Just sittin' on the porch.

Sittin' on the porch brings to mind a summer's evening and lemonade, a cool breeze and the smell of freshly cut grass.  For most people.  For myself, it brings back the memory of stinging buns.  My second experience of the stinging bun sort, brought on by porch sitting was when I was around six years old.  It was a nice hot summer day, we lived on a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, and the summer people (as my parents called them, because we lived there all year round) were vacationing in the neighboring lake houses.  I had made friends with a couple girls my own age who's parents owned a cabin just a couple houses away. They had the best dock to swim from and a nice sandy swimming area.  Not like the muck and sea-weedy area right off of our dock.  We were getting ready to go to town.  The big town of Libby, eighteen miles away.  It meant that shopping and maybe dinner at one of the two cafe's in town was in store for us, and it was a big deal. I was all cleaned up and told to sit on the porch and wait, and stay clean, while my parents got ready.  I could see the neighbor girls floating on inner tubes, splashing and having a great time.  They called me over.  I shook my head.  They insisted so I thought, "what's the harm?"  As I stood on the dock feeling jealous my friend Penny, also six, said that if I was really careful I could slide onto her innertube without getting wet, and have a little fun. I did have fun, although the part about staying clean and dry didn't quite work out.   The stinging buns comes from  the application of a wooden spoon applied to a soaking wet bottom.
     You'd think I would have learned this lesson at age five, before we moved to the lake.  My aunt was visiting from Oregon and had sewn me a beautiful white lacy dress.  She was left in charge of me while my mom went grocery shopping, and wanted to dress me up as a surprise while she was gone. She put me into the itchy lacy dress, new white ruffled socks, black Mary Jane shoes, and a red ribbon in my hair.  She told me to sit on the front step and wait for my mom.  There was no lake at that apartment complex, but there was a really huge dirt pile from some construction.  Kids were climbing up and sliding down.  What could be the harm of a few turns sliding down the hill?  You've got it, stinging buns, but not from sliding down the dirt hill.
     I had learned my lesson.  If I was told to sit on the porch and wait I would not move.  No way.  Not  when mom had sewn matching outfits for me and my two year old sister.  I was eight, and I knew better than to move off of that porch. Not even to fetch my sister from the newly oiled and gravelled road.  Not even to prevent her from sitting in the middle of the tar and gravel while she made a tar and gravel castle.  Not even when she rubbed tar into her hair and all over her new outfit. 
I still think it's unfair that I was the one that had stingin' buns after that one!