“Let’s play pirates!” My cousin Kat announces. She doesn’t make suggestions, she just says what she thinks should happen and usually we do it, because she’s the oldest.
She’s standing up on one of the old swings built into the wooden playfort behind our grandparents’ house, and the whole structure sways with every arc back and forth, like a ship on the ocean. There’s a faded plastic steering wheel screwed onto one side of the upper platform, and an open-ended spyglass filled with spider eggs that Micah and Brayden were poking sticks into earlier. They were chasing the Ava and Maggie with the white-tipped swabs held out like swords, but eventually they got bored and wandered back to the swings with the rest of us.
“I get to be Blackbeard,” Kat continues, gesturing towards the splintery wood. “And this is my ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.” She holds a hand up over her eyes, as though she’s scanning the horizon for enemy vessels or deserted islands. One hand gracefully goes to point at the faded sandbox nearby, in the shape of a turtle with one eye missing from the head. “And that’s the lost Spanish galleon, full of all the gold taken from the New World.”
She lets one hand go free of the swing chain, making her spin even more as she sways back and forth, still unbothered. “Who do you guys want to be?” she asks. “We should all be rival crews, racing to see whose ship can get to the Spanish gold first.” I think she’s been reading a book on pirates. She always says random facts about things she’s read.
“Captain Hook!” shouts her little brother, Micah. Peter Pan is his favorite movie, and he’s been carrying around a plastic crocodile with him all day. I don’t think he knows anything about Spanish gold.
Kat immediately shakes her head. “No. Real pirates only. Not made-up ones. Or you can just be a member of the crew.”
I guess it’s okay to be someone made-up if they aren’t important.
“Um…” Micah thinks hard. “I will be the crew. With one hand.” He finds a curved stick on the ground and holds it up. “This is my hook.”
“How do you know there’s no real Captain Hook?” asks Brayden, the boy who lives next door to our grandparents. He’s in the same grade as Kat, but goes to a different school, and he likes to pick fights with her. “You don’t know every pirate who ever existed. You weren’t there.”
“Because the guy who wrote Peter Pan said he made it all up. I saw a movie about it,” Kat argues back, then turns and looks towards me. “What about you? Who do you want to be?”
I don’t want to be the crew. At least not Kat’s crew. Then I’ll just have to let her boss me around more than she usually does. But I don’t know any other pirates besides Blackbeard, Captain Hook, and Jack Sparrow, who I’m pretty sure isn’t real, and even though I bet Brayden would pick my side and say Jack Sparrow maybe was real, I still have to share the basement with my cousins for the week we’re all spending with Grandma and Grandpa, and I don’t want to get on her bad side.
I can’t imagine any new pirates fast enough, so I just say, “I don’t know any others.”
She thinks hard, beginning to twist on the swing, but her small hand grips the chains tight and she seems unbothered. “How about…Calico Jack? Your names kind of sound the same,” she points out. I have no idea who Calico Jack is, but I nod.
“I want to be the pirate princess!” insists my little sister, Maggie. Princesses are her favorite thing. They’re also our little cousin Ava’s favorite thing, and she echoes Maggie’s statements. “I’m a princess too!”
Kat rolls her eyes. “There are no pirate princesses. That’s not a thing.” I remember hearing something about Spanish princesses from one of the boring costume shows my mom likes to watch, but I don’t bring it up.
“How do you know?” Brayden grumbles, but I’m the only one who hears him over Maggie’s defiant scream.
“Uh-huh! I saw it on TV!” she yells at Kat. Sometimes she likes to watch our mom’s shows too, until Mom makes her go in the other room.
“TV isn’t real!” Kat snaps back. This makes Ava cry, and she runs off to where all the grownups are drinking beer on our grandparents’ patio. But Maggie holds firm.
“Then I’ll make one up,” she insists, scanning the yard until she sees the plastic Fisher-Price castle Grandma got at a yard sale last year. Once spotted, Maggie makes a mad dash for it. “This is my ship!”
To my surprise, Kat doesn’t argue this point. “That can be your ship,” she agrees. “But you’re not a princess. And you can’t just make one up, I already said that’s against the rules.” She pauses, and gets a look on her face like she’s planning something mean. “But there were women pirates. You could be one of them,” she offers.
Maggie pauses, seemingly intrigued. “What are their names?” she asks suspiciously, sensing a trick.
“Anne Bonny and Mary Read. You can be either one,” Kat explains, as though she’s offering Maggie a pick between two candy bars she doesn’t really like.
“Um…Mary Read,” Maggie decides after a moment of thought.
Kat looks at me now. “Go be with her, Jackie, that can be your ship,” she says.
“No! It’s mine! I’m the captain!” Maggie shouts from across the yard. She’s already run up the slide of the plastic castle and stands triumphant at the top. “Captain Mary Read!”
“No you’re not, Calico Jack is the captain. Mary Read is his girlfriend,” Kat says with a triumphant grin.
At that news, Maggie makes a face and noise like she’s going to throw up, and nearly topples the castle over as she angrily shakes one of the walls back and forth with both hands. “I don’t want to be Jackie’s girlfriend!” she yells again. “I’ll be Anne Bonny instead then.”
“She’s Calico Jack’s other girlfriend,” Kat replies, earning an all-out scream from my sister.
I think it’s very interesting that whoever this Calico Jack was, he was allowed to have two girlfriends. Whenever that happens on TV, someone gets in a fight. And I guess it’s causing a fight now too, because Maggie is also storming off, probably to go tell on Kat to our parents.
Meanwhile, Brayden goes to claim the plastic castle-turned-pirate-ship. “I’m going to be Captain Flint,” he says confidently, looking Kat square in the eyes. “He’s the only man Blackbeard was ever afraid of.”
Kat takes a flying leap off the swing and lands gracefully on her feet, after she gets up from landing on her knees. “I said no fake pirates,” she snaps, taking a few steps towards Brayden. “You got that from Treasure Island. That’s not real, it’s just a made-up story, like Peter Pan.”
“Is not,” Brayden argues. “My dad went to Savannah last year, and he went to the Pirate House, where Captain Flint actually died. There were plaques and everything, and my dad said the waitress even said she saw a ghost there one time.” He turns to look and me, putting one hand over his eye. “She said he had an eyepatch, and a cutlass, and was floating down the hallway.”
“Well she lied to you,” Kat sniffs. “Captain Flint isn’t real. I saw a TV show about pirates last week, and they even said the guy who wrote Treasure Island made it all up.”
“You just said TV isn’t real!” Brayden snaps back.
“Well this show was! It was on the History Channel!”
“You just want to be the boss of everyone!”
“Well you just want to be the boss of me!”
Before anything can come to blows, I hear my grandpa shouting from the patio. “Kids! Burgers are ready!” he calls out to us.
Brayden glares at Kat one more time, then takes off at a dead run, determined to beat her to the food. For a moment, I think she’s going to try and race after him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she falls into step beside me, a thoughtful look on her face as we walk to the patio together.
“Hey, Jackie?” she asks as we walk towards dinner. “Where does your dad keep the firecrackers? I have an idea for after dinner…”
She’s standing up on one of the old swings built into the wooden playfort behind our grandparents’ house, and the whole structure sways with every arc back and forth, like a ship on the ocean. There’s a faded plastic steering wheel screwed onto one side of the upper platform, and an open-ended spyglass filled with spider eggs that Micah and Brayden were poking sticks into earlier. They were chasing the Ava and Maggie with the white-tipped swabs held out like swords, but eventually they got bored and wandered back to the swings with the rest of us.
“I get to be Blackbeard,” Kat continues, gesturing towards the splintery wood. “And this is my ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.” She holds a hand up over her eyes, as though she’s scanning the horizon for enemy vessels or deserted islands. One hand gracefully goes to point at the faded sandbox nearby, in the shape of a turtle with one eye missing from the head. “And that’s the lost Spanish galleon, full of all the gold taken from the New World.”
She lets one hand go free of the swing chain, making her spin even more as she sways back and forth, still unbothered. “Who do you guys want to be?” she asks. “We should all be rival crews, racing to see whose ship can get to the Spanish gold first.” I think she’s been reading a book on pirates. She always says random facts about things she’s read.
“Captain Hook!” shouts her little brother, Micah. Peter Pan is his favorite movie, and he’s been carrying around a plastic crocodile with him all day. I don’t think he knows anything about Spanish gold.
Kat immediately shakes her head. “No. Real pirates only. Not made-up ones. Or you can just be a member of the crew.”
I guess it’s okay to be someone made-up if they aren’t important.
“Um…” Micah thinks hard. “I will be the crew. With one hand.” He finds a curved stick on the ground and holds it up. “This is my hook.”
“How do you know there’s no real Captain Hook?” asks Brayden, the boy who lives next door to our grandparents. He’s in the same grade as Kat, but goes to a different school, and he likes to pick fights with her. “You don’t know every pirate who ever existed. You weren’t there.”
“Because the guy who wrote Peter Pan said he made it all up. I saw a movie about it,” Kat argues back, then turns and looks towards me. “What about you? Who do you want to be?”
I don’t want to be the crew. At least not Kat’s crew. Then I’ll just have to let her boss me around more than she usually does. But I don’t know any other pirates besides Blackbeard, Captain Hook, and Jack Sparrow, who I’m pretty sure isn’t real, and even though I bet Brayden would pick my side and say Jack Sparrow maybe was real, I still have to share the basement with my cousins for the week we’re all spending with Grandma and Grandpa, and I don’t want to get on her bad side.
I can’t imagine any new pirates fast enough, so I just say, “I don’t know any others.”
She thinks hard, beginning to twist on the swing, but her small hand grips the chains tight and she seems unbothered. “How about…Calico Jack? Your names kind of sound the same,” she points out. I have no idea who Calico Jack is, but I nod.
“I want to be the pirate princess!” insists my little sister, Maggie. Princesses are her favorite thing. They’re also our little cousin Ava’s favorite thing, and she echoes Maggie’s statements. “I’m a princess too!”
Kat rolls her eyes. “There are no pirate princesses. That’s not a thing.” I remember hearing something about Spanish princesses from one of the boring costume shows my mom likes to watch, but I don’t bring it up.
“How do you know?” Brayden grumbles, but I’m the only one who hears him over Maggie’s defiant scream.
“Uh-huh! I saw it on TV!” she yells at Kat. Sometimes she likes to watch our mom’s shows too, until Mom makes her go in the other room.
“TV isn’t real!” Kat snaps back. This makes Ava cry, and she runs off to where all the grownups are drinking beer on our grandparents’ patio. But Maggie holds firm.
“Then I’ll make one up,” she insists, scanning the yard until she sees the plastic Fisher-Price castle Grandma got at a yard sale last year. Once spotted, Maggie makes a mad dash for it. “This is my ship!”
To my surprise, Kat doesn’t argue this point. “That can be your ship,” she agrees. “But you’re not a princess. And you can’t just make one up, I already said that’s against the rules.” She pauses, and gets a look on her face like she’s planning something mean. “But there were women pirates. You could be one of them,” she offers.
Maggie pauses, seemingly intrigued. “What are their names?” she asks suspiciously, sensing a trick.
“Anne Bonny and Mary Read. You can be either one,” Kat explains, as though she’s offering Maggie a pick between two candy bars she doesn’t really like.
“Um…Mary Read,” Maggie decides after a moment of thought.
Kat looks at me now. “Go be with her, Jackie, that can be your ship,” she says.
“No! It’s mine! I’m the captain!” Maggie shouts from across the yard. She’s already run up the slide of the plastic castle and stands triumphant at the top. “Captain Mary Read!”
“No you’re not, Calico Jack is the captain. Mary Read is his girlfriend,” Kat says with a triumphant grin.
At that news, Maggie makes a face and noise like she’s going to throw up, and nearly topples the castle over as she angrily shakes one of the walls back and forth with both hands. “I don’t want to be Jackie’s girlfriend!” she yells again. “I’ll be Anne Bonny instead then.”
“She’s Calico Jack’s other girlfriend,” Kat replies, earning an all-out scream from my sister.
I think it’s very interesting that whoever this Calico Jack was, he was allowed to have two girlfriends. Whenever that happens on TV, someone gets in a fight. And I guess it’s causing a fight now too, because Maggie is also storming off, probably to go tell on Kat to our parents.
Meanwhile, Brayden goes to claim the plastic castle-turned-pirate-ship. “I’m going to be Captain Flint,” he says confidently, looking Kat square in the eyes. “He’s the only man Blackbeard was ever afraid of.”
Kat takes a flying leap off the swing and lands gracefully on her feet, after she gets up from landing on her knees. “I said no fake pirates,” she snaps, taking a few steps towards Brayden. “You got that from Treasure Island. That’s not real, it’s just a made-up story, like Peter Pan.”
“Is not,” Brayden argues. “My dad went to Savannah last year, and he went to the Pirate House, where Captain Flint actually died. There were plaques and everything, and my dad said the waitress even said she saw a ghost there one time.” He turns to look and me, putting one hand over his eye. “She said he had an eyepatch, and a cutlass, and was floating down the hallway.”
“Well she lied to you,” Kat sniffs. “Captain Flint isn’t real. I saw a TV show about pirates last week, and they even said the guy who wrote Treasure Island made it all up.”
“You just said TV isn’t real!” Brayden snaps back.
“Well this show was! It was on the History Channel!”
“You just want to be the boss of everyone!”
“Well you just want to be the boss of me!”
Before anything can come to blows, I hear my grandpa shouting from the patio. “Kids! Burgers are ready!” he calls out to us.
Brayden glares at Kat one more time, then takes off at a dead run, determined to beat her to the food. For a moment, I think she’s going to try and race after him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she falls into step beside me, a thoughtful look on her face as we walk to the patio together.
“Hey, Jackie?” she asks as we walk towards dinner. “Where does your dad keep the firecrackers? I have an idea for after dinner…”