During the lunch break for the
Creative Live workshop I'm watching, I went out for a quick walk. As I got closer to the end of my street I kept a wary eye on the house across the T-intersection. A boy and girl were in the driveway shooting hoops and the dogs that often bark at me were jogging around them.
The kids disappeared into the garage for a few minutes, so I hoped the dogs wouldn't charge. The black dogs were content to watch their charges and they emerged with a large bouncy ball. They were throwing it towards the hoop, and I thought, "If they make it, it's going to be stuck up there."
As if they read my mind, the girl sat on the ball and bounced it a few times. I'm not sure what happened next except that the ball was swiftly rolling towards the road and the boy was running after it, towards me, a bad cliche.
I saw a car whizzing up the hill and yelled, "WAIT!"
The boy stopped in his tracks thankfully. The car narrowly missed the ball and kept going without even slowing down.
I jogged over to get the ball as it rolled into my street and waited for a string of four cars to go by and then a fifth from the other direction. Oddly heavy traffic today. Yet another vehicle kindly stopped for me, so I walked the ball over. The dogs immediately surrounded me.
The boy said, "It's OK, they're friendly."
One sniffed my hand and gave it a lick. Huh. They seemed downright nice when they weren't barking at me for a change.
I bounced the ball back to the boy who kept saying, "Thank you. I'm so sorry."
"That's all right," I said and turned to cross the road again. And waited for another car to go by.
6 years ago on TTaT: tip worth the time...
44. Treasures of the Pharaohs by Delia Pemberton
