I remember reaching down to grab the tattered, purple football from the basement floor, and looking up to see my 200 pound younger brother barreling toward me like a crazed bull, his shoulder lowered and death in his eyes. Then I remember pulling myself out of the wall where I had become imbedded in six inches of plywood and removing splinters from my back as my brothers rolled on the floor with laughter. This was one of the games my two younger brothers and I used to play in our basement.
In an old house like ours, nature and time take their course and inflict various amounts of damage to certain areas. But no room has taken half as much abuse as the big one in our basement - the "wreck" room. When my parents moved into our current house with us three large, rowdy boys, they decided that we were inevitably going to break things, so they might as well forfeit a whole room to us. The Jury boys' playpen is basically a low-ceilinged living room, with wood panel walls, a white plaster fireplace, and an obnoxiously green carpet. The only difference is that instead of furniture, the centerpiece of the room is three noisy boys beating each other's heads in with pillows. Scattered with broken toys, hockey sticks, and wrestling mats, it's far enough away from the rest of the house so that an injured brothers' cries can be muffled, but close enough to the fridge to be able to run for ice packs.
This room has been our arena for as long as I can remember. While other kids played in their bedrooms or went outside, Mark, Alex and I would remain underground, devising new and ever more malevolent games. Actually, it was my job as the oldest to think of the game, and then convince other two that it was fun. It wasn't that we were against going outdoors, but we figured why bother when you could play every sport known to man in the comfort of your own home? Unfortunately for the paneling in our basement, all of our sports were contact. Those four walls, the "Walls of Fame," still serve as an historical account of all the brutal contests we've had. There are cracks and scrapes of all shapes and sizes in the paneling, and each has its own tale. For instance, a one square inch hole about six feet off the floor represents the raging frenzy of one of my brother's friends and the head of the golf putter he lodged into the wood. As for when my Alex put me through the wall, that three foot indent only tells half the story. Retaliation was swift; I knocked out a chunk of paneling with him about five minutes later. We were very productive that day. There is also a circular cavity where Alex's head went through. We were engaged in a particularly reckless game of Smear when somebody tripped him and sent the poor kid hurtling through the air like an out-of-water torpedo. After pulling his head out of the fresh indent, he sat up and pulled a nail out of his hair. He looked blankly around for a moment, then got up and left to go watch TV. We let him go this time. He'd earned a break.
The games we played weren't limited to Smear, of course, although that was one of the more brutal, and thus popular, pastimes. Basically, Smear involved one person holding a football or similar object, while the other participants tried to tackle him. Once down, the player would give the ball to someone else, who would in turn run and be tackled, continuing the cycle until only one person could get up. Smear had an even rougher version where the runner could fight back, called "Brawl Ball," but we only played this game once and then gave it up because there were too many casualties. There was also a game called "Hernier," (like hernia with an "r") that was basically a brawl with the lights turned out. The object was to grope blindly through the darkness until you located another person, upon which you would attack them, yelling the word "Hernier!," as a verbal beacon for others to join the fray. We also had a game that didn't really have any rules, but basically consisted of forcing our youngest brother, Alex, to run around as we blasted him with pillows in the head and legs until he fell down. I believe it was called "Hit Alex with Pillows Until he Falls Down." Alex didn't particularly like this game, but it was fun for everyone else.
I wish I could write a warm, fuzzy essay about how all the time we spent together in our basement really brought my brothers and me together and made us grow. But that wouldn't be the totally truthful, and I'm more into subtle exaggeration than downright lying. Although we kids have a generally good relationship, these games weren't the cause. If anything, they only made us fight more; it's hard to love someone who has their fist in your ear.
But the basement helped us in other ways. For one thing, we're a lot sturdier for it. Our bones are so callused from breaking through walls and crashing into each other that we're practically invincible. Several years ago I fell off the roof into our driveway and didn't even break a bone. Also, I think my parents' plan worked. Although the rec room sometimes takes on the appearance of an auditorium after a Pantera concert, the rest of the house has remained fairly intact. The basement basically drew the fire for the rest of our home. We focused so much of our negative energy on destroying this one room that we completely forgot that there were other rooms to break.
So the basement has helped us grow - at least in strange, indirect ways. It's certainly become more a part of us than the other rooms in our house (except maybe the kitchen). Over the years its use has diminished as the three of us have grown out of maiming each other and into more organized forms of rough play. Both my brothers are now avid football players and find their years of experience to be an advantage over other kids who had no basement. We hardly ever play Smear anymore, but thankfully we're still immature enough to go down to the basement from time to time for a good old three person brawl, at least for old time's sake.
