of peas

I just had a nice chat with my brother, we took a little trip down memory lane. He reminded me of something that happened when we lived with our grandparents for a little while. When he was five years old, my brother ran away from home because we were having peas. My gran put the plate down in front of him and David slammed his fists on the table.

"That's it! I have had it!" he muttered.He stomped over to the door, pulled on his shoes and left.

My gran and I watched him from the lounge window of the house as he set out across the yard between the house and the road, where there was a bus stop, his presumed destination.It had been raining for a few days so David only got a few meters away before his shoes were covered in mud and he started getting tired.

I remember seeing him fall and he did his best to hold his long pants up to keep it dry and tried to pull out of the sucking mud, but only succeeded in removing one of his feet from its shoe. He stood there for a moment, holding his leg up, teetering on it, aimlessly flailing his blue-socked foot in mid-air.My gran and I were in hysterics, and David must have sensed us watching because he looked over his shoulder at us. That caused him to lose his balance and he slammed his shoeless foot down into the mud. Then he pulled his other foot out of its shoe and repeated the previous teetering, dangling, flailing motions.

My gran looked at me, "We shouldn't be laugh....oooh ha ha ha ha ha."I couldn't answer because I was rolling on the floor in the joy that only an older brother could experience in this moment. When I got up and looked again, David was knee-deep with both legs, still trying to hold his pants up. And he started to cry. And then it started to rain. Hard.

My gran grabbed an umbrella and sloshed out to get him. I could hear David's wailing get louder as she carried him back to the house, the way an ambulance siren gets louder as it comes down the street towards you. Of course, I took every opportunity to mock him and make it worse.

The next day, my grandfather took him into the yard with a spade and made him dig up his shoes. Then he made sure my gran served us peas again.