My grandparents on my dad's side lived in a private gated community. A
really swank joint with a clubhouse, swimming pool and private park I
am talking about a little place called the Imperial Mobile Home Park.
Anytime we went to visit my grandma for extended periods of time or
had a family get-together my grandma would reserve the clubhouse and
fit the whole family in at once. This was easier then trying to do it
at their mobile home because there were 20-30 of us at any given
time. Most of my dad's brothers and their families were usually there
and some second cousins and their families. So there was plenty of
kids and that was awesome for us but for those still anchored in
southern decorum it was a living nightmare. We would run around the
one big meeting room and jump on the couches and would play tag or
just scream as children do.
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| Best toy Ever |
My favorite part was some faux finished
octagonal end tables that had four doors on the side and enough room
in the middle for a kid to climb right in. I think all of the cousins
loved that so beside the wear and tear inherent in having a little
hell spawn crawl through the furniture there was the additional
damage of a few of the spawn fighting over it. We must have been
banned from that glorious thing twenty times a party but the allure
was worth the risk. My grandma was always trying to organize us into
some ridiculous game that she invented, she was not a student of game
theory so they were always badly balanced and organized. So we would
get bored and wonder off and she would tell us all to get back until
someone was able to run free and then only the pious would remain to
salvage the scraps of the game. In fact the clubhouse had a pool
which was open approximately never, but when it was open we used to
go over and get yelled at by my grandma for an hour or two as we
tried to swim. She always wanted us to play in exactly the way she
formulated in her mind beforehand, however she never shared these
rules us we had to determine them by error. So is like a game of
punishment mastermind. You would do four or five things in
combination, get in trouble but you were not sure for what, and then
you had tried different combinations of things to see you find a
common thread. She did teach me how to tread water which for some
reason she called sculling I think it is the same thing. A lot of
parties a lot of fond memories from that clubhouse it's also nice to
know that my grandparents are rich enough to live in a place that had
clubhouse. It makes you feel good to be better than other people.
