What Bounces and Rolls

They are round like oranges and grapefruits, but they bounce, and they roll.  That was my childhood. Throw the tennis ball against the wall and it comes back.  Dribble and it obeys the bounce. A simple return. You learn about action and reaction.

Of course, better not try that with the citrus but they answer with juice and slurp. Young and easy under the apple boughs, said Dylan Thomas. The music in that line has transit, returning me to those languid summers with creative bursts.

And yes, there was an apple tree or was it a peach or lemon? The elbows were for climbing and the shade under those leaves lent itself to hatching movie plots or flights of fantasies higher than a pop fly.

The wall I struck was unusual. It had a ledge and if I struck that perpendicular the ball would carry to distant planets, still in orbit. Better for high bounce was the pink Spaulding which was a rubber ball like the core of a tennis ball without the felt cover.  

Did I bounce and roll? My imagination did, not as huntsmen or herdsmen as in the Thomas poem, but as Astaire or Tracy, with grace and equipoise. If I was mild-mannered Clark Kent, there would be a phone booth close by and a cape at the ready to set the world right.

That particular wall was no ordinary one. It was also the exterior of my father's corner drugstore and became my portal as if I had beaten through it with repeated poundings. I was to become my father. I didn't roll but I did enroll in pharmacy college. 

The bounce eventually propelled me out of childhood. By age 21 I bounced across the country to Los Angeles. In one leap, I had a marriage license and a pharmacy license. For the next 25 years I dribbled my way to a poetic license.

The secret pleasure of growing old is keeping that child alive with what ifs and exclamation points. My two tennis balls are now the back wheels of my walker, but I am still that kid bouncing ideas against the walls of this world.