WEBVTT

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The Game.

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And on certain nights maybe
once or twice a year, I'd

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carry the baby down and
all the kids would come.

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All nine of us
together, and we'd

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build a town in the basement
on boxes and blankets

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and overturned chairs.

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And some lived under
the pool table,

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or in the bathroom,
or the boiler room,

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or in the toy cupboard
under the stairs.

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And you could be a man or a
woman, a husband or a wife,

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or a child, and
we bustled around

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like a day in the village, until
one of us turned off the lights

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switch by switch and
slowly it became night

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and the people slept.

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Our parents were upstairs
with company or not fighting.

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And one of us-- it
was usually a boy--

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became the town crier.

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And he walked around our
little sleeping population

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and told the hours with his
voice, and this was the game.

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9 o'clock and all's
well, he'd say,

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walking like a constable we
must have seen in a movie,

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and what we called an hour past.

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10 o'clock and all's well.

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And maybe somebody stood in her
sleep or a grown up baby cried

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and was comforted.

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11 o'clock and all is well.

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12 o'clock, 1 o'clock,
2 o'clock, and it

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went on like that
through the night we

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made up, until we could
pretend it was morning.

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