This morning Wattpad tweeted something along the lines of, if you could write a story based on a memory from your childhood, what would it be?
I don’t know the answer to that. My childhood is filled with scraped knees, bike rides, swimming, rollerskating, making a band with my two brothers, making interview tapes (yes, I said it, tapes) with them and so many other things.
Wattpad’s tweet got me thinking about my childhood and any moments about it that one might find entertaining.
There was the time my brother told me I was adopted. What made it really not so funny is that both of my brothers actually are adopted so in my 5 year old mind, this had to be true. Turns out, I look exactly like my dad and have my mom’s dry sense of humor so maybe Sean was wrong.
Anyways, my two brothers were always up to no good. Playing good natured pranks on anyone who would fall victim to them.
The first house I remember was in a small town in Alberta on a street called Madison Avenue. We lived in this great big bungalow that backed on to a huge greenspace which we referred to as the forest. I’ve since been back as an adult and it is sadly not nearly as big as I remembered but I loved that house. My room had a man on the moon in the blinds, I had an ensuite bathroom when I was 3 years old.
The house had this massive cement driveway, straight through to the backyward but my father had wanted some privacy so he built a fence. A fence with a gate that was at least 12 feet high by 4 feet wide and was so large that it sat atop a set of wheels to pull the damned thing open. Recollection is fuzzy at best but the hinges on this gate were the size of half a shoebox. No joke.
In the backyard, my father (he is a very handy guy) had built us a treehouse. Instead of a swing I had a plane (I was going to be a pilot) and my brothers and I spent hours there, surveying the forest and inventing alternate universes.
One day, my eldest brother had his friend Brad over, and when the two brothers threw a friend into the mix, I knew better than to rest easy. Surely a prank was inevitable.
So there I was, coming round the side of the house through the back, and on the hinge of the gate sits a bat. Two things run through my five year old mind.
1. It’s like noon. Bats are nocturnal, even at five years old, I knew this to be true.
2. It looked plastic. So it must be.
I leaned close to it, squinting to analyze its rubbery wings. The thing wasn’t breathing so I put my hand on the latch to the open to the gate and shouted “Scott, Sean, I know it’s fake” and proceeded to pull it open.
The second the hinge bent, the bat moved.
I realize it’s not super evident in my profile picture but I have thick hair. So thick that I bust elastics and hair clips and bend hairpins on a regular basis. It is also curly.
So the bat’s wings start going nuts and he dive bombs my head. His wings which have to be flapping at the same speed of a hummingbird, get tangled in the curls atop my head. I scream bloody murder. I scream like I have never screamed before in my life.
I book it across the back yard and scale the ladder to the treehouse like I’ve somehow joined the Marine Corps, the whole time, the bat struggling to free itself from my hair.
My brother Sean (the same one who told me I was adopted) sees what’s going on and proceeds to hit me in his futile attempts to get the bat. My other brother Scott joins in and between the two of them, manage to get it loose. The bat flies into the forest, leaving me behind utterly traumatized and my brothers near pissing their pants laughing at me.
So, yeah, what if the bat bit me and just like in the comic books and cartoons I’m somehow morphed into this mutant bat girl?
That would make a pretty good story, don’t you think, Wattpad?
