The Announcement

As a kid, you never think things will change.

Chapter Three

The Announcement

There's something special to a kid growing up in Venezuela, something concrete, something sure, something you could always depend on, something called...summer.

The grass was always green, flowers always in bloom, and Mom always shrieking at the site of a stray iguana sprinting across the living room floor.

What better way was there for a boy to grow up than this?

But life isn't always full of dependables, things like my old faithful stray dog that abandoned me just because of a few bee stings.

Ok, maybe it was more than just a few. Maybe there were a lot.

And then there was the Venezuelan government, definitely a source of undependability.

But your parents?

All your young life you believed they were the root to all things dependable, all thing stable, all things...well, dependable, and then...

I was in love with my fourth grade sweetheart Penny.

I guess you could say she was my first real girlfriend, or at least, that's what she claims. I had to believe her because...well, that's just the way things were.

Penny was the cutest girl in our school.

She didn't act it though, I mean, she was actually friendly and nice.

Or maybe I was just blinded by that right cross punch to my  eye.

Of course she said it was an accident, and of course, I believed her, but still, the girl could throw a mean right jab. A guy had to respect a girl like that.

Penny and I spent all our fourth grade year as boyfriend and girlfriend. We were the inseparables.

Soon  summer vacation would be upon us, which was confusing because, as I said, it's always summer.

Penny and I sat on the park swings dreaming of the day when we would both be fifth graders, walking hand in hand to school, sliding recklessly down the old metal slide, and digging for worms at Mr. Palmer's worm farm.

I would catch her in my arms,  kiss her like no other fourth grade amateur-in-the-art-of-love-making could do, and then...well, I never got past the kissing part. I guess for a fourth grader that's about as far as things go.

 It didn't earn me any extra merit badges in boy scouts, but hey, what's an old merit badge when compared to a kiss from my girl.

What greater romance could ever be than that of me and my Penny.

Ok, maybe I've gone a bit too far here, but well, you get the picture...right.

We had it all planned out.

By New Years Eve of our fifth grade year we would have our first French kiss ever, that is, of course, if I could ever figure out just what a French kiss was.

That...at least, is how it was supposed to happen.

Leave it to our biannual summer vacation to change everything.

 Summer vacations always meant flying thousands of miles to the U S of America to visit grandma, grandpa, cousins, uncles, aunts, and...did I say cousins already?

It also meant going places we had never gone before, seeing things we had never seen before, meeting people we had never met before, getting a big wet one from Aunt Velma.

 I swear, she must be at least a thousand years old.

She would grab me in those big flabby arms of her and give me a bear hug like I had never had before. Then she laid those big slobbering lips on mine and...it was the kiss from hell.

I spent a week scrubbing my face.

Of course it was always great to visit my cousins. We always seemed to find fun ways to get into trouble.

My older brother and cousin Billy would sneak behind my uncles barn and smoke cigarettes. They never once set the place on fire. I think they had an old Playboy magazine back there too because they were always gone a long time.

If you eliminated Aunt Velma's kiss, I guess you could say things were going great.

Yep, I'd have to say life was going well...until...THE ANNOUNCEMENT.

 “Kids,” my Dad says as he paced back and forth. Pacing, my father never paces. What was going on? What was he so nervous about? What was so important that necessitated bringing the whole family together in one place, at the same time, sharing the same air?

It could only mean one thing, he had bought a new car, a brand spanking new Ford Thunderbird . What else could it be,? What else could be more important than that?

 “Kids, we're moving to Texas.”

 Well, there was that.

He smiled as if this were some sort of good news, something great, something wonderful, something...it was crap, that's what it was.

What!  I mean, how could they do this to me, me...a man in love, a man with a plan, a man with a,...OK, so I was only freshly out of fourth grade, but still, does love know the boundaries of youthdom? Does it even care?

I didn't have any answers, all I knew was that Penny and I would not be seeing each other for some time. For the first time in my young life, my heart broke.

I never understood what they meant about love hurting, but I was beginning to, and it wasn't easy.

In only a few spoken words, my life changed forever.

My best friend and I would never see our dreams unfold under the stadium lights of Yankee Field. Our hopes  of baseball greatdom dashed.

There's one thing about being a kid, you never give any thought  about life ever changing.

But the truth is, it does, it always does.

And that's the way it has to be, otherwise, how could man have ever set foot on the moon, or could The Beatles have changed the  world of Rock and Roll.

But at the same time, and in some small way, things never really do change. I mean, kids will always be kids, and parents will always be parents, only the characters change places.

I never saw my best friend Harry after that.

 But as for Penny...well, that's another story altogether.

Author's Note

I still remember the shock when my father announced our move. None of us were happy.

Reviews

[Woody]

my heart goes out to the narrator. I can relate in a small measure.
great continuation and impeccable storytelling, my friend.

[Marie]

Moving is hard for kids, who get used to one place, one set of friends, and then it's all over. All I can think is how terrible it must be to leave a green place like Venezuela for Texas.