LJ Idol Survivor: Challenge 7: Dig It

[flipflop_diva]

When I was a kid, my mom used to say if we kept digging our holes deep enough, we’d end up in China. Looking back on it, this was probably because she wanted my sister and me to stop digging massive holes in our sandbox, and she was hoping the idea would seem scary to a seven-year-old and a three-year-old.

It did not.

It actually seemed rather cool. And it made sense to my seven-year-old mind — after all, China was across the world and the world was a circle, so it did make sense that if we dug down far enough that eventually we’d come back up and be on the other side of the world. Besides, my mom was a nurse and she was very smart, and she definitely knew what she was talking about.

One of my good friends, Cindy, was Chinese, and her parents had lived in China before they moved to America before Cindy and her brother were born. I wondered if I could dig a hole straight to their old backyard? Or maybe my hole would meet up with a hole that kids in China were digging? That would be pretty fun.

I had once asked my parents if I could dig a tunnel from our house to the house next door, so my friends who lived next door and I wouldn’t have to go outside when we wanted to play together. My parents rudely said no without any good explanation, but my mom did not say I couldn’t dig my hole to China and play with the kids there.

As luck would have it, that summer, we went on vacation with three other families up to Lake Arrowhead, California. All the parents had been friends before any of the kids were born, but now there were six of us kids, ranging from seven (I was of course the oldest and the wisest) to a one year old.

Our parents rented a giant house where everyone could stay together. All the parents had their own bedrooms, and the kids all got to sleep in a giant attic bedroom that had enough beds for all of us, including bunk beds, which we thought was the greatest invention of all time.

The best part about the house, though, apart from the bunk beds, was that it was really close to the lake. A couple minutes walk down the road and we were there, able to play all day in the sand and the water.

And this sand was really soft and really fine and very diggable. Very, very diggable.

Immediately, I told all the other kids about my plan to dig a hole to China, and since I was the oldest and the wisest, and we all knew my mom was very smart, everyone immediately agreed that it would be the best use of our time to work on the project. We were going to be there for a week, but we were sure we wouldn’t even need that long.

How far could China be anyway?

We started working. We each had a couple trusty shovels and buckets, and of course we had our fingers and toes, too.

We dug and dug and dug and dug. By lunchtime, we had a deep enough hole that we could sit in. We were pretty excited by that.

We ate our lunch and explained what we were doing to our parents. They were very impressed by our ingenuity. So much that they gave us money to buy candy from the little food shop that sat in the far corner of the beach, across from the bathrooms.

We spent most of it on green apple and watermelon Jolly Ranchers, because those were the best candies. You could suck on them and make them last forever. And we could get a lot of them for the dollar our parents gave each of us.

We went back to work after lunch. We took a few breaks to go swimming and play in the water. And we took a few more breaks to go buy more candy. But we mostly worked hard. Our dads joined us for a while too.

By the end of the day, the hole was so big, we could stand it in and it went past our waists. We were for sure going to make it to China soon!

The next morning, we headed back out of the house with our buckets and shovels and our dreams of making it to China and offering our new friends we met there handfuls of Jolly Ranchers.

But something was wrong.

Our big beautiful hole was no longer quite so big or beautiful. Overnight, it had filled with sand and water, either from the waves or other people, we didn’t know.

We stared at it sadly for a few moments, but we were undeterred. Just a minor setback. It was fine.

We put our stuff down and took our places and began to dig again, getting deeper and deeper down to where the sand became cool and the texture became more like dirt. Around us, the piles of removed sand grew bigger. Our parents helped. We took turns digging and swimming and providing Jolly Rancher reinforcements. By the end of the day, our hole was even deeper than the day before. We were all so proud and so hopeful.

The next day our parents made us take a day off from our task. We went into town instead to go to the skating rink and see a movie. But the day after that, we hurriedly changed into our swimsuits after breakfast and begged our parents to walk faster down the street so we could started sooner.

We made it to the lake, but this time, there was an even bigger problem than the second day. Other kids were playing in our hole, and it was once again not so deep!

We were enraged, frustrated, despairing. All our hard work! And we had been so close!

My mom pulled out a handful of dollar bills from her pocket.

“Do you kids want to get some candy?” she asked.

We forgot about our fury. We decided it was a nice day for swimming and maybe burying the littlest kids in the sand.

We took the money and headed off to buy our Jolly Ranchers.

We could go to China next year, we decided. After all, it would still be there.








Non-fiction. Though, alas, we never did build our hole to China. By the following summer, we had decided it was cooler to build tunnels and caves with really, really big moats.

I tried to find a photo from that summer, but I have no idea where that photo album wandered off to. However, I did find these, taken around the same time period.


I'm the one holding the blue balloon. My sister is the baby on the ground on the right. Not pictured is the one-year-old from the story above.


This one is probably a few years later. I'm on the left in the wagon. My sister is on the bike with the two boys. We are all still friends to this day.




Thank you for reading! This was written for a new adventure in the therealljidol world — Survivor Idol! You can see all the entries here. Voting should be up on Tuesday night!

We are now fighting for individual immunity so I would appreciate if you could vote for me if you liked my work!

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

Awwww. This brings back lots of fun summer memories. My bro, some summer friends and I tried to do something similar on a Florida beach. Our parents made us fill in our hole because they worried someone would accidentally fall in it and need the life squad. 😆Oh...and Holly Ranchers!!! I love the cherry and cinnamon ones. Like you said; they last a good while too!

[murielle]

Digging holes to China! Did that. Never got there either.

This made me smile all the way up from my heart. :-)

Brava!

[bsgsix]

This is so nostalgic, and I love that you added photos - it makes this great story that much more real, and those childhood memories and dialogue really jump off the page. :) I also adore your final line: "After all, it would still be there." I love how, as kids, we know things will just BE. As adults, that sense fades, but you really captured that essence of "it's all okay" in your entry, and I just love that. It's something we really need right now. :) *hugs* <3

[bleodswean]

So many childhood memories here - you captured the experience so well! We lived in the desert and dug "a hole to China" only to cover it with plywood and have an underground "treehouse"! Nicely penned and photos to boot!

[gunwithoutmusic]

This was such a perfect description of "kid logic" - I love it! :) It feels like one of those things we all experienced as kids, along with "The Floor is Lava," where everyone just knows that if you dig enough, you'll get to China. And I love that the story is less about the digging and more about just the general childhood experience. I have a lot of memories of stuff like that, being somehow both really determined and really lackadaisical at the same time ("We'll get this hole to China dug! It's totally our main focus-- oh, candy, though!"). I liked this one a lot, and the photos brought some extra life to it that I enjoyed too. :)

[alycewilson]

How fun! I think we had similar ideas when we were children but never tried so hard to make it happen. This brought back many happy memories. Well-done!

[swirlsofpurple]

This is such an adorably sweet story!

[halfshellvenus]

I remember the days of digging holes to China, which was exactly what we called it!

I was so disappointed to grow older and find out it wouldn't work, that not only was the world unimaginably huge but that there were things like rock and then magma farther down under the surface. Phooey! Who puts things like that in the center of the Earth when there is important tunneling to be done?

I remember the ROI from Jolly Ranchers well too, even though I'm from an older generation. The green apple and the cherry were my favorites-- they hurt so good!

[ashgael]

I was never told i would end up in China.
There is no treasure in the backyard.
You arent going to find fossils.
Iowa doesn't have jem stones
But nothing about China.
Its good to have goals.