There's Something About Cindy

I had absolutely nothing in common with the few girls that lived in my neighborhood. They were either too young for me to play with, too old for me to play with, or just flat out too stupid to even bother with (my stories about Laurie are coming up soon.)

The aforementioned Cindy was about five years older than me. For whatever reason, she would pile her hair underneath this little flat orange hat. If you ever watched the Fat Albert cartoon, there was a character on there named Rudy who wore a hat similar to Cindy's. Don't get Rudy mixed up with Mushmouth, cuz Mushmouth wore a ski mask.

She acted like she was tough stuff, but she was really just all talk. She had absolutely no sense of humor. Everyone in our neighborhood constantly played jokes on each other; no one meant any harm to anyone. It was done completely out of boredom and it was a harmless way to amuse ourselves....and no one was exempt. That's just the way it was.

We hid each other's bicycles. We told each other that their mother was calling them when we knew she wasn't. We'd tell the little kids that we saw the ice cream truck on the back street so they'd run in the house and beg their mama for ice cream money and get mad when she wouldn't give it to them. We'd argue over whose daddy could beat up the other daddys. (All of our fathers got along with each other just fine; but to hear us tell it, every daddy on Grace Street had beat up at least 100 other daddys.)

Anyway, we played together and we picked on each other. It was just fun.

Apparently, Cindy did not see things that way. She was CONSTANTLY in big sister mode with regards to her brothers and if she even SUSPECTED that you were picking on them, then you were going to get the world famous "Cindy Stare-down."

She would do this thing where she would stand out on her driveway with her hands on her hips, that stupid little hat pulled low across her eyes, with her head lifted up so she could see underneath the brow....and stare you down. I guess it was supposed to scare us or something. If you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly."

All of that changed when she started dating Tiny.

Tiny was our garbage man. I have no idea what his real name was, but his nickname was Tiny....but he was not. I think the garbage truck actually belonged to his dad. I just remember that on the side of the garbage compactor in big letters it said "Haulin' For Jesus."

One day, Tiny came down the street in his "Haulin' for Jesus" garbage truck as we were riding our bikes. Cindy happened to be outside and she and Tiny were talking. After he threw the Baskins' garbage up into the compactor, we heard Tiny holler out "I'll be back here around 7" and Cindy said "OK" and she ran back into the house.

We all looked at one another and immediately made a beeline for the Baskin house. My brother asked the million dollar question...."How come Tiny's coming back here tonight?"

Stanley said, "He's taking Cindy to a movie."

So....all of us being the nosy little kids we were, gathered on our carport around 7 to see the spectacle. This was not just me and my two brothers....this was just about every kid on our street.

A car pulled into the Baskin's driveway and out jumped Tiny. We were all standing there, so we decided to do what most nosy little kids would do. We all hollered out "Hey Tiny!!!"

Tiny didn't look like the Tiny we knew. This Tiny wasn't wearing tore up blue jeans and a dirty white tshirt. This particular Tiny was wearing regular pants with a button down shirt....and he wasn't wearing his garbage gloves.

LeAnn hollered out, "Hey Tiny...how come you're not in your garbage truck?"

Tiny hollered back, "'cause I'm done haulin' trash today."

One of the older boys muttered "Oh yeah?" which made everyone else laugh. Being 12 at the time, I didn't get what was so funny, but I laughed because everyone else was laughing.

Cindy came running out of the house...with that ridiculous orange hat on and got into the car.

And as they backed out of the driveway, we began serenading them with that age-old love song:

Cindy and Tiny sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love
Then comes marriage
Here Cindy comes with a baby carriage

I'd like to be able to give you a happy ending, but Tiny and Cindy eventually broke up. They got mad at one another about something, she pulled the "Cindy Staredown" and I guess it probably scared poor Tiny.

From that point on, Tiny made it a point to not tarry on our street too long when he picked up our garbage.