Apparently Unexpected and the Monday

Or, why I am lying on the couch, refusing to move. 

I always thought that Mondays got a bad rap. Why should Mondays be despised and Fridays venerated? 

(The answer,  of course, is "the weekend", but the point is that Mondays usually aren't bad for me.)

"Usually" being the operative word. 

Today, I drove over half an hour through thick fog to get to the school where I volunteer.  As soon as I parked, I came to a terrible realization:

The lunch I had carefully packed the night before was still in the refrigerator at home 

Suffice to say I was less than overjoyed. In fact, I was a little discouraged. The morning went on,  and I discovered that the bathroom lights are motion sensors. That time out after about 20 seconds.  Yeah.

The kids were fantastic, as always, and lightened my mood considerably with their cheerful chatter and shy smiles. Then, at lunch time (Which is really early for teachers, depending on the age group they work with), I scrounged up a dollar in change to get something from the vending machine. My supervisor gave me two extra dollars, in case that wasn't enough to get what I wanted. 

The vending machine promptly ate two of my dimes. 

Despite this, I managed to get a package of cheese crackers and a small bag of Fritos. I noticed that the Fritos were oddly stale for having been sealed, and that there seemed to be little black things stuck to the side of the bag. I ignored them, being too hungry to care.

I got to the bottom of the bag, and I found out what the black specks were.

The segmented pieces of about fifty dead ants. 

Not even joking, the bag was filled with dead ants, and it's more than just probable that I ingested some.

So now I'm home, chilling on the couch. Monday is officially over as of right now. 

The One About Sleepwalking

Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulismor noctambulism, is a sleep disorderbelonging to the parasomnia family.^[2]Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness. These activities can be as benign as sitting up in bed, walking to the bathroom, and cleaning, or as hazardous as cooking, driving,^[3] violent gestures, grabbing at hallucinated objects,^[4]or even homicide

(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking)

Well, there are supposedly varying reasons for sleepwalking,  depending on the age and circumstances of the walker. 

       That makes them sound like   zombies...sorry...

One theory is that stress is involved, causing the body to work overtime to set its systems back to normal while you are supposed to be sleeping.  That's the only explanation I can think of for my particular incident. 

Now, I'd had incidents of sleep talking before, but not sleep walking. 

I've been told (by roommates who were reportedly awake at the time) that in my teenaged years I would occasionally mumble nonsensical things while sleeping, or say good night to people without being aware of it. The weirdest occurrence was one night when my sisters witnessed me flailing my arms around and (if reports are to be believed) quoting the entire sword - fight scene from The Princess Bride. 

Sleepwalking though? I'd never thought of something that could happen to me. But I simply have no other explanation for what happened. 

It was during my last year of college, and I had no roommate to tell me what happened. 

I lived on the end of the hall at the back of the building, right near the doors. I knew I moved around in my sleep, because I would find bruises on my shins from where I'd kicked the desk next to my bed during the night. Then one morning I woke up more tired than usual. 

I looked down, and noticed that the blanket was covered in dead grass.

There were dried leaves stuck to my feet.

There was a pile of grass and dirt on the floor by the bed.

I brushed off my feet and made my morning cup of tea, confused as you can imagine. How on earth had all that stuff gotten on my feet and blankets? It wasn't until later that I thought to myself, "Did I go outside barefoot, and not remember? "

Surely I would have remembered doing something like that, particularly since I couldn't have gotten in and out without my student ID card! It just didn't make sense, and frankly, the thought was concerning. There were wild animals around campus, you see, such as deer, angry geese, a big bobcat, and several coyotes with temper problems.

To this day, I don't really know what happened that night, but I tend to think that it might have been, to some extent, a kind of sleepwalking. 

Eerie Tales from an East Coast Walmart

"I am quite certain," said the blogger, "That half the fright of a spooky story lies in the telling."

And of course, I think it must be true. After all, all those childhood urban legends (see "On Scary Stories) and frightful tales should not give us half so many goosebumps if they were told in a dull and lifeless manner.

So what has that got to do with a Walmart? 

(Disclaimer: I've nothing against Walmart. It's a terribly convenient place with a good produce section. Except on Christmas Eve when all the late shoppers come, and the place turns into Walmargeddon.)

Well you see, a few weeks ago while grocery shopping, I had a rather odd encounter. I realized that, if given the proper verbal framework, it had the potential to be a creepy little tale. Told otherwise, it might be taken as more humorous. 

Allow me to demonstrate. 

Vanisher:

About two weeks ago, I went grocery shopping at the local Walmart.  I decided to stop by the book section to see what they had.

     On my way there, I passed a young mother pushing a cart with a baby boy staring at a box he'd grabbed. Running ahead of the cart was a little girl no older than four, with a pink sundress and long brown curls. 

" Wait, sweetie, not so fast!" The mother said placidly. 

I passed all three of them and settled into the book aisle. I had just picked up a brightly colored fantasy book and was flipping through the illustrations when the same little girl darted past me.

     Once more, I heard her mother call her, but the giggling preschooler skipped around the corner. 

Then the giggling stopped.

So did the sound of little sandals. 

The mother and baby brother came into the aisle at a sedate pace, seemingly unconcerned, but I was curious: what was the little girl up to around the corner?  I put down the book, stood up,  and walked around the corner. 

There was no one there.

Mind you, it's a very small book section, shaped vaguely like a "E". She might've run out the other branch. Still, it was just small enough that I feel I should have heard or seen her leave.

She had only run around the corner about three full seconds before I went to check. Somehow, the little girl had completely vanished. 

As the mother did not look worried,  I said nothing and went back to my shopping. Still, I couldn't quite get it out of my mind.  What had happened? How had she left the book section without me seeing? 

I later saw her checking out with her mother and brother,  which was rather reassuring.  All the same,  I can't help but wonder: how did the girl vanish?  And where did she vanish to? 

(Insert X-Files theme)

See? The once semi comical story becomes a little creepy! 

The Footprints in the Hall

Every now and then, I'll have a story to tell,  which has no explanation. 

Nevermind the clichés, but it truly was a dark and stormy night, sometime in the late winter or early spring. It was pouring down rain outside, and everyone was inside. I believe we were watching a movie when my grandmother came in from the front porch. 

" Okay, who left muddy footprints in the front hall? " she asked. 

None of us had been outside after the storm had started, and I went to investigate. I thought perhaps it had been one of our two cats that had left the tracks.

I was wrong.

A line of tiny, human-shaped footprints went from the doorway to the middle of the hall, about three feet, and then stopped. I took out a small camera and filmed the trail, though I think I later deleted the footage, because while no one in the house had especially large feet, the tracks were only about half the size of the smallest feet in the house.

Meaning that they couldn't have been made by the feet of anyone in the house. Now, they could have used their hands, but everyone was surprised and confused by the tracks, making a prank somewhat unlikely. 

My only guess was that one of the multiple kindergarteners living in the neighborhood had slipped into the house looking for one of us. 

But how would they have gotten in without someone remembering? 

To this day we don't know who made the footprints in the hall.

Just a story for a stormy night.

In which Erin tries her hand at writing Poe-esque fiction.

Kindly do not fret yourselves, I'm nothing so macabre as Edgar Allan Poe. I just thought I'd like to have a go at writing in his style. 

This is not actually my first foray into this arena, but I'd actually like to publish the other one someday, so I'm keeping it off the internet until then.  

Aurelius
(Or, the Memory Thief)

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it

-Michel de Montaigne

I do not know where it was that I first came across the enigmatic Aurelius, or if I knew, I can only assume that I have put the troubling occurrence from my mind. Elsewise, I must conclude that the memories no longer exist, and that I have followed after my beloved sister's fate: the paths of my mind have been wandered by another. To the nearest estimate of my beleaguered recall, it was never so much that I made his acquaintance or that he introduced himself to me. After a mild summer and a dank and gloomy autumn where the mist floated through the cracks in the windowsills, tainted by the scent of decaying leaves, winter surged into life. With it came Aurelius.  He simply appeared: standing in misty fields at dawn; gently correcting the butcher's mischievous lad when he caught him flinging pebbles at women; watching from the corner of the ballroom with something about his face that was not quite a smile, nor yet a frown. It was the expression of some internal debate to which we were never privy.

Aurelius was not what some might have deemed exceedingly handsome. He possessed a rather high forehead topped with lank hair, yellow in color, under which there resided a long, thin nose and a rather small pair of lips in a permanent pout. Of his eyes, I would hardly say much, save for that they receded slightly and had the same liquid brown quality one often finds in the eyes of horses. Aurelius was of no great height, but neither again was he very short, and I once believed that he had taken some injury in the near past, for he often leaned upon a cane made of blackthorn that he had wound about with witch hazel. It was, I thought, a very ugly walking stick, although I never made comment upon it for fear of angering him. It was not that he was a man of violent temper: indeed, he never once raised his voice above a drawing-room whisper, and when he did, it had such a peculiarly musical sound that all surrounding Aurelius would stop to listen. Rather, it was that there was something I found to be unsettling in his gaze, a kind of uncomfortable knowing look that I did not understand, as though he could look into the thoughts of the person who displeased him and see each motive and suspicion. He seemed to have the ability to bewitch every acquaintance with the smallest gesture, and in no place was this so evident as within my own home.

My dear sister, my sweet Deirdre, seemed to have garnered his special attention, for he was often at her side, and she, poor child, hung attendant on his every word. I can easily believe that, if it had been within her power, she would certainly have left home and followed him wherever he wandered. Yet my mother was not lax in her vigilance, nor my uncle in his cupidity. By and by, one of them came to the erroneous conclusion that Aurelius had come from money, and was in want of a wife. I once pointed out to them over a cold and uncomfortable tea that we really knew very little about the man, that my father would never have agreed to let his daughter marry a man who had just appeared in a field one morning. "Don't be so foolish," my mother scolded me, grown man though I was, "Do you not recall? He came with Madame and Monsieur R- from their summer home. Come now, my dear son, we all saw him leave that splendid carriage!" And what had always been merest quivers of uneasiness now began to bloom in earnest within my mind. My mother would never have told a lie, believing it to be a sign of deep betrayal, but I could not ignore that she had spoken falsely. Madame and Monsier R- did indeed own a carriage, but it was a shabby thing of black leather, more like a hearse than a coach. And it was common knowledge that they were an elderly couple, and childless. There was not the slightest possibility that Aurelius was a relation of them, and I said as much.

My uncle did not take to my words, and protested that I did not know what I spoke of. "Tell me, uncle, " said I, "What resemblance does Aurelius hold to the R- family? He never got those eyes of his from Mme R-, and what explanation could be given for such bright hair? The R-s have ever had dark curls, nothing like Aurelius!" My uncle affected an air of shocked affront, and warned me not to speak so indelicately. At length, he persuaded my mother that Aurelius ought to be allowed to court my darling sister, and for the first time since meeting the winter visitor, my blood chilled in my veins. Twice more over the following weeks I attempted to warn them all that Aurelius was not who they thought him to be, but each time I was ignored. And each time, the story they gave as explanation was different. He was the nephew of Mssr. R-, or he was a long-lost cousin of my father's, or he was a merchant sailor, stopping to visit. Never mind that our sleepy town was no closer to the sea than Hermia to Demetrius, but more troubling was that I could see within each one's eyes that they clearly believed each of these outlandish tales!

Whenever I thought to ask about one of the previous and contradicted answers, they each eyed me as if I were some dangerous wild creature that might, at any moment, turn upon them all in a savage frenzy. Deirdre would ask if I felt quite alright, my uncle would forbid me to speak, my mother would gently tell me that she hadn't the faintest idea of what I was talking about. By and by, other things more ominous began to occur. My mother, who wore a widows weeds though her husband had been twenty-eight years gone, forgot my father's name. My uncle, a creature of unbreakable habit, so neglected his garden that the boys of the village helped themselves to its produce with none to stop them. And my sister, oh what can be said of my sister? For by that time, she had been married to Aurelius, and yet not a single person I have spoken to can recall the circumstances of the wedding. She simply did not live in the main wing of the house anymore, but saw us at meals. She spoke as though she remembered the day of her wedding, but I believe that she must have been lying as well, for no one could provide me with a single description, and I was meant to have been the one to give her away at the ceremony! Days went by and Deirdre did not come down to the parlor, nor to the library, which she so often used to haunt. Sometimes I went to her wing of the house in an attempt to speak with her as I used to, but I ever received the same answer. "Oh, dear brother, do not fear so! I am happy, yes I am very happy!" But her voice bespoke a soft confusion in her sweet tones, and I believe that she did think she was happy, but she could give no reason for it.

I think now with darkened and halting mind to the last time I saw my Deirdre. I could wait no longer, unsatisfied with whispering through the door to her, and I found a way in. How precisely is not important, but I made my way to her chamber and my throat closed up, tightened with horror, for in the bed was a pitiful little thing, all pinched lips and pallid cheeks. One bony arm and knobby elbow hung limply at her side while the other twirled spindly fingers in her lusterless raven hair. Dull grey eyes that seemed far too lifeless for the girl I had known squinted uselessly at a book on the coverlet. I made some exclamation of terror, and my eyes started from their sockets. She raised her head, neck no stronger than a newly-hatched bird. It flopped horribly to one side and she regarded me as some frightfully new and unusual creature. "Hullo," the creaking voice rasped, "Where have you sprung from?" This was not the voice I had so recently heard assure me of health and well-being not two days ago. Was it possible for disease to overtake the body so rapidly?  "Deirdre, my dear, what's happened to you?" I begged her upon my knees beside the bed, for I had always doted upon my sister. "Have you fallen ill?" At the sound of her name, a little spark came back into her eyes, and she repeated it softly. "Deirdre? Deirdre. I am Deirdre?" Certain that she was somehow delirious, I reached out to lay a hand upon her pale forehead. It was icy cold, and dry as death itself.

"Who are you?" the creature croaked, "Have you come to see my husband? He is out. He has gone to see my mother." Could it truly be that she had forgotten me? My heart was heavy within my breast, and I only smoothed her dull hair. "I am your brother, Deirdre, do you not know me? I'm your own Robert, come to see how you fared!" It is to be wondered at that the body can react to things that are not seen by the eyes, nor heard with the ears. I was overcome by some deep and horrible dread, and every hair on the nape of my neck stood upright. Over and again in my mind, I felt the grave suspicion that someone was watching us. Very suddenly, color returned to Deirdre's cheeks, and her hair shone like a raven's wing. "Hullo, dear brother!" she said, as if I had only just come in, "It's terribly sweet of you to come and see me like this. Do give my love to Mama, won't you?" Words left me, so gripped was I in the vise of a nameless fear, for her gentle eyes shone the liquid brown of Aurelius's. At last, I gasped, "And shall I see your husband when I go to greet our mother?" There was an awful moment when the stranger's eyes in my sister's face narrowed and seemed to measure me and sift me like wheat. An awful, crowding sensation came over me, as though I stood in a ballroom with too many guests, all their chatter buzzing about my head and drowning out my own thoughts. "Why, Robert, why ever would you say such a silly thing? My Aurelius hasn't gone to see Mama, what reason would he have to do so? No, dear brother. My husband has gone to the doctor for me, that is all. I expect he'll be back any moment now." And I suspected that he was, in fact, already returned.

Charitable thoughts for the man began to steal over my suspicions, tinged with a brotherly affection and gratitude that he should be so concerned with the health of my sister. I found myself, quite unaccountably, promising my sister that I would greet our mother for her, and asking that she tell Aurelius that I would keep a place open in my office, should he ever need work or funds. I stumbled towards the door under some power other than my own, and as the door opened, I passed Aurelius. He smiled at me, but o! What creature that crawls upon the earth or swims beneath the sea could ever match the horror of that smile? No sooner had I passed out of sight of his eyes than my mind was clear again. I could not understand the words I had said, nor the thoughts that had seemed so foreign to me. It was as though a stranger had wormed his way into the chambers of my mind and taken up the role of setting down thoughts for me. I became filled with dark horror, and fear drove me to my mother's parlor, where she was accustomed to sit and read between the afternoon and evening hours. One dainty hand, shriveled and pale, rested across the back of the sofa, and at first glance I believed that she slept. Then I stepped closer and saw that her eyes were open, glassy, and devoid of all life, though her chest rose and fell. She almost appeared to have aged a decade within a single day, and her dress hung loose upon her wasted body. "Who is there?" she asked, and the voice that had always been so strong now quavered like a brittle thing that, if dropped, would shatter. "Mother, you were the picture of health this morning!" I cried out, "What has done this to you?" A troubled expression rose from the wrinkles and she murmured, "The night-mare, my son. The night-mare." I thought then that she spoke only of bad dreams.

Then she spoke again. "Tell me, have you seen your uncle? I am sure that he has not gone out of the town, for last night his horse was still here, but I have not seen him in a fortnight! Oh Robert, I am so afraid! You must leave this house at once!" Then, in seconds, a prodigious change came over her, and the wrinkles smoothed away. The life came back into her eyes and she sat up quickly, smoothing down her skirts. I did not need to look to know what color orbs now spun in her sockets. "What is the nightmare that so troubled you, Mother?" I asked, averting my gaze. "Nightmare? Oh, nevermind that, my dear," her voice was smooth and full once more. "Dreams are but as shadows, and cannot hurt the sleeper once he wakes!" I hazarded a fleeting glance at my mother's face, and once more I found my mind full, brimming with a strangeness that I could not identify as kindly thoughts of my brother-in-law and indulgent thoughts of my mother and sister flooded over my perception. Understanding that they were not my own, I looked away again, and my mind cleared. I pretended to straighten a doily upon the tea table to give an excuse, and asked, "Have you seen Uncle, Mother?" for no better reason than to see what the stranger might say. I greatly doubted that it would be anything regarding his supposed disappearance, and I was soon proven right. "Oh," the not-Mother said, "I expect he's locked himself in his study again. He has been very concerned about a private matter in the bank at which he is employed. What a fortunate thing your sister married Aurelius! He has been able to aid your uncle on several matters of family finance since he has come to live with us!" The room began to spin around me, and I was aware of my own voice answering faintly, "Yes, a very fortunate thing." and then I somehow excused myself and left the parlor.

I resolved that I had to leave the home of my childhood, or else suffer the fate of my mother and sister. It galled me to leave them behind, but I had no way to rescue them without Aurelius seeing. I did not even dare look into my own horse's eyes as I led it from the stables and tied it a little ways into the woods behind our home. I would take all my life's savings from the secret place in my rooms that evening, and then escape to an old schoolmate's home several towns over until I could more fully understand what malignant force I was meant to deal with. Every moment of that afternoon was torment, for I was certain that my plan would be found out, though I needn't have worried that my family would recognize this. Indeed, when not in the presence of the winter visitor, they seemed vacant, unfocused shells who could remember nothing for more than forty minutes. This, I used to my advantage, making sure to tell them repeatedly that I intended to be working late in my study that evening, and that I was not to be disturbed. In the times that their eyes were not their own, I even pretended that I too felt the influence of another's thoughts, and suggested that Aurelius be given the key to my library, had he any need for it, and that I desired that he accompany me on a hunting trip I usually took in the spring. This seemed to convince them all, but I thought I saw in Aurelius some shadow of knowing and was hard pressed to keep a shudder from my frame.

Night fell at last, the heavy darkness a welcome shield in between the tall windows of the house. I slipped silently from shadow to shadow, icy perspiration bespangling my brow lest my footsteps be heard. Within the pockets of my heavy coat and a valise that weighed down my arm I carried all that I had ever earned, and several antiques of particular value that had been passed down through my father's line for generations. I had no intention of leaving them for Aurelius's dubious purposes. I left through the servants' quarters, long since abandoned, and only the cook witnessed my departure, but as she had served as my childhood nursemaid, I could be fairly certain of her silence. From the kitchens, I made my way through the frosted desolation that had once been my uncle's garden, and prepared to climb over the low stone wall that led to the fringe of trees and freedom. It was the work of a moment, and I trudged away, well aware that any member of the household with even mildly adequate vision would be able to trace my path through the snow. My horse fidgeted nervously, a light dusting of the white powder covering his thick coat, and it barely stood still long enough for me to fasten my bags to the saddle. As soon as I had settled into the saddle, the horse bolted forward, as if being in the very shadow of the house was a torment to it. As we passed through the great front gates, I could not help but follow after the unfortunate wife of Lot. I looked back, as though I were vowing silently to return and rescue my mother and sister, for I now doubted that my uncle remained in the house at all. 

Aurelius stood in the window, a mocking smile upon his face, and the smile has followed me the rest of my days.

The End.

Well, I did say it was meant to be like Edgar Allan Poe, so...yeah. Macabre, but nowhere near as gruesome as an actual Poe story would have been.

This is what happens when you study the Trickster archetype before bed.

Now, I've had a fair amount of weird dreams in my life. I have a whole post about that from about a month or two ago, in fact. This one, however, might just take the cake.

I'd been doing research on the archetype of the Trickster figure, because I'm finishing up a research project on the Trickster as a form of covert rebellion against power inequalities, using the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Charles Chesnutt as a primary source.

So I was up late, working on the paper, and I fell asleep somewhere around 2:30 in the morning. At first, my dreams were fairly close to reality. (My R.A. sitting at my kitchen table singing Newsies with me, for instance, while doing homework. I actually thought that was happening.) That's when the Twilight Zone apparently decided to hijack my brain.

So here's the premise of the dream: my family and I were apparently some sort of law enforcement group that dealt primarily with something known as "non-human-citizens", and my dream showed us dealing with a few complaints by said entities.

The first was a rather disgruntled Sasquatch calling about trespassers in the woods. Don't ask me how he managed to call, because he had no phone. I think carrier pigeons may have been involved...Anyway, my dad gets out of the truck and is talking to him, and then everything got even weirder.

You know how sometimes in a dream, a sequence of events flashes by super quickly and you just pick up the gist of what's going on? 

All I can remember is that there were several kinship groups of shapeshifter/people/animals all based off of the varying Trickster characters of folklore. That meant that there was a Raven culture, a Coyote culture, a Rabbit culture, and I think maybe Wisakedjak (anglicanized as "Whisky-Jack"), a trickster/transformer from the Cree culture. (I kid you not, folklorists literally call him a "transformer". That probably accounts for who else showed up in my dream, but more on that later.)

We were driving between these different groups, settling disputes, doing normal police-type things, I guess. I suppose that many Tricksters in a concentrated area isn't a good thing...there was some kind of brouhaha, but my dream didn't see fit to tell me what it was. That's when Optimus Prime showed up.

Yeah, you read that right. Optimus Prime. 

I told you it was one of my weirdest dreams ever, didn't I?

He was apparently part of one of the groups, though he didn't count himself a Trickster. (I honestly can't see him as a Trickster at all. Too serious.) And he was concerned about whatever incident had riled everyone up. As the "non-human-citizens" unit, it was apparently my family's job to find a solution to everything, so (seeing as I was the one dreaming) the worst possible solution was found: I was going to get married off to someone from one of the groups. So in the dream, I'm sitting in the back of this pickup truck in the woods, cleaning a gun and grumbling to my brothers while Dad is discussing the issue with Optimus and somebody from the Raven group. The only thing that everyone could agree on, for some reason, was that under no circumstances was I to marry someone from the Raven Tricksters. No idea why, but everyone was opposed to that idea. 

Then, as if we weren't far enough down the rabbit-hole already, our friendly neighborhood Autobot announces that he actually has an adopted son, "Purely ceremonial position. It was an effort on their part to make me feel more at home in their culture." And Dad's like, "Well what about him?" I'm still in the truck mouthing, "No!" but nobody sees this, evidently, and by the time I wake up, it has evidently been decided for me that I'm going to marry this guy, just so all the Tricksters will stop fighting. 

So my two remaining questions when I woke up were these:

1. Why in the heck would me getting married to someone from one of the groups stop the fighting?

2. How in the world did Optimus Prime make it into my dream, and why did I keep seeing Kermit the Frog in the background?

No really, I kept catching these really quick glimpses of Kermit the Frog, but when I tried to focus on him, he was gone.

So. Weird.

Overheard in a Classroom: You can't script this stuff.

I volunteer in a reading mentors program at the local elementary school twice a week.

Now, today I'm sitting with my first-session student at a desk on one side of a big, blue, wooden divider. I cannot see the mentors or students who sit on the other side, but I can generally recognize them by their voices.

But today, there was a new-ish mentor that I had not met sitting on the other side of the divider. 

I never saw the young man who was assigned to her, but I did not recognize his voice as being one of the ones I'm used to. He was reading some sort of booklet on geography with his mentor. (Now, keep in mind that these kids are seven-and-eight year olds, so it wasn't anything too terrible. Or rather, it shouldn't have been. The little boy evidently thought that world geography ought to be rewritten.

I heard the mentor ask the boy if he could point out Brazil on the map in the book. His reply? "No. These maps! They lie to me!" Startled, the woman gently pointed out that he really shouldn't be telling a book that it was lying. There was the sound of a metal chair being pushed back, and the boy shouted, "THESE MAPS ARE LIES!" My eight-year-old turns and looks around the corner of the divider, then turns and gives me this wide-eyed stare, then giggles. I put my energy into trying to get her to focus on her lesson again, dismissing from my mind the unusual dialogue going on next to us.

Until this happened:

Very curiously, the boy asked, "What is metal?" By the sound of his voice, I pictured him tilting his head to one side, perched in his chair. Flustered, the woman trying to help him with his lesson floundered for an answer. She began to mumble about playgrounds and table-legs, cutting off her words mid-sentence several times. Finally, she mumbled, "Your chair is metal." The little one seemed to accept that for the moment, but about two seconds later, I heard him pipe up, "Are you metal?" Shocked, the poor mentor managed, after a stunned silence, to say, "No dear, I am human." "No?" the boy asked thoughtfully, "Well I am. My head is like a rock."

I kid you not, that is literally what he said. And I never even saw him. I have no idea who he was.

Needless to say, the mentor had no ready reply for this, and tried to redirect him to his lesson. I was sort of glad that my own student was not overly distracted by this.

Things that I say often enough to be weird.

If there were ever a plush version of me with a sound chip, there's probably six or seven phrases it would spit out.

Dare to look upon the horror that is:

the MyRetroGeek doll.

Thankfully not a real thing.

Yet.

Godzilla and other acquired tastes

I'm sure we can all agree that there are some things that take time to get used to.

The first time you try spinach, for instance (not recommended by this author, but there are plenty that do like it, I'm sure.) Or when a new pet joins the family. And then there's some things that take years to adjust to.

Like Godzilla.

When I was little, sometimes my family and I would go to Old Town, a theme park in Kissimmee, FL. There were small rollercoasters, old-fashioned taffy-pulling places, and an A&W restaurant where you could get root beer out of a tap. (I've always loved that!)

Now, it may have changed a fair amount since the last time I was there, but I remember there being this arcade/playplace that started on one side of the street and bridged over the top to connect to another arcade on the other side. We kids would go climbing up one side and down the other, sliding down the slides contentedly for what seemed like hours. But then there was always one thing that made us pause.

On the other end of the tunnel-bridge and slide, there was a cardboard cutout of Godzilla. (The classic one from the '50s). It had some sort of motion detector on it, and whenever people got close, it played the classic Godzilla roar. You know the one I mean.

So here's a little kid, about five years old, and I'm sliding down this slide and I hear that. 

Total and complete NOPE moment. I don't remember exactly what I would do in response, but I always hear Mom and Dad say it as, "Oh yeah, you guys hated that thing!"

So I imagine something like this.

And yet, here I am, years later, counting down the days until the Godzilla remake is released in theaters. I am definitely willing to shell out the cash to see that on the big screen! Go figure: the Godzilla roar is now one of my favorite sound effects, along with the classic noise from Transformers (you know, the 8 hz repeated sound whenever they change forms? I don't really know if there's a name for it.)

I guess it was an acquired taste.

Noah: the Preschool Edition.

With all the controversial mishmash I've been hearing about the "Noah" movie, I thought I'd share the story from the perspective of a five-year-old.

A little background here, my neighbor got called into work one Sunday and asked me to keep an eye on her little girl since her husband and son were out of town for the weekend. I took the five year old to church with me and dropped her off in the Sunday School class, since I was volunteering in the nursery that day. After the service, I went back down the hall to get her and found her standing at the door with a paper Ark on a popsicle stick, beaming proudly. "Hey there, (name)," I said, "What've you got there?" And she proudly informed me it was "a Noah". Once I'd put her in her carseat and we were on the road, I glanced into the rearview mirror and asked her to tell me what she'd learned in class that day. 

The following is, as near as I can remember it, the basic transcript of what she told me.

Little Girl:  "Well, the world went bad, and e'eryfing was wotten." (Rotten). "And it made God sad. So God sended a fwood to wipe off the earff."

Me: "Right! And what about Noah? Do you remember who he was?"

Little Girl: "Yeah, Noah. Umm...he was good, and God told him to build a boat."

Me: "Yeah! What kind of boat was it? Was it a big boat?"

Little Girl:  "Yesss...it was a awk. And God bwought all the lots of animals on it."

Me: "Why did He do that, (name)?"

Little Girl: "Um...so they would be safe from all the watew."

Me: "Do you know how long they were on the ark?"

Little Girl: "I dunno...twenty-seven days?"

Me: "Forty days and forty nights, actually."

Little Girl: "Phwaw! Fowty days an' fowty nights! Yeah, an' then they went bump! And they landed on, on a mountain, and Noah sended out a bird, but it didn't find anyfing. Then he sended it out again, but it didn't find anyfing. Then it went away to build a nest."

Me: "Good job! What did God put in the sky to show He wouldn't flood the world again?"

Little Girl: "....I don't wemembew."

Me: "It was a rainbow."

Little Girl: "Ohhh! That's wight, a wainbow!"

She then proceeded to very carelessly say something baffling. (I've noticed with small children that very often when they say something deep or startling, it's in such a nonchalant way, as if it isn't strange at all to them!)

She nodded her head and said, "Just like Eastew!" Confused, I asked her, "What was just like Easter, honey?" Drumming her feet against the back of my seat, she said, "Last Eastew, God telled me He was gonna put a wainbow in the sky for me, so I looked out the window and it was up there!"

I had no idea what to say. How do you answer that?! 

I love hearing Bible stories retold by kids.

East of Normal and West of Weird

I like to tell people, "Normal is just a setting on your dryer". And then sometimes there are moments where I think to myself, "I am a rather strange bean."

Not that I'm complaining, no not at all! You see, I thoroughly enjoy being a rather strange bean. It certainly provides one with an interesting repertoire of stories to tell, should one ever become bored for some reason. And I have a lot of those weird stories.

A lot. 

I'm in a story-telling mood tonight, but I don't feel like freaking anyone out, so I'll tell two of the ones closest to "normal".

Fire is your Friend!

So earlier this winter, I had a bunch of my friends/siblings over at my house for somebody's birthday. It might've been mine, I can't remember. (There's a lot of us.) Anyway, it was really really cold outside, and gross and wet, and not nice weather at all, really. Well, unless you had a cup of hot tea and a good book, but that's beside the point. The point was, it was super chilly outside and my dad was really busy working on something he had to get done for his job. He's usually the person who starts the fires in the fireplace, and I tend them and keep them from going out. (Earlier that week, I'd spent an entire day keeping a fire going because it was so cold out.) So since my dad was busy, I decided that I'd build the fire in the fireplace before everyone got there! 

Don't laugh. It wasn't a disaster!

So Dad walks me through the basics of what I needed to do to get the fireplace ready (where the thing to open the flue was, for instance) and I went out to the back yard to collect firewood. Okay, first of all, it was as dark as all getout and the woodpile is in the very back of the yard by a line of overhanging trees. Second, it was cold and windy, and I was out there with just a flashlight and a wheelbarrow. Not fun. Especially when you start hearing creakings and cracklings in the treeline in front of you that you're just sure aren't the feral cats or the wind, and you're thinking, "Well, it's probably not a crazed raccoon or a sneaky bobcat like that one time," as you shake out each individual log before putting it in the barrow. (I've learned by experience that bugs like to get into the bark, and if you bring them into the house, you find them later and it is very unfortunate for everyone.)

By the time the my older brothers got there, I had the logs in the fireplace and some kindling lit, but it was having a hard time catching. One of the guys sat down in front of the hearth with me and we just started shoving wadded-up magazine pages and wood shavings into the flame, because he told me we needed to make something like a bed of coals to help the log catch fire. 

Did I mention we were doing this with our bare hands?

No seriously, we were actually shoving the paper into the flame with our hands. I cheerfully told my mother about this later, and she said, "Why?!" I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, but my answer was, "Because pain is impractical." 

So there you go: a little weird.

Ice is not Nice.

Later that same winter, there were several snow days at my school. Now, down here in the south, "snow day" could mean anything from "a light dusting of white powder" to "three inches of ice covering the parking lot". This time, it was the latter. The first day was fun, spent in snowball fights and hot tea, and I even went sledding for the very first time. 

Yeah, that's right, I'm in my twenties and I'd never gone sledding before.

As I've learned, a chicken feed sack works pretty well as a sled! Although, I preferred my giant tupperware lid. I slid down a giant hill several times, then the last time I fell off the sled and went rolling the rest of the way down with my hat going the opposite direction. Cold and wet, I went back to the dorms, shook out my coat and hat, and went right back out again with my brothers and sisters for a massive snowball war, after which none of us could feel our hands.

The second snow day consisted mainly of hot tea and homework, catching up on anything we might need by the time classes started again.

By the third snow day, I was going absolutely stir-crazy. As I'd mentioned before, there was a good two or three inches of solid ice covering the roads and parking lots, and I was not confident enough to take my car over it to go anywhere. I spent a lot of that day flopped over my bed complaining that I was going mad. Then, that night, my RA came dashing down the hall and announced that she was going skating in the parking lot...sans skates. My sisters and I joined in, slipping on flat shoes and running out to find that the long, thin road linking the parking lot at the top of the hill to the parking lot at the bottom of the hill had suddenly become a modified ski slope. A group of us were taking running (or in my case, waddling, as I was wrapped up in a blanket) starts and then "skiing" down the hill on just our shoes. On either side of the narrow road were ditches filled with giant snow drifts, which made convenient landing places when we fell down.

I started out mostly falling off midway down, but after four or five tries, I was able to pick up speed and coast all the way to the bottom, turning sideways and skidding to a halt. It was really fun, and I couldn't help but feel very slightly Olympic...even though I was wearing oversized sneakers and wrapped in a fluffy pink blanket because I didn't want to put a coat on.

Then, while I was at the bottom of the hill, some girls decided to sled down...

...sitting in either side of a suitcase.

In my haste to get out of the way, I slipped on the ice halfway and did a faceplant on the road. I ended up breaking straight through to the pavement...with my face. I remember seeing stars, as it were, and this kind of shocked moment of "What the heck just happened?!" You know, when you hit your nose, your eyes water. So I'm sitting on the ice in a state of semi-shock, trying my darndest not to cry in front of everyone because it didn't hurt that much! I mean, yeah, my brain was definitely telling me that I was in pain, but my face was so completely numb that I couldn't feel it. I looked up and everyone winced.

When everyone winces when looking at your face, that's not a good sign.

I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear for forty seconds, and my twin sister practically dragged me back inside because I couldn't walk in a straight line, which was hilarious. I got inside, and, oh! Surprise! Blood all over my face! I'd busted my lip, scraped up my chin, and had a huge gash on my nose. Quite honestly, I should've gotten two black eyes out of the deal as well. Meredith went outside and packed a bunch of snow into a plastic bag and made me hold it on my face (which hurt a lot, by the way), and the next morning I looked like this.

Only there was more blood than that.

I didn't realize until the next month that I'd actually broken my nose, but since I reset it myself, it didn't go crooked or anything.

So...yeah...weird stories of weirdness.

Very Strange Dreams.

I'm sure we've all had 'em at some point.

I'm not talking about your average "First Day of School in your Underwear" dream (although those do happen to people).

I'm not talking about nightmares. I very rarely have real nightmares, but when they occur, they are of such a nature that leaves me wide-awake and unwilling to shut my eyes again for hours. 

What I'm talking about are the dreams that are just plain weird. Sometimes in a Lewis Carroll way, sometimes in a Dr. Seuss way, simply bizarre.

I can honestly say I've had some doozies.

For instance, some time back in 2007 (I wouldn't know this unless I'd written it down)

Have you ever seen those little gooey-men toys that you throw against the wall and they stick? And then they kind of cartwheel down? Well, I dreamed that I had two of them: one green, one dark purple. I don't know why, because I've only ever seen them in pinks, blues, and highlighter yellows. Despite having neither faces nor mouths, they could speak. The green one made me shrink somehow (a la Alice in Wonderland) and we were running around the fringe of trees in my backyard, hiding in the underbrush. We were hiding because the dark purple one stretched and stretched and stretched until he was three stories tall...and had evidently decided that world domination was a good alternative to his wall-clinging career. I don't remember why the purple guy was chasing me in the dream (resident human threat? needed a good PR rep? Revenge for being thrown against the wall? who knows!) But I do remember a mouse's-eye-view of my yard, dodging insects and ducking under sticks and dead leaves, being thoroughly grossed out by my slimy green rescuer.

Then there was this other dream, back in give or take 2009

I dreamed that I was playing around in an old house made of wooden planking somewhere in the middle of a clearing. There were a few other teens there with me, none of whom I recognized. One climbed out the attic window and onto the roof, and I followed. There was a large forest at the back of the house, and there were two men with shovels and a bulldozer standing near it. I climbed down the side of the house with the others and we found that the two men were staring at a huge red "x" on the ground. While the other teens stopped to talk to the men, I ignored them and went into the woods with one or two others, playing around. I was jumping off of stumps and boulders, climbing on things that probably weren't sturdy (a bit like I do in real life, come to think of it) and suddenly a hawk flew over my head with the Civil War's Rebel Flag emblazoned on its back.

(weird, right? It gets stranger)

Confused and excited, we ran back and told the two men with the shovels, who promptly organized an expedition into the woods to find said hawk. They were jabbering on about some kind of lost Civil War treasure. I wandered away from the group and started walking along logs, picking up shiny rocks (you know, basically just being the way I was at that age). I heard wingbeats and thought it was the hawk coming back, but it was much bigger. (Here's where it gets really unusual.)

     A bald eagle standing some five feet high lands in the clearing on a wide branch. Its back was to me, and I couldn't see its face. Then, in a moment of perfect silence, it turned its head to one side. 

The bird's left eye was a compass.

Mesmerized, I stared into it and watched the direction in which the needle spun. I called to the others and they saw the eagle as it took off. We headed North, and for some reason we were supposed to be looking for a water moccasin snake. One of them was supposed to be carrying a map in its fangs. No really, like you catch it and hold its head steady and ink comes dripping out of the fangs to form a map on a rock. I was in the creek up to my knees looking for snakes when I woke up.

And to conclude, one of my very strangest dreams.

I had a dream one Saturday night, four or five years ago, that I was walking around my house, looking for something. I didn't quite know what it was. Then I walked into the classroom (actually a large bonus room used for schooling purposes) and found a boy that I did not know. He was small, thin, about twelve years old with short blonde hair and a sharp nose. I was surprised, and rather short-temperedly asked him who he was and what he was doing in my house. He never answered me, but he turned and looked into my eyes and I've never quite been able to describe the emotion on his face. I can't even remember what it was anymore.
I woke up rather confused.
At church that morning, a speaker came to talk about older orphans in Eastern Europe and how they needed love, prayer, and support, especially since it is the younger children who are usually adopted. At a little table in the church foyer were little cards with pictures of specific boys and girls from the children's homes in the specific country who needed prayer. My sister picked one up with two young boys on it, but I didn't see the card until we got home. When she showed it to us at lunch, I got the surprise of my life!
The second boy on the card was the little boy I'd seen in my dream.
And that's a true story.

Old Man Beaver and other Animal Anecdotes

I go to school at a small Bible college near a river, surrounded by a small area of woods. 

The campus is home to plenty of wildlife...and I'm not talking about the students, actually. The following is a small collection of the various strange animal encounters that have taken place over my time here. 

1. A Cat Named Cheez-it

For a while, there were a ton of stray cats on the campus, to the point where Residence Life had to order us not to feed them. One of them apparently had kittens, because there were several very young cats running around during my sophomore year. Two girls who lived off campus named one John the Baptist (don't ask me why) and took it home with them. Most of the others wandered away or went to go live in the woods, but there was one that stayed. She was a tiny, skinny, grey and black tabby with spots between the stripes. At first, she was deathly afraid of all humans and wouldn't go near them. Then, the girls in my building took it upon themselves to domesticate the feral cat. We lured her to the porch with Cheez-its (which is how she got her name), and over a course of two or three weeks, we had gained her trust. Eventually, any one of us could just snap our fingers and call, "Cheez-it!" and she would jump out of the bushes and follow us wherever we were going. 

     It actually took considerably longer to get her to trust guys, for some reason, but my older brother (who loves cats) helped things along by carrying cat treats in his trench coat pockets. Unfortunately, we spoiled Cheez-it, and Res Life caught her begging for food in front of the cafeteria. Once again, it was reiterated that we weren't supposed to feed the cats, and we started to worry that animal control might come for our favorite stray. Then, one of the girls on my hall announced that the Russian school a little ways down the street was having a mouse problem and had asked for a cat to take care of it. So now Cheez-it actually has a home, and a job. We were sad to see her go, but it's nice to know she didn't go to a shelter.

2. The Horse.

There's not much to say for this one except one day, out of the blue, somebody rode a horse onto campus, around the buildings, and back out again. It would've been one thing if it was a nice-looking horse, but it was the scruffiest, saggiest, saddest, most pathetic looking creature I've ever seen on hooves. I've also seen it being ridden down the sidewalk headed for town. With no explanations.

3. Bones.

One morning last semester, I left the main classroom building to discover a knot of students crowded around something. It was a large, male pit bull, and he was so thin that you could see every single one of his ribs. Despite the fearsome reputation of pit bulls and the size of this fellow, he was the sweetest dog I've ever met. The students were trying to keep him there so that someone could call an animal rescue unit, because the poor creature was pretty clearly starving. Somebody got him a bowl of water and I played with him a little. I don't know, maybe it was because he was the same colors as the basset hound I had when I was a little girl, but I didn't want to go to my next class. (I did, though.)

4. The Deer-ly Departed

This one also takes place sophomore year. I was coming back from work a little late one evening, and was hiking up from the parking lot to the back of my building. As I'm fishing the keys out of my purse to try and wrestle the stubborn door open, something catches my attention. In the back yard space of the dorm next door (which, at the time, belonged to guys. Now it belongs to girls and I live in it.) there's this metal pole about four feet high. Stuck to the top of it was a head. A deer's head. I walked over warily, thinking it was fake. Nope! Actual deer's head, actual blood. While not scared or disgusted, I was slightly concerned. The next day, I was telling a friend about it while in the lunch line and I didn't realize that the head of Student Life was behind us. That night, the head was gone. I didn't learn until years later that apparently what had happened was a guy in the dorms had been walking in the woods and found a dead deer. If I remember correctly, he hauled it back to his room, cleaned it (In his room!) and put the head on the pole. His roommate came back to find him making jerky. Now I know why this building used to smell so weird.

5. Gobbledygook.

Did I mention we have turkeys? Only two or three people have actually seen them, but they're there. A friend of mine went down to the lake to look for Old Man Beaver (more on that later) and texted me to say that there were three wild turkeys down there. Me being me, I told him to catch one so we could eat it. Evidently he decided to take me up on that. I'm not entirely sure what happened after that, but I do know that the three turkeys didn't take kindly to it and chased him back up the path. Turkeys can be mean!

6. Pooh, is that You?

To quote and old Royal Guardsmen song, There's bears in the stairs, and sometimes in pairs./Very difficult to get along with. One of my friends is a very outdoorsy type. She went hiking a year or so ago in the woods behind our dorm. While out among the trees, she heard something moving through the underbrush. At first, she thought it was a deer, so she stayed to watch for it. Then she thought to herself, "Hmm...deer walk on top of leaves and roots. Whatever this is is just ploughing through the leaves!" Sure enough, it was no deer. Something big, dark, furry and fat came shuffling along through the woods. 

Yep. It was a bear. 

I assume that she left fairly quickly. This is actually not the first sign of bears we've had. On two separate occasions, with two separate guys, someone found pawprints and...other signs...

That's one of the reasons students aren't supposed to go into the woods alone.

7. Old Man Beaver

I moved here when I was about eleven or twelve years old. My dad took me and one of my sisters hiking out in the campus woods one day, when the trees were thicker and the pond was smaller. There was this overturned rowboat on the far edge of the pond, and a beaver had taken up residence in it. My sister and I went over and knocked on the boat. I'd never heard a beaver hiss before, but it was not a friendly sound. Some nine years later, the pond was widened into a lake and the beaver's boat-house was gone. There was a little island in the middle of the water, and the beaver had built a lodge there. I went down there with my sister, a friend, and her two little brothers. We were showing the little boys the beaver's tracks and where he came in and out of the water, etc. 

     There was a big old tree, about as big around as the two boys standing back to back, that the beaver had been trying to gnaw down for some time. He'd already chipped away a third of it, to my surprise. Since my friend Carrie's little brothers had ridden their bikes down to the lake, one of them still had his helmet on. Carrie looked at him and asked, "Why do you still have that on? You don't need it now." The seven year old looked thoughtful for a moment and answered, "In case of beavers." We must've looked confused, because he explained, "Beavers are very sneaky. I have to wear this helmet because he might be in the tree. He will yell, Hallooo! And when I look up, he'll drop on me." Now, I'm already trying not to laugh my head off at this little boy using Winnie-the-Pooh quotes, but the whole idea of crankly old Mr. Beaver being up a tree was pretty funny. 

     Yesterday, I went back down to that lake for the first time this year. The whole island is completely overgrown with thorn thickets. I got caught in them several times because I somehow decided it'd be a good idea to force my way through. It wasn't. Anyway, I managed to get halfway over the tiny island and discovered that the beaver's lodge was now huge. He'd finally managed to get that tree down, along with several others, and most of it was furnishing the walls of his house. As I managed to free myself from the prickles, I heard a distinct, watery slap! I don't know if it was Old Man Beaver or not, but there were suddenly ripples in the water that hadn't been there before. I kind of hope to actually see him one of these days.