Ah, That Cloud Of Impending Doom Is Gone!
It’s not uncommon for people to think they’ve come a long way from their childhood years. We all know that, but for good reason, I am quite a bit different.
You see, as a child I was “touched” as my mother would like to put it. What she didn’t realize, was when most children are called touched, it means mentally handicapped. So a lot of people got the wrong idea. I guess I could have been considered mentally handicapped, but I’d like to think of it as very in tune with my emotions. Well, in tune with a constant feeling of impending doom is probably more accurate.
My poor parents. I’m sure they were convinced by the time I could talk, that I would one day, end up in the city’s psyche ward. You probably think I am being over dramatic. Oh, quite the contrary. Let me give you a few examples of my old antics.
Whenever I was being driven anywhere, my parents took care to keep away from cemetaries. Sometimes even going miles out of their way. A few miles were worth it in comparison to my rantings. The moment I spotted a cemetary, I began to wail and cry uncontrollably screaming, “I don’t want to die! Mommy, I don’t want to die!”
The screams did not subside until we made it safely home, no matter how anyone tried to console me. For the same reason, I didn’t attend my first funeral until I was seventeen. It’s not that people didn’t die, it was that there was always a babysitter no matter how much searching had to happen.
Though death was hidden from me quite well through my early years, there were a few times that it was out of anyone’s control. For example; the day of the mole.
I was all of five years old, when I was sitting outside of our small but lovely house on Armstrong Drive when a small, hairless baby mole emerged onto the sidewalk. Curious, I made my way over for a closer look at which point “the creature” as it was called in my mind, promptly keeled over and died.
I stared at the beautiful creature for minutes until I realized he would not be revived, at which point I screamed bloody murder. My mother, obviously assuming I had just been hit by a car or snatched up by a man with a kneck tattoo, came barreling out of our modest house ready to put up a fight. When she saw me simply standing in the middle of the sidewalk screaming her expression quickly changed to relief then annoyance. As she walked to comfort me she asked that question that was muttered multiple times a day,”Linny, honey, what happened?”
“The creature died! Mommy! The creature died!”
I was overcome with grief for weeks following. You don’t even want to know the aftermath following the passing of our beloved family dog Rufus.
I’ll leave you with that for now, but check back tomorrow for more stories from my childhood that resembled something that came from an Emily Schwartz play.
