Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan Claire. This is day one hundred and nineteen of that project.

This quilt block shows a brown fence, like in the previous blocks, coming up just short of halfway. Above the fence you can see the top bars and chains of a swing-set. Both of these are against a gray splotchy background. — Click To Enlarge

Behind this fence is the elementary school playground.

You can see the top of the swing set, and along with that, there is a concrete area where a four-square court and hopscotch are painted. Girls and boys jump rope and play marbles. I’m sure there is a tetherball pole back there somewhere.

When I was a little girl, we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school until I was in the 4th or 5th grade, so we all wore snow pants under our dresses. That way, we didn’t freeze when we were on the playground playing king of the mountain on the giant snowbank that would happen every winter when they would plow the playground.

My husband and I knew each other from the time we were in 4th grade. He liked to tell people this story about me when they asked him how he knew I was “The One.”

Back then, little girls liked to put their arms straight out and spin around and around to make their dresses “twirl.” I especially liked to do this on warm days.

I tended to close my fists when I was spinning. There was a boy that was a bully to the other smaller boys, and my husband was not a very big kid when we were young.

He was often a target of the bully. One day I was doing my spinning around thing, and the bully was running across the playground away from an even bigger kid and wasn’t paying attention.

He ran headlong into my fist that I spun right into him. It knocked the bully off his feet and out cold. Hit him right between the eyes.

And that’s the moment my husband said he knew I was “The One.”