the things at night.
When you're young, there's nice ways to say it: creative. imaginative. unique. People smile at you and shake their heads. When you get older, the vocabulary changes and so does the way people say it. schizophrenic, paranoid, bi-polar. My mother offered me my bedroom set for my room. I took only the antique vanity, whose stool I methodically destroyed with a metal nail file. The bed I stepped away from. I never told anyone the truth about that bed. The rails weren't broken due to a frantic slumber party where we were jumping on it, or my 200+ pound brother flopping upon it. I willed them to break.
My bedside table was a simple wooden chair, the depression in the center to make your butt think it's actually comfortable. I had a clock, maybe a lamp, and every night I would get a glass of water but before I could fall asleep I had to unplug the clock and the lamp. If the glass where to spill, it could start a fire. In my antique wood house, in my varnished antique wood bed, I would be engulfed in flames. I would die screaming, my skin curling away from my muscle as it popped and sizzled like meat in a fryer. I could see it happening. I'd awaken and I could see the flames eating the posts of the bed, hungry for me.
In second grade, I coloured a dinosaur rainbow in order to not have one crayon used more than the rests. The other kids laughed. In my defense, I stated that people weren't around when dinosaurs where so how do they know that the dinosaurs WEREN'T rainbow coloured? My teacher gushed about how creative I was. Hung my dinosaur for anyone walking by to see. Subsequent art projects were the same. Rainbow opossums. A rainbow pig-puppet made from a brown grocery bag. At each one, the teacher beamed. And soon, others in the class took up my rainbow obsession. I don't remember anything else about that, and if I told you I did I would be lying.
The power of linguistics.
My bedside table was a simple wooden chair, the depression in the center to make your butt think it's actually comfortable. I had a clock, maybe a lamp, and every night I would get a glass of water but before I could fall asleep I had to unplug the clock and the lamp. If the glass where to spill, it could start a fire. In my antique wood house, in my varnished antique wood bed, I would be engulfed in flames. I would die screaming, my skin curling away from my muscle as it popped and sizzled like meat in a fryer. I could see it happening. I'd awaken and I could see the flames eating the posts of the bed, hungry for me.
In second grade, I coloured a dinosaur rainbow in order to not have one crayon used more than the rests. The other kids laughed. In my defense, I stated that people weren't around when dinosaurs where so how do they know that the dinosaurs WEREN'T rainbow coloured? My teacher gushed about how creative I was. Hung my dinosaur for anyone walking by to see. Subsequent art projects were the same. Rainbow opossums. A rainbow pig-puppet made from a brown grocery bag. At each one, the teacher beamed. And soon, others in the class took up my rainbow obsession. I don't remember anything else about that, and if I told you I did I would be lying.
The power of linguistics.