In article , "emerald" wrote:
Eimear, I played that ball game as well. We lived across from a Catholic school complex. One outside wall, was the North end of a gym. There were only windows on the third and forth floor above the gym We played tennis agains that wall, and ball games with three balls at the time, or you bounced the ball first on the side walk and then against the wall. You had to turn around before the ball hit the wall....LOL.
Years later, when I came to visit my parent with my three small kids in tow, I showed them how it was done agains the same wall. Dennis promptly came running in the house that the ball was now in the gutter of the little roof over the school main entrance. No sweat, said this mother, who was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and in much better shape than she is now. I did my thing, and show off for my kids, and climed the fence and the three stone blocks above it and onto this little roof and retrieved not only Dennis' ball but several others. Low and behold, the doors of the school open and one of the older nuns (same darn nun who used to chaise us when we were kids), and with her stern teachers voice asked me what I thought I was doing up in the roof, and did I not realize, that I was distracting the kids in the class (that part of the school had windows at street level). I sat down on the top stone, and told her that I was getting the ball, I had left there when I was a child. She did smile and told me to come down, and behave myself....LOL We were the only family on the block who were not Catholic. I went to Montessori school some blocks away. We loved to hang out of the window (free translation form Dutch) and watch when the processions came by on their way to the Church. Holy communion drove my poor mother crazy, with three little girls wanting the same lovely dresses as all the girls on their way to this big event. Palm Pasen with the fantasticly decorated sticks with bread swans and other intresting figurers on it wrapped around with ribbons and adorned with palm branches, like gay distaffs
Thanks for evoking that memory Eimear.
Els