ones that were already dead. "It may be dead, but we don't know if it can still feel pain or not," he said, and went on his way.
The one down the street always had a German Shepherd that they'd give away once it got too old and untrained and relegated to a 20' length of chain. One of them had an accident in their play room once - I can't remember if it was Jupiter or Saturn (never Uranus) - and it had worms squirming in it. The stench was overwhelming. We climbed their maple trees often, we built bicycle ramps on the downslope to the coul-de-sac. Once I raced down it so fast, and the pavement was so rough, that I lost traction and slid fifteen feet on my side and knee. I was fascinated when the gravel wormed its way up through my skin; I still have the scar. We would find hollows between the lawn and the curb, or make them in the woods or in the stacked square logs that held erosion at bay and place GI Joes in battle stance, squared against Cobra in their pretend pillboxes. They had Beastmaster I and II on laserdisc, his parents smoked like a coal plant, and they moved.
The other one down the street, his dad would beat him with a belt. Once we were in their front yard and I shinnied up a tree. Misjudged. Slipped, tore the skin off my shin. I was pretty high up. Never climbed a tree after that. Never saw that one again, either. I can't remember his name. I hope he didn't continue the cycle of abuse.
I couldn't figure out, for the life of me, why we weren't allowed to cross the gentle slope that formed a lip round one side of the playground in fifth grade. I got in trouble for wandering down there several times. A boy showed me a playboy magazine there; I thought the distended breasts were gross; I tattled. He had gotten rid of the evidence in the toilet trash can, but still got in trouble. It flurried one day, and my math teacher had us stay indoors while she went outside and frolicked in it, gloating at us. She made me feel stupid for not knowing long division - when I insisted that fractions were clearly better: .3 repeating made less sense to me than 1/3.
By middle school, recess turned into "socialization time": 200 sixth graders standing for half their lunch period in sweltering heat or shivering cold, milling around bleachers and prohibited from going on the football field below by the panopticonic gym teacher with his comical shorts and puffed out chest and bulging belly and Kenny G hair, forced to interact with no context but that which came as visual, auditory, olfactory baggage.
That's when the bullying started.