The Swinging Girl
This is probably as good a place as any too start. It is a story that in my mind is left open to interpretation. It is also an experience that I could only be a part of from a distance, as I’m sure you will understand after reading it. Like many of my stories, this one should probably be given just a bit of backstory.
In 1997 I, along with a business partner, moved from the Oregon/Idaho border, to the hills of western Virginia. We were going into business running a pizza store, and as owner/operator types, we spent a lot of time there. Now the store was located kind of away from the main business section of town. Surrounded by homes, and a couple of small-time commercial business properties, that were themselves located in homes. Our store had a big bay window up front, and looked across the street to a simple, split level red painted house. There was a short flight of steps leading up to the home, and though the homes on either side of it had fenced back yards, this home did not. We took over our new restaurant on New Years Day 1998, and I wasn’t far into that snowy winter, when I first noticed an oddity about one of the residents of the house across the street.
You see, there was a young girl who evidently lived in that house. I don’t know how old she was, as I really didn’t have reason to pay attention to her regular comings and goings. I may not have paid any mind to her at all, if not for a very large snowstorm that hit the area a few weeks after we had started working. The forecast was warning that it would be a rather bad storm, one that would likely lead to most other stores in town closing. We however had another idea. I had grown up in Idaho after all, and I felt very confident in my abilities to drive even in several inches of snow. Seeing as we were a place that offered delivery, we decided we would stay open, while everyone else was closed. Shortly after noon, I went out into the then light snow to put chains on my tires. As I was doing so, a movement across the street caught my eye. As I shifted my attention to the red house, I noticed someone was in the backyard swinging on one of those old metal swing sets.
It was an odd sight, especially with the falling snow as its backdrop. My family had swings when I was younger, swinging on a swing set was something I think most kids did. Except it was usually something reserved for spring, or summer, or even fall. Heck, the parks in my hometown even took the swings down during the winter months I remember. The schools usually left them up, but nobody ever played on them. I wondered on the scene for a moment, but then shoved it aside, my desire to get the tires done overriding my curiosity at what was ultimately a child playing in their yard. No big deal. By the time the tires were done and the preparations for the busy evening broke into full swing (har-har) the swing set and the girl had been forgotten.
That was until the next day, after roughly a foot of snow had fallen. Just as the sun was about to set, I had gone to the phones to take an order. As I was waiting for the customer to choose their toppings, I happened to look straight out our front window, and there, with snow pushed and piled so that she would have room, was the girl, swinging again. The temperature outside couldn’t have been much above freezing, and even with the snow moved, she was barely clearing the piles. And yet there she was again. I again kind of pushed it aside, the schools were all closed, and I guessed with the daylight fading, playing outside in the snow wasn’t that odd of a thing for a kid to do.
As the name of the story implies though, this wasn’t the last time I’d see this girl outside swinging. In fact, as time went on, my questions only increased concerning her behavior. Cold and snow were the least of the elements I would witness her swinging in. Later that spring, we experienced about a week of almost constant rainstorms. And there she would be, regardless of how torrential a downpour it was, swinging away. Blistering heat, wind, rain, snow, cold, no element of the weather seemed to be a factor when she decided it was time to get on the swing set.
Over the years I have reflected on what exactly it was that drove this girl to doing this. I am no psychologist, nor a doctor, nor anything that would qualify me to hazard a guess as to what it was that fueled her swinging. Truthfully, had this just been a girl that lived across the street from my store, I would never have given her or the house a second thought. Some people that I have told the story too think it sounds a bit odd or creepy, watching a child playing. I will promise you the only thing odd in my mind was the fact she would do this, regardless of the weather conditions outside. To me, the most logical thing seemed to be that maybe it was a coping mechanism. Like someone who will dive headfirst into a hobby or pass time to distract them from a stressful situation in their work or personal life. I confess, I have no real idea of all the ins and outs of say ADHD, or OCD. Was the swinging something she just HAD to do? I don’t know. But I also wonder if maybe it was just a child playing away her cares. Having fun, no matter the situation presented her. In that regard, I wistfully think that maybe we all could be a little bit more like the swinging girl.