Second Grade Dropout

Here's another reason I wanted to drop out of school in second grade: When I went to school my mother or my sister - or both, would go through my toy box and throw stuff out.

If only she'd left the Beatles cards or the baseball cards. Even the crap baseball cars would have been worth SOMETHING today.

I had two toy boxes in those days. One toybox was in my bedroom and the other was in the living room, in the corner near the sofa end table and mom's Singer sewing machine.

I had sets of Army guys and cowboys & Indians and whatever other stuff would fit in an old cardboard cigarette case.

I still have one tin of my 'men' but the wide-open Singer ranch is gone, and the long carpet battlefield barely a memory with the few handfuls of soldiers and sailors and blue marines I have left.

You might have thought that as a budding writer the stories that came out of that old cowboy play might have deliniated characters and incredible plot twists. But my guys always won, and that was all that mattered.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.