When I was eight, Brother was six, Sister was four and The Kid was 2, we all lived in a two-story green house on Stamy Road. Our half-acre back yard had two apple trees, two cherry trees, two pear trees, two peach trees and one crab apple tree, a thick bed of strawberries, and more raspberry bushes than you could imagine. There was a large, white natural gas tank next to those raspberry bushes; it had handles on either side of it and sometimes we’d pretend it was our horse. Dad built us a sandbox and playhouse near the strawberry patch, and most afternoons Spring – Fall, you could find the four of us out there, playing some imaginary game very intensely.

(I will also admit that we did more than our fair share of picking on The Kid while living in the green house. We have all since apologized to that Kid, and I think he is over it.)

The green house used to have an attached garage, but the former owners built an unattached garage next to the house and finished off the old one. The former owners had garish taste in interior decorating, the entire upstairs was carpeted in Harvest Gold carpet, the bedrooms were done in varying primary color shades of shag carpet, the kitchen and downstairs were orange patterned Berber…and in the former garage, they put bright red and black diamond-patterned carpet with fuzzy red wallpaper, interspersed with mirrored columns on the walls.

It was atrocious.

I realized that even at the tender age of eight years old.

We affectionately called the red room The Red Room, and it became our enormous playroom. Mom could shut the door on it, too, if we were really annoying her and do her work at her desk in peace (which she never did).

One such afternoon, when Mom was working in her office downstairs, Pops was working at the hospital, and Sister and The Kid were taking their naps because they were still babies, The Brother and I climbed up on the kitchen counters to see if we could find any snacks. It was hard for us since, being little Lairds, we were both undersized and underweight so we had to go get kitchen table chairs in order to make it all the way to the counter.

“Mom has good stuff in here,” I said to The Brother, as he struggled to finally pull himself up over the edge. He sat down and dusted his little hands off.

We opened the cupboard doors and, to our great disappointment, didn’t find anything good. Only boring Pyrex baking dishes, flour, baking soda, spices, casserole containers, potholders, Tupperware, cookbooks…nothing interesting at all.

Not even chocolate chips.

In the back of the spices cabinet, though, I noticed a tallish, rectangular blue tin with pink and white flowers on it. I reached my little arm back into the cupboard as far as it could go and and pulled out the tin.

“I think this is it,” I told The Brother. His big brown eyes got even bigger as he waited in anticipation for me to pull the lid off the tin.

Inside were…

Walnuts.

An entire bag full of walnuts.

The Brother wilted; he had been expecting something delicious. I decided I’d better spin this situation as quickly as possible, so I said, “Um, these are Magic Nuts.”

That got The Brother’s attention. He looked at me, then at the bag of walnuts, and then back again.

“Yep. If you eat them, they’ll make you fly.” I said, cautiously opening up the bag of walnuts. I couldn’t spill them because Mom hadn’t given us permission to be getting snacks, and I certainly didn’t want to get in trouble.

The Brother, like Pops, had always been fascinated with trains, planes and things that go (isn’t that a children’s book?), so the minute I said “they’ll make you fly”, I knew I had him, hook line and sinker.

“But I don’t like those things,” he said, pointing to the walnuts.

“Oh just try one,” I said. “Maybe you’ll like it.” (Even at eight years old I was a little negotiator.)

I popped two in my mouth, jumped off the counter and zoomed around the upstairs with my arms out like a plane. “I’m flying, I’m flying!” I yelled.

The Brother grabbed a handful of walnuts and stuffed them into his mouth, cheeks bulging. He chewed and swallowed and shot off the counter and followed me around the house. We “flew” through the living room, dining room, family room, kitchen, down the hallway towards the bedrooms, then back again and out the sliding glass door and onto the deck.

We flew around the back yard for awhile until we finally tired ourselves out and went back inside, where I immediately put the canister of Magic Nuts away and put the kitchen chairs back around the table. Then The Brother and I went downstairs to play in the Red Room while we waited for the other two kids to wake up from their naps.

Over the course of the next few years, The Brother and I often snuck snitches of Magic Nuts when Mom wasn’t looking. Eventually, The Brother told Sister that Magic Nuts would make you fly, and the two of them would fly around the house together once I got too old to play that game with them. (I’m not sure if The Kid ever got to fly or not. If not, I’ll have to remedy that when he comes on Friday.)

One afternoon they made cardboard wings for themselves and taped them to their tiny little arms and ran down a runway they’d built for themselves (out of our school desks, of course) in an attempt to get a little bit more lift on the takeoff. They were unsuccessful, of course.

Magic Nuts can do just about anything, I guess.

Last week I was munching on some walnuts in the afternoon, and all my Magic Nuts memories came back. I asked Mom what she remembered about them, and I was kind of surprised when she had no idea what I was talking about. I am shocked she didn’t hear us running around upstairs all those afternoons ago, sounding like a herd of 30 & 40 lb elephants…but I guess she didn’t.

I’m also kind of impressed that I put the Magic Nuts away well enough each time that she never noticed that little thieves were getting into them and snitching. I bet she wouldn’t have minded if she knew, though. Mom & Dad were always real into fostering our imaginations (and some argue that’s whycomes the four of us turned out the way we did) and if we needed Magic Nuts to fly, I bet they’d have bought us our own bag to keep in the Red Room.

Being a little kid sure was simple and fun. If I didn’t like wearing high-heels and driving a car so much, I might just wish I could go back.