The Hedge

My Dad's Mom's house, Grandma's house, looks like a boat house frequently seen on Lake Powell. It has slanted walls on its second story and a wall of windows that are slanted inwards all along the back side of the house. The windows are there to look out at the pool and patio area that fills most of the back yard. In the front of the house were hedges. There were short hedges that knee high things that went along the sidewalk along the front of the house to the front door. There were larger hedges almost as tall as the first story of the house that blocked one from clearly seeing the front door if one was looking at it from the corner. This hedge was neatly trimmed and stood a good two feet away from the house. With two feet of space between hedge and house it became a major path for my cousins and I to play on or hide in when we did not want to be found. The hedges ran the rest of the length of the front of the house and curved along the side of the house and finally ending at the fence that surrounded the pool in the back yard. There were two ways in or out. One next to the front door, where we could enter but not easily as the opening was only a few feet tall. I think Grandma did that on purpose to discourage us from going in or out through this entrance and it was the only place I noticed that backside of the hedge ever touching the house until one got to the pool. The other entrance was on the side of the house. This entrance was five or six feet wide and had a poplar tree growing right in the middle of that entrance. One day we, my older sister, younger brothers and cousins of various ages, were playing tag. We were playing in the front yard were the yard sloped down the street and where the hedges would play into the strategy of getting away from whoever was it. With all of us laughing and running around the yard we were getting more creative with our moves through the hedges. Now a quick note; when kids play any game there are rules that are known and rules that are made up on the spot. We preferred to make rules as we went along. So one of the rules was that if you went into the hedge you had to come back out within five or ten seconds. Well as the course of play continued I became it. I ran around the yard trying to catch my cousins, older sister, and younger brothers but was not having much luck then I saw one of my cousins enter the hedge at the front door entrance. I quickly ran to the other entrance on the side of the house and entered at a full gallop. I was running so fast in one direction and my cousin was running so fast in the other direction that we collided somewhere in the middle behind the hedge.