Mud Pies

When i was in the second grade, in Mrs. Haskins' class, i hung out with a boy named Ricky. Ricky was a motor mouth. I mean, a word per second, rat a tat tat barrage of questions and statements and exclamations all flung on to whoever was closest and whoever he could grab. Ricky would talk and talk and talk while he was sitting still, or while he was at bat during a kickball game, or while riding bikes, jumping ramps, playing army men, in class, after class, before class, during gym, during lunch and on and on and on. and he was like this until around the 7th grade when his mom moved across town, and i'd see him once or twice a year, until we never saw each other again. I wonder whatever happened to ol' Ricky. I liked him, in spite of all his noise. I can't imagine Ricky almost 40 years old. Does his wife roll her eyes like, every 5 minutes? Is he still a chatterbug? God, are his kids like him, or are they the complete opposite because they've been mortified by his quirks their whole lives? I wish I knew. But chatterbuggin' aint what i wanted to talk about tonight. Tonight it's about Mud Pies. I'm sure I made mud pies on numerous occasions. I'm sure i made all kinds of them. I'm sure I got in trouble with mud pies and i'm sure I threw and or was thrown at, at some point. But i don't really have any memories of those things. It's just one of those things that hasn't lasted in this murky mind of mine. But i do remember making mudpies with my buddy Ricky, in the second grade. There was a cement wall behind my grade school, Millard Fillmore Elementary. The wall was maybe a foot and a half tall, poured from white cement, that separated the back of the school yard from an alley-way. Someone had left a pack of roofing shingles by the wall, and Ricky (not me) suggested that we make mud pies. I remember thinking, but how will we bake them? haha good one, Joe. And so we went about laying out the shingles out all in a row on top of the wall, like an assembly line. And we went about digging through this fresh, nasty mud puddle, scooping, with our hands, mud from the puddle to the wall. This was during recess. We had about a half an hour. And so we layered the mud and shingles a couple inches high. And finished up about a dozen mud pies, when the bell rang and we had to go back to class. I remember poor Ricky talking and talking and rubbing his upper lip while working. I remember him looking like something out of The Box Car Kids, with mud all over his face, his arms, his jeans. The kid was filthy. And I remember looking at myself thinking I wasn't dirty at all, just my hands. So, I had to look the part and so i rubbed a little mud here, a little mud there, and before i knew it, i was filthy too. but I didn't look natural. It looked like i rubbed mud all over my jeans and my shirt. So i got back into it, and decided, i'd pretty much just cover up all my jeans ans my shirt and see what that looked like. So by the time I was ready to go back to class, i was completely covered in the front, with dark, dark mud. And when Mrs. Haskins saw us, she sent us to the bathroom to get cleaned up. There was nothing we could do about our clothes, but our arms, hands, faces needed to be cleaned.

And we watched the dark muddy water circle the drains in the sinks while we washed up. And we laughed and knew we were in trouble. Other kids came in and made funny comments, acted like we were doomed once we got back to class. But we didn’t really care. The mud pies were works of art, and they had to be made. And we were kids, and this is what we do. And as for getting in trouble? It wasn’t the first time for me, and it definitely wasn’t the last. I’d make those mud pies again today.