Saturday. 1977.

When my doorbell would ring before 11 a.m. on Saturday morning, I knew it could only be one person. Denise. She was the only weirdo who didn't watch cartoons on Saturday mornings.

"Hi, Denise."

"Hi, Jenny."

"I'm still watching cartoons. I'll come out after Laff-A-Lympics, okay?"

"Okay."

It was like the girl didn't know me! Right now, the Really Rottens were in the lead because Muttley had cut a hole in Huckleberry Hound's sandbags and the Yogi's Yahooeys were falling behind. The weeks when the Really Rottens stole first place just put a whole stink on the day.

On Saturday mornings, I would try my best not to wake up before 8 a.m., because the baby shows like Captain Kangaroo were on. Trying to occupy myself today at 7:37 a.m., I took my time picking out the stale popcorn from last night, putting it in a fresh blue plastic bowl and mixing up some chocolate milk.

When 8 a.m. mercifully arrived, it was magic time. Most often, I would stay solidly with the ABC lineup of Superfriends/Scooby Doo/Laff-A-Lympics. Occasionally, if the Wonder Twins were getting on my nerves, (form of an ice-unicycle? weird.) I might actually groan and pull myself off the faux-red recliner and walk the four feet to the t.v., turn the dial, clunk, clunk, clunk, to see what Peepo and Jake were up to on Space Academy.

Around 11:30 a.m., secure in the knowledge that the Scooby Dooey's were this weeks champs, I threw on some clothes, yelled, "Mom! I'm going out to play," and walked out in search of Denise and the other kids from the neighborhood.

Denise was a year older than me and five houses down the sidewalk. My house was at the center of the circle and had the distinction of serving as Cedar Lane's home base for baseball, kickball and other made up games. I was only five, but the older kids would walk in closer to me and let me have a crack at it with my mini Phillies bat. (Inevitably, all of my clunkers would miraculously turn into a homeruns. I had the gift!)

Eventually, I found Denise and Vicki at the "Big Rock" which was an enormous boulder behind the cement wall marking the edge of my next-door-neighbor's property. They didn't have kids--but didn't mind if we hopped over the wall. The Big Rock could hold about five kids--so we had plenty of space to sit and talk about Donnie and Marie last night . We then moved on to sliding down the Big Rock into the backyard of the people behind our street. (All of these people were a mystery to me. I only knew my street people.) After a while, we needed more action.

We decided on freeze tag with my big backyard cedar tree as base, but that fizzled out quickly with only three people, (No Duh!) so Vicki got her older twin sisters, Susan and Sandra to come out. They were a LOT older and sometimes wouldn't be in the mood to play, but they were up for it today. We switched to hide and go seek and all the friendly yards were fair game. Friendly yards were generally houses with kids or ones your parents hadn't warned you to stay out of.

After an hour of trying to find Sandra, Vicki finally shouted out from Denise's back yard. We all came running and it turned out Sandy had been hiding down the hill past Denise's back gate. (A little out of bounds as far as we were all concerned--but we knew enough not to say that to Sandy. We were just lucky she was playing with us.) Denise's back gate led to three cement steps that abruptly ended on a steep, wooded hill, backing up to one of Drexel Hill's busiest roads. The front of Denise's house was quiet, but the back had the perpetual whirring of fast cars. We weren't technically supposed to go behind the gate because I think our parents worried we would wander down the hill, onto the busy road and then get hit by a car.

As it started to get a little darker, Denise's mom called her in. Susan, Sandra, Vicki and I started walking back towards our houses, kicking a rock back and forth to each other. I heard my mom shouting, "Jennifer! Dinner!......Jenn--i---ferrrrrr." So I said bye to the sisters and wandered in the front door of my house.

Cube steak, white rice and gravy. Bath. Popcorn and the Bionic Woman back on the red recliner. Saturday Perfection.