Inside the Life of Laura Dixon

Fried Chicken
The day I got my dog remains clear in my mind. The detail that remains strongest in my mind, though, was fried chicken. Yes, that’s right, fried chicken. That was what my mom was making when we called the pound. They had some puppies that we wanted to look at. We left the chicken on the table and rushed to the pound.

I remember how badly it smelled, and how sorry I felt for all of the little puppies and kitties in their tiny cages and pens. I wanted to take all of them home just to get them out of that terrible place. It seemed to take forever, but we finally found the new puppies. There were three, one male and two female puppies. My parents said we had to get a female puppy, and they told me to pick one of the two.

I stood looking at the puppies for quite a long time. One had a white foot, and was very cute. The other was solid black like her brother, but considerably smaller than her siblings. I could not decide between the white-footed puppy or the small one.

I chose the runt. We took her home and gave her a bath. We played with her all night and discussed names like Muffin and Fluffy. We decided on Muffin a few days later, which I changed to Muffy, because at five years old, I had wanted the name Fluffy. Oh yeah, and we ate our fried chicken.


Indiana Storms
Ever since I was little, I have always loved the rain. My grandparents and most of my other family live in Indiana, and one of the things I look forward to when I go there to visit is the storms. I especially love the ones at night.

The rain in Alaska doesn’t even compare to an Indiana thunderstorm. The thunder crashes so loudly it can make you jump. But if you watch the lightning closely, you can predict when these big booms of thunder are coming. The brighter and longer the lightning lasts, the louder and longer the rumble of thunder that follows it will be.

What I love most about these storms is the rain. It drums on the roof and windows, making a peaceful, calming sound. If you are outside when it is raining this hard, you can be soaked in a short amount of time.

I remember lying in bed at night for hours watching the lightning and listening to the rain, trying to predict when the loudest booms of thunder would come. I also remember how much it would cool down when it rained, and how dark the clouds were. I love the Indiana rain.


My Yard
I remember all of the time I spent playing outside in my yard with all of the neighborhood kids when I was younger. My yard was where everyone met to play. It was the perfect place, and if you don’t mind me bragging, the best yard in the neighborhood.

We were all good friends and would play all day in the summers and before we started school, after school, and on weekends when we did start school, up until about the seventh grade.

Amanda Gamble was the oldest in our group, being two years older than I am. [My parents] babysat Amanda before we started school, and because we were together every day, we became best friends. When I was in about third grade, Amanda changed. She stopped coming out to hang with us because she thought she was so much better and older. Sadly, to this day she does not speak to any of us.

Lindsay Jones, who is only a few months younger than Amanda, acted quite different. Lindsay was always very nice and still talks to us a lot today. Lindsay was sort of quiet. She was always very athletic and good at our games.

Jessica Rose is a month older than I am, and we are in the same grade. Jessica is one of the nicest people you could meet today, but she didn’t used to be. My first memory of her was when we were only a year or two old. She was at my house and we were coloring. It just so happened that I was using the crayon that she wanted next, so she reached over and slapped me in order to get it. It was her way or the highway during our games. One summer she stopped coming out to play. The next summer and the next year in school, she was one of the nicest people I had ever met. I am not sure what happened during that summer when she stayed inside that year, but it sure changed her.

Jamie, Jessica’s little sister, was about three years younger than Jessica and I. She had Jessica’s early personality, and if she did not get her way, she would run home crying to her mommy, but she could never stay away more than five or ten minutes. We often had to change the rules of our games, though, to prevent this from happening. Despite this personality, she was still fun to hang out with.

We had some other people that hung out with us, but we were the main ones that got together almost every day.

My dad built a huge pipe swing set with everything you could dream of on it. He even invented some parts of it. Not only does it have a regular swing, but it also has a swing that twirls you around in circles. There are monkey bars, a trapeze, rings, climbing ropes, and tons of other things to play on. We still have the swing set today, because it is so deeply buried into the ground.

It was great fun, but my parents had many rules that went along with it. Nobody could climb too high, or do anything that could involve any type of injury, which took some of the fun out of it.

The only person to ever be banned from the yard was Paul, one of the girls’ older brothers. He was Amanda’s age, but didn’t hang out with us much because we teased him and called him Polly Pocket after his name. Paul was quite the show off.

One day, he announced he was gonna do something special on the swing set, and told us all to watch him. He started swinging on one of the swings. Then he let go, jumped, and flew through the trapeze, and landing about ten feet away. My parents just so happened to look out the window at this moment. My dad yelled at Paul and told him not to come back for the rest of the summer.

In addition to the swing set, we also have a matching sandbox and teeter-totter. Although the teeter-totter was built for one person on each side, sometimes half of us would go on one side, and half on the other.

One day we had a whole yard-full of people over, and everyone wanted to go on the teeter-totter. Half of us got on one side, and half on the other. I was on the same side as Jamie. Someone on our side decided to get off for a minute, and being young and stupid we didn’t think to take someone off the of her side to even up the weight.

Just about that time, because I had no handles, I fell off the teeter-totter. The weight of three people on the other side and small Jamie left on our side acted like a catapult, and Jamie went flying into the air. She did a flip in the air and landed on her back. She was hobbling around for days. Ever since then, only one person was allowed on each side.

My dad also built a basketball goal. It faced the road, and in the road he took white paint and drew in the regulation free throw line, key, and three-point line. It was conveniently in front of the neighbor’s garage goal, so we could play half or full court. However, because we had to play in the road, every time a car would come by we had to stop playing to run and stand under the goal so the car could pass. Also, despite the huge backboard, sometimes the shots would go over the fence into my yard, in which case you would have to climb the fence or go around to the gate to get your ball back.

Our hot tub and sauna were also great additions to the fun yard. Although we rarely used them during the already hot summers, the nice buildings they are in made great hiding spots during hide and seek, or a great place to run around to confuse “it” during tag.

My front yard is quite different from the back. It has not yet become a victim of one of my dad’s building projects. Instead, it is an absolutely huge yard, containing only three trees. Two birch trees lie on either side of a giant evergreen tree, forming a triangle. These trees were perfect for baseball (with the addition of a home base) or a number of invented games, like tree tag.

Tree tag was one of our favorite games. We would often tire of playing on the swing set, and decide to play one of our many invented games. As soon as we had decided to play, though, every person would say, practically in unison,

“NOT IT!”

The last person to say that had to be “it” first. Sometimes several rounds of eenie-meenie-miney-moe were necessary to decide who had been the last person to declare they were not it.

Tree tag was a game that I invented. Basically, there was one “it” like in traditional tag, but the trees served as bases. As long as you were touching a tree, you were safe.

The rules changed depending on the players. The normal rules were that you could only stay on a base for five seconds, and “it” couldn’t guard a base to wait for someone’s five seconds to run out before tagging them. These rules could change, though, depending on the number of players or if Jamie was playing. Because Jamie was a few years younger than the rest of us and couldn’t run as fast, she could then stay on a base as long as necessary, and she could guard the bases from a reasonable distance if she became “it.”

Another game we played was called color tag, which I also invented. The start of this game was usually with a round of “NOT IT!” and eenie-meenie-miney-moe. Then, “it” would start the game by saying the phrase, “I choose the color, and the color is...” As soon as the color was called, “it” would start chasing people while everyone else dashed to touch something of that color so they would be safe. If you were tagged before you could touch something of that color, you were the new “it.” If nobody was tagged, “it” would call another color.

When everyone started school, things changed. We didn’t play out as often. In the seventh grade, when Jessica and Jamie moved across town and everyone else became busy with school, the swing set was never used. But instead of finding adventures and mischief around the neighborhood, I found it in school.


Visit to the Principal’s Office
I became best friends with Kristine Kintz in kindergarten. We hung out together through fifth grade, and we are still friends today. One time, in the third grade, we got in to really big trouble. Or at least, what we thought was really big trouble at the time.

It was recess and we went inside to go to the bathroom. When Kristine was finished, she started hanging and swinging on the stall walls and doors. When she was jumping on the door of my stall, it started to bend. Just then, Mrs. Sharp, the meanest teacher in the school, walked in.

She ordered me to come out, and she marched us down to the principal’s office. We sat down. The principal started to lecture us about playing on the jungle gyms and not in the bathrooms. We both started crying. We both thought we were in big trouble.

I said, “You’re not gonna call our parents are you? Please don’t call them!” We both begged and pleaded with her, and she was sympathetic. She agreed not to call them, saying that she thought we had learned our lesson, but we should thank Sam, the custodian, for fixing the bent door.

Just then I looked up and saw my neighbor’s mom, who sometimes helped at the school, standing outside of the principal’s office. I thought nothing of it at the time, but a couple of years later I realized why my mom had known about my visit to the principal’s office when I got home. Although the principal had not called our parents, my neighbor had. Kristine and I still laugh about this today.


Soccer Ball
When I was in the fifth grade, my friend Kristine Kintz and I went out to a pond in Kincaid, along with Kristine’s two sisters and her oldest sister’s boyfriend. We were looking for frogs. Along the side of the pond, I saw this white circle with black spots on it wedged under a fallen tree and partially covered by some leaves and twigs.

“Oh, look!” I called. “It’s a soccer ball!”

I kicked the ball, but it didn’t budge. Kristine had just run over to see my soccer ball discovery, when suddenly I realized that we had just been surrounded by an oddly large number of mosquitoes. Yellow and black mosquitoes. Suddenly I realized that they were small bees.

We both started running back to where everyone else was standing and watching. I escaped without being stung, but Kristine got one on her neck. I felt really bad about it. Note to self: never kick strange soccer balls in the woods.