I sit here and write and try to remember the times that we played. There is one that stands out, but there were many. It was hard not to find things to do when you had this big church in the back yard. There were always the war games that took place throughout the church grounds. Hordes of children with plastic guns shouting “I got you! You’re dead!” “No you didn’t! You missed!” as we ran through the church. We were always careful to check first to see if there were any parishioners praying. You have to understand that the policy of the Church of the Holy Spirit was to remain open 24 – 7. Anyone could enter any building at any time. That policy worked out very well for my brother Chris and me.
But it wasn’t just the inside of the church that was our playground. The church owned quite a lot of land. There were hills and valleys, fields and swamps. But by far the most exciting, and the most restricted, was the roof of the guild hall. It was a very large flat roof, covered with pebbles, which even a small child could simply step onto from the parking lot area. The handfuls of pebbles became hand grenades which showered all of us when we were below. The plumbing vent pipes were always fun to drop those same handfuls down. God only knows why the plumbing system worked with the vast amount of pebble deposits we made into it.
One sunny summer day Chris and I were on the roof. We always had to keep an eye out for a stray adult. I got the idea first I think. Let’s jump off! There was a hill on the left side of the roof. The gap between the hill and the roof didn’t seem like it was that big. We could do it. But which one of us was going first? “Come on Chris, you jump, and I’ll wait for you on the hill.” That didn’t go over too well. As my brother matured, his fear of just about everything seemed to fade away, but we hadn’t come to that point yet. “No way” was the answer. So I had to be the first to go.
I don’t know why I thought that it would be a good idea to jump off of that roof. To this day I still can’t figure out the motivation. I guess it was new, it was exciting, it was stupid. That was enough for a 12 year old kid. And here’s another thing. Why am I still alive? It was a long way down from that child accessible roof. Why wasn’t there a fence or something to keep kids off of it? Why was it such a tempting place that was so easy to get on? Why did they build it that way anyway?
Well those were the excuses that I tried on my mother after Chris ran to get her, just after my incredibly stupid leap of faith. Your first sprained ankle really hurts. I was extremely lucky that that was all that I had at that point, but you’re not thinking in that direction while you are rolling on the grass in incredible pain. What really bit the big one was that I didn’t even get crutches. I think the doctor said to himself “no crutches for this idiot. Let him suffer.” It was a little embarrassing having to explain the outcome of my foolishness. “I jumped off a roof” was always followed by “what an idiot”. It didn’t even turn out to be a cool injury like breaking your leg skiing, or breaking your arm riding a bike. “I sprained my ankle jumping off a roof had only idiocy associated with it.
When I look back on that incident, it has become a metaphor for my life. How many roofs have I jumped off since then. I can think of a couple, but that is another story which I care not to share at this point in time. I guess that the answer is, there is always a roof waiting to be jumped off of, and how we deal with the temptation is what separates out the idiots. I failed miserably on the first one.
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