Since my cousin Steven and I were so close in age (one month apart), our parents thought it would be a good idea for us to spend time together during the summer and keep each other company. They figured we could keep each other out of trouble! One summer we were probably 8 or 9 or so, and we were experiencing a bit of cabin fever having been in the house all day. We decided to invent a new game. I can't remember exactly what we called it at the time, but for the sake of telling a story we'll call it "Flying". What we used to do is wait for Steven's parents to go to work. Once they were gone, we would gather all the pillows in the house, all the sofa cushions - anything that would help "break the fall". You kind of have to know how their house is arranged, but it's a two-story house, with the front door at the bottom of the stairs. We would place all of the pillows and cushions at the bottom of the stairs, in the foyer of the front door. We would then prepare ourselves to "fly". We would try to get a running start, and dive headfirst down the stairs and try to land on the bed of pillows and cushions that we had arranged. If you can't tell, it was a lot of fun. We tried a number of variations to keep the excitement in the game, including strapping stuffed animals to our backs, much like skydivers fly tandem. We "flew" for a number of weeks until one afternoon Steven's father came home sick from the office in the middle of the day, and couldn't open the front door because of all the pillows and cushions that were wedged between the stairs and the front door!

This particular game stands out as a fond memory that Steven and I shared during a pretty special time in our lives. I'm really surprised that we never got hurt "flying", or using leftover fireworks for target practice, or crawdad fishing in the creek, or the other million games that we invented together. I look back at those summers as some of the best times of my life.

-Mike Kim

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