It's quiet around here.
sure is! guess maybe we better do
something about that, eh? <g>
How about a story or two to perk things up.
okay!
i actually have a weird little story
that came to mind yesterday.. just "poof"
outta the blue -- you know, that sort of sky blue
part of your brain where disconnected thoughts come from?
well, here is a story that came out of that part.
~ ~ ~
I'm suddenly thinking back to one time when I was about, oh, maybe six years old. My younger brother, the one next after me, would have been about four, and my youngest brother was less than a year old.
This must have been around 1960, and I guess there must have been some kind of scare on about some illness -- I'm thinking that it must have been smallpox (maybe WR will know from what I'm writing about).
Up here, we have these nurses that come to your home -- the VON (Victorian Order of Nurses). In the 1950s, as I recall, the nurses used to wear navy blue uniforms and a funny little matching fedora. There was something distinctly military looking about them.
Well, on the day which suddenly came to mind, a VON nurse showed up at our house with a little suitcase. My Mom invites her in and she takes a place on the curved corner sectional piece of the living room sofa. She clicks the locks open and pops back the lid, and I see all of this shiny chrome stuff inside.. along with a little black ball that looks like a small bomb. I'm curious, so I come up and watch her over the back of the sofa.
She starts setting up all of her gear on the coffee table. The black bomb-looking thing gets lit with a lighter. Turns out that the thing is some kind of bunsen-burner gizmo. I'm watching all of this in fascination.
Then she gets out this weird looking cylinder with a bunch of needles in a ring on the end of it. She sticks this thing over the flame and looks like she's heating it up.
I start thinking that I don't care too much for the look of all of this. It reminds me of something I saw on TV -- some cowboy show where they tied up calves and burnt them with branding irons.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Well, after a time, I guess whatever preparations are complete. Some logic or other determined that my younger brother, the one a couple of years younger than me, should be first in line to get "vaccinated". I watch all of this from my new vantage point -- the doorway to the main hall of the house.
The nurse holds the shiny cylinder up to my brother's bare arm and does something that makes it go KA-CHING --- like a staple gun. My brother lets out a shriek and twists around trying to break free from the nurse's grasp. He's crying now.
uh-uhn... this doesn't look good.
All eyes turn towards me. I shout something.. probably "NO!!"
(I don't think little kids knew how to curse and yell
"Go to hell!" back then, or I probably would have).
My Mom tries that age old method that parents use to con older kids in the family into doing stuff they don't want to.
"You don't want to look like a BAY-BEEEE, do you?"
I give this a moment's consideration. But I have a great comeback.
"You go first!"
My Mom is thrown off-guard by this ploy. What's she going to do... act like a chicken in front of her kid?
She rolls up her sleeve and sits down on the sofa while the nurse starts waving her needle gizmo back and forth in the flames of the bunsen burner.
I use this opportunity to make good my escape. Silently, on agile little sock feet, I slip down the basement stairs and skim across the rec room to a storage room at one end. Inside, there is a big coat rack with many things hanging on it. One of them is my secret refuge -- a big plastic bag -- sort of a rectangular case that hangs from the coat rack. My mom's wedding dress is hanging inside of it. I have already, secretly figured out how to unzip the bag, climb inside, and then rezip the bag almost to the very top by pushing the zipper up from behind. I race to get inside as fast as I can --- won't be too much time before they come looking for me.
I get inside and all zipped up, and push the wedding dress and its big net crinoline thing in front of me -- just in case my Mom suddenly gets a notion to look inside the bag (but she never has found this hiding place, so I feel reasonably safe).
Sure enough, a little while later, I hear my Mom coming down the basement stairs, trying to sneak down without me hearing her. I hear her feet moving around the rec room as she looks behind things and then in the furnace room, and then into the storage room where I'm hiding. I can hear her feet right in front of the wedding dress bag as she, no doubt, bends to look behind all of the coats hanging on the rack. I hold my breath for several long seconds. There's a painful and prolonged silence, and then the feet sneak off to look elsewhere.
After awhile, I hear the feet going back up the stairs.
I can just hear a mumbling at the top of the stairs as my Mom and the nurse discuss what's to be done. A little while later, I hear the nurse saying, quite loudly, "Goodbye!" and the door slams shut -- loudly.
I am not to be fooled by this. I'm a smart little urchin. This is just a ploy to flush me out of my hiding place. I continue to stand silent behind the wedding dress.
A short while later, I hear the front door of the house creaking open, and then more mumbling.
"Hah! I was right!" The nurse is back, sneaking into the house, hoping I've emerged from my hiding place so that she can grab me and stick a hot branding iron on my arm!
More time passes, and the nurse finally packs up her little black bunsen burner thing and leaves.
For insurance sake, I wait a good long time before I emerge, carefully zipping up the wedding dress bag so that my secret hiding place won't be revealed before I require it again.
I've learned a very important lesson today.
Grown-ups are not to be trusted.
~croc |
