If I don't come back alive...

When you were a kid (can you remember that long ago?) what was your favorite pasttime with your sibs? Ours was playing on the swing. It hung in a giant sugar maple tree in our front yard. We lived in the boonies and our front yard was pretty big. The "swing tree" was at the edge of the yard, next to an old, no longer in use, cow pasture. My sisters and I played in that swing daily and our favorite game was pretending that the swing was a rocket ship that would take us to a far off world. One of us would man the "cockpit" while another provided the rocket "thrust" by pushing the swing higher and higher. This was before real outer space travel and after the days of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movies so our imaginations were free to roam.

Apparently we traveled light for these excursions to unknown places. The only thing we carried was crackers. Don't ask me why - I simply don't remember. To let the crackers go stale or soft was the worst thing that could happen on our trek. Without those crackers to sustain us we would surely perish in the astronomical unknown. And as we swung higher and higher, we recited these words: "If I don't come back alive, you'll know why. S-o-o-o-g-g-y crackers!"