don't ever challenge the paper boy

We had matching sun dresses for every occasion.  Pretty pink with flowers, light yellow daisies, the style of the early eighties.  White strapped sandals, delicate, and petite.  My mother loved us to look like little girls sometimes despite our tomboy ways.  Our house on Gotham Street was typical of the time, we had an enormous tree in front of our house that kept guard.  A fateful day in the summer of 1979, Danielle and I were sitting out front of our house on the roots around the base of the big tree.  I loved those lazy summer days, the sun shining, the air smelling of cut grass, the neighborhood kids everywhere.  A small distance down the street our paperboy was making his way towards our house.  He yelled ahead for Danielle and I to get out of the way so he could get some air by riding his bike up the root of our tree.  I complied, rather quickly.  Danielle, not so much.  She stood her ground and refused to move, even decided to change her position from sitting to laying to cover more of the surface area of the tree root.  He said "I'll run over you!", she replied "This is my tree, and I'm not moving."  This was a game of chicken and no one backed down.  My mother must have heard her screaming, my sister had bicycle tracks across the waist of her new sun dress.  This is the best, most unbelievable part of this memory.  My mother, a quiet, hippie type woman, peace, love, and music...came out in a rage and spanked the paperboy.  Yes, she spanked him.  I am not sure at that point if I had ever seen her lay a hand on anybody.  She was the essence of patience, a school teacher non the less, she dealt with terrible kids all the time.  Her patience was tried and tested, the result forever engraved in my mind, my startled four year old body stood rooted in the same spot that I retreated to when the paper boy initially demanded I move.  The only muscle I dared to move was my jaw as it slowly fell as I watched my mother take out, what seemed to be, years of fury on the paperboy's butt.  This story comes up every now and then during Thanksgiving when we get our family together, my mother frail, denies all...but I remember.