My Jacked Up Life

Last Saturday night I had dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends. It was the first time we were able to get Gene and her husband Stan together. We had a great time. Kelly grew up with me in the neighborhood. We’ve been friend’s since the fourth grade. When we get together we laugh like two 12 year old girls. As we were telling Gene and Stan stories of our youth, one particular story came up that still cracks us up.

Kelly had an older brother named Ronnie. Now, Ronnie was a real character. He was one of the most off-the-wall people I have ever met in my life. Ronnie had a good friend named Steve and they had a game they liked to play, swing the rat. First thing they had to do was find a live rat. Once we saw them shaking down the dumpsters, Kelly and I ran like hell to hide inside the house. Once we were safely locked inside we would watch the games from the window’s. Just to be safe, we would always use the second floor window’s. Ronnie and Steve got pretty good at swinging those rat’s and they had a dead on shot. We didn’t want to take any chances.

So, once they rounded up a rat, they would chase each other and their friends around trying to hit someone with it. It’s like paper tag only with a rat. Seriously, this is how they entertained themselves. I’m sure you’re probably asking yourself why they didn’t just use a newspaper like normal people. Because we didn’t get the Suburban Journal on the north side.

If you got hit with the rat you were ‘it’ and you had to be quick with your response. If you were too slow the rat might get away and then you had to hunt for a new one. This could hold up the game for some time. The best thing to do was to hold it by the tail and fling it that way. It was also the best way to catch it too. That was hard to do when the person throwing it was trying to smack you up side the head with it. It’s this whole bob and weave thing. It looked pretty difficult.

Kelly and I watched many games of swing the rat from that upstairs window. They are some of our fondest childhood memories. You would think that watching someone get smacked on the side of the head with a flying rat would be a little tramatic but really…..not so much. The trama came from the ‘Brick Tag’ tournaments. But that’s a post for a different day.