Little brother was always the guinea pig

Somehow I was always the guinea pig.

At least that’s how it felt when I was growing up.

Our post-World War II neighborhood was swarming with kids.

As a classic Baby Boomer, born in 1948, I was among the littler batch. My brother Steve, 7 years old, and his cohort ran the show.

They were the ones who built a clubhouse. They were the ones who decided to rope off an old mattress with clothesline and stage a boxing match.

But they weren’t the ones who boxed.

That was where the littler kids came in.

It was a bit like that commercial where they say, “Let Mikey try it!”

The boxing match didn’t last long. I was put in the ring with my buddy Stevie Patten, and neither of us quite knew what to do.

After shouts and urging from the older kids, I managed to bloody Stevie’s nose, and that was the end of that.

And when the older kids built a “raft” after the 1957 flood, they weren’t the ones set adrift to test it out.

That’s where the guinea pig — me — came in.

The raft was assembled from rotten wood porch columns that my parents had replaced with wrought iron from Frenchy’s along with whatever scraps of wood the guys could put their hands on. It probably included old lumber from their forgotten clubhouse.

It was pushed off into the flooded backyard of Donnie Green’s house. The water depth was probably between 18 and 24 inches.

As I recall, the raft drifted across the yard but didn’t sink. Then again, there was no system of propulsion. I finally had to step off into the flood waters and walk back to higher ground.

A few years earlier, the older kids weren’t building rafts or boxing rings. They were digging holes.

Why? If you remember being a kid, you don’t really have to ask. Digging holes is something kids do.

In my case, the holes are fixed in memory because I was the one stuffed inside them.

After all, the big kids couldn’t fit and the hole wasn’t really big enough, so it was time to shove a smaller kid inside.

One, I remember, was at the corner of Donnie Green’s backyard, not far from where I eventually drifted on the raft. The other, for some reason, was right beside Indiana 67 where Votaw and Middle streets intersect.

The hole was dug, a guinea pig — me — was selected, and the hole was tested to determine whether it was sufficient to provide protection from invading Nazis or Commies.

That seemed to be the end of the process.

But I still have a bit of claustrophobia from the experience and I hate horror movies involving premature burial.

I’ll get over it. After all, that’s what guinea pigs do.