Last Sunday felt like an afternoon out of my own childhood. It was the warmest it's been in Baltimore this year, and I thought it would be a great day for Jamal and I to get together. When I called over to his grandmother's house, he told me that he was doing... that's right.. "nothing." Well I couldn't imagine why any able-bodied child should be inside the house on a day like that so we made plans for me to drop by.
Instead of driving, I decided to run to his house (it's only a mile and a half) so that I could squeeze some exercise out of afternoon as well. On the way over, I realized that I had seen very little of his neighborhood up to this point since we spent most of our afternoons going out. This gave me a great idea for how we could spend the afternoon. Once I arrived, we set off for his favorite places to go. We zig-zagged through about 5 blocks, running most of the way between each play area that he frequents. Most of them were just your standard jungle gym, basketball court, and swing set arrangements. We played on, and climbed over everything we could find, and raced each other up and down a few side walks (I had to give him a few meters head start). I even managed to get him to do push-ups with me. In a few places, he showed me his favorite daredevil stunts. I had to stop him in mid-demonstration of his most dangerous one because I was having visions of me carrying his limp body back to his Grandmother and explaining why I let him break his neck right in front of me. I was very impressed and pleasantly surprised by my little brother's fitness level, agility, and foot speed. Particularly since he seems to enjoy giving me the impression that he's very inactive and lazy.
After ripping and running, we returned to Grandma's house to get a drink. As of late, I've become very anti-video gaming with my little brother, hoping that I can direct his interests towards more productive pass times. But since we did spend the day outdoors, I thought I could make a small concession before I took off for home. I probably shouldn't have bothered though, because it was just more of the same embarrassment with me getting blasted game after game of Smash Brothers while he laughed. As I was heading out, he handed me one of two walkie-talkies that he was recently given by his father. Apparently, Dad shows up rather sporadically, bearing gifts for the young man. He wanted me to take it with me so that we could talk whenever we want, without having to use the telephones. It didn't look like it had a range of more than 1 mile, but on the run back to my apartment, I radioed back to him each block so we could determine it's true range. Turns out they're good for about 8 blocks. Not too bad, but it looks like we're still going to have to use the telephone.
