Emma- Snapshot Two: Gullible

Emma Kleinknecht

English 1109 10:30

9/12/2016

Snapshot Two: Gullible

There were four big, unique houses in a suburban neighborhood. Two on one street, two on the next street over. They faced opposite directions so our four backyards were back to back, sort of sharing the same space other than a few trees that divided some of the space. Evan, Joel, Emily, Lindsay, my brother Christian and I met on Joel and Lindsay’s swing set every morning that summer because out of all of ours, Joel and Lindsay’s was the best. Evan, Joel and Christian were all ten years old and viewed as the leaders. I was nine, so also held authority. Emily and Lindsay were the youngest, so the boys always picked on them.

This specific morning Emily was at church. The rest of us were hanging around the swing set. Tall, scrawny Evan, who was the silly one of the group was on the rope swing and I was viciously shaking the bottom like an earthquake until he couldn’t stay on any longer. The rope swing was my thing, so I was very territorial about it.

Little Lindsay spent hours working on a castle in her sandbox which sat feet away from the swing set. She went inside to use the restroom and mischievous Evan approached her sandbox and demolished her castle to make us laugh and stir up trouble. No one said a word. We stood in disbelief. Not cool.

Moments later Lindsay came out and threw a temper tantrum, jumping up and down, flailing her arms all over the place like noodles. “Who did it? Who did it? Who did it?” We all looked in Evans direction but before he could take the blame he said “Emily put invisible lotion on and she did it.”

 “Really?” Lindsay asked with her eyes exploding from her head. “Yeah, we all watched her put it on” Evan explained. We all erupted with laughter, making jokes about it the rest of the day. Really? Invisible lotion?