Growing up, in the house next to our, a single mother and her teenage son lived.
Now, this guys eventually grew up to be a car sales man, complete with all the attributes that follows one such. But back then, he was a teenaged hard rocker with a motorbike, that he liked to work on during days off school.
My mother used to hate this motorbike, with passion, as the boy would fling the dirty, oily cloths he had used on the bike (not on purpose, I´m sure) on her roses. I would just admire the fact that he was a teenager. How lucky he was!
Small input on the matter: When we were children, we were always in a hurry to grow up. In retrospect, that seems quite ironic, as I know I have spent a large part of my adulthood wishing I was a child again. But back then, all things that seemed to be fun, exciting and cool would happen to you after the age of 17. People that age were allowed to wear cool clothes in bright colors (come on, it was the end of the 80's) drive cars and listen to cool music... not to mention go to high school and use cool words in their vocabulary.
Back to our story again. It was a particulary lazy summer afternoon. My best friend and I, as per usual, had nothing to do. Thus, we decided that we would transform my mother's old storing shed in the garden into our new club house. The club's purpose would be to sit and talk about cool things, this including our top secret plan to collect money through yard sales, travel to the USA and become famous.
We didn't really ask for permission to put all my mother's gardening tools and furniture out in the garden (we just did, as children do) but said and done, we spent all remaining day and the following collecting things for our new club house, carrying things in and out of that garden shed. And finally, it was ready and fit for our secret club meetings.
As I recall it (and mind you, these are recollections of things happening at age 8 or 9) the club house was absolutely spectacular. Being a garden shed, it had a lock on the door and an electrical outlet, which enabled us to listen to music through an old boom box, stolen by my best friend from her older brother´s room. We had also furnished our secret lair with an old rug, a small 2-seated couch, a very small table, blankets and a few posters of exclusively cool people (such as Michael Jackson) to cover the walls. A small corner of the shed, consealed behind a curtain and blue colored shelves, was still used for storage, as my mother was not too happy to find all her gardening things out on the lawn when she arrived home the day before. Nonetheless, we had our own place, with a lock and a key... and boy, that made us feel cool! We never wanted to leave this heaven on earth, and were even considering spending the night in our little shed-turned-clubhouse. Of course, since the shed was made of wood, with concrete floors, it was cold in there even during the summer. Thus, it wasnt really a suitable place to spend the night, according to our parents. We, however, disagreed. Following this, one of the things discussed in the club house was therefore how to pull off spending the night in the club house without our parents knowledge.
The teenage boy next door had, as customary with teenagers, a lot of friends over from time to time. This particular teenage boy had a lot of female friends, who used to come and sunbathe in his garden, chatting about teenage topics, while listening to music and having lemonade on sunny days. When we learnt that such important happenings were occuring just on the other side of the wall (the back wall of the shed faced the neighbour's lawn) we quickly found a knothole in the unpolished wooden walls of our club house, where we could spy on these gatherings. Oh, how glamorous to be able to wear a bikini, gracefully sipping lemonade while sunbathing! These girls would twirl their long, beautiful hair and cheerfully laugh at jokes, displaying their perfect smiles. We just had to be like them!
The path to true beauty comes through exercise and eating right, so we had heard. That's how it came about that two of the neighbourhood's skinniest 8-year-olds started to do daily aerobic sessions to the instructions of Jane Fonda (through an old video tape my mother bought but quickly lost interest in). It went without saying that the workout was to be performed in contemporary teenage-fashion type outfits: tights, bathing suit, a broad belt on the waist and a white sweat band on the forehead.
This excercise session was followed by a breakfast consisting of swallowing an entire raw egg, for so we had seen people do in american movies. We were one step closer to our true goal; being grown ups, doing what grown up people do!
As I am sitting here, writing this text, I cannot help but wondering if I can go back to being a child again. Little did we know back then that being a grown up involves constantly making up silly excuses NOT to go to the gym, skipping breakfast and never (I mean NEVER) have time to sunbathe, twirl your hair and sip lemonade!
Maybe I can empty my mother's garden shed again and turn it into a club house?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The Man In The Shrubs
Close to our school there was a large terrain of nature, consisting of lawns and wood-like shrubbery. With the exception of the shrubs surrounding the actual school buildings, the shrubs in the surrounding parks of our little suburb were off limits during school hours. Of course, this did not prevent us from lingering in the Forbidden Shrubs after school, with the perfect excuse that we absolutely had to cut through them in order to not have to do a completely meaningless detour around them. It was during one of these afternoons in the shrubs (annoyingly enough, on afternoon when I was not part of the lingering committee) that the legend of the Dark Man emerged.
The name did not come from this supposed man’s complexion (no one had actually seen his face, as he, according to the tales, wore a large hat, and his face was all covered in soot) but because he wore black clothes bottom-to-top with the exception of an orange back pack. Apparently, three of my class mates were playing in the shrubs (or, according to the official version to the grown up, just cutting through) when this scary character, half man half creature, had jumped out of nowhere, causing all children to scatter faster than you could imagine possible.
I remember that the grownups didn’t seem to take too much notice on these first reports. Maybe they figured that it was just a figment of these children’s imagination, or maybe they just didn’t really think it was too important. In any case, the first sitings of the Dark Man were quickly forgotten. That is, they were forgotten by the grownups.
In the realm of the nine-year olds, however, the news spread like fire, and within a few days there had been even MORE sightings of this terrible, almost supernatural creature. The stories had the peculiarity of escalating as more of them emerged. One girl swore that he had approached her in the shrubs, hissing something in a strange, foreign language. A few boys claimed that he had exposed his thin, razor-sharp fangs at them. A few other children claimed that he had spent the night at their tree house, leaving the place full of ritual-type offerings of small animals. In short, this Dark Man was the author of all the nasty and abominable things a pack of nine-year olds can come up with.
The element of panic was eventually when news of these happenings came to reach the ear of the mother of one class mate of mine (Chairman of the PTA, housewife and an extremely devoted mother). This mother had a few months before distributed a dodgy-looking pamphlet (today known as chain-mail) warning children not to accept candy from strangers, as these could be part of this new gang of organized dealers, straight from the United States, specialists in hooking young children on drugs. In other words, if we ever saw a dodgy-looking character with some kind of foreign accent (American), insisting that we accept sparkling candy with dodgy names like “Fizzy Magic” we should run screaming the other direction.
Anyway, one evening, this mother got told by her kid at the dinner table (who probably, and completely unsuspectingly, told her mother, expecting the same “ooh”, “aah” reaction as she has gotten from the children at school) that there was some Dark Man running around in the shrubs just outside of school.
Panic.
Now, knowing how children can be, knowing how our sleepy suburb usually was (the biggest factor of danger was dying from boredom) she would probably have done best in actually filtering the information her child was presenting to her at that time.
But there is also the point of view that one can never be too careful.
The next day we woke to face a completely different world. The PTA had mobilized a so called “telephone chain” to inform parents that it was not safe at this time to let their children walk alone to school. To my delight (and my mother’s infinite irritation) I was driven to school that morning. In school, we were given yet another pamphlet to the attention of our parents, detailing the description of this Dark Man (Person? Creature? Crazy Shaman in search of victims?) and the encounters, experienced until present date (without the gory details in the nine-year-old version, of course).
The following few days all dodgy-looking persons scouted in the surroundings were under suspect, including the harmless hobos that probably had been hanging around, sitting on their park-benches by the supermarket longer than we had been drawing breath. Some parents I think chose to deem it all to be an exaggeration (my mother being one of them), and would still let their children play outside, and walk to school. Some parents didn’t. The police was phoned a couple of times (I remember a girl screaming that “we would all be heroes” when we saw a Local Police vehicle patrolling the area around the shrubs).
Us children found all the excitement very thrilling and were happy to continue to contribute more stories to the ears that wanted to listen, until it became a must to have seen the Dark Man (those who hadn’t were losers). As for me, the only thing I ever saw was an old mattress amongst the shrubs that could have gotten there for a million other reasons. In my version, I had found the Dark Man’s secret lair.
What’s more, I lived to tell the story.
The name did not come from this supposed man’s complexion (no one had actually seen his face, as he, according to the tales, wore a large hat, and his face was all covered in soot) but because he wore black clothes bottom-to-top with the exception of an orange back pack. Apparently, three of my class mates were playing in the shrubs (or, according to the official version to the grown up, just cutting through) when this scary character, half man half creature, had jumped out of nowhere, causing all children to scatter faster than you could imagine possible.
I remember that the grownups didn’t seem to take too much notice on these first reports. Maybe they figured that it was just a figment of these children’s imagination, or maybe they just didn’t really think it was too important. In any case, the first sitings of the Dark Man were quickly forgotten. That is, they were forgotten by the grownups.
In the realm of the nine-year olds, however, the news spread like fire, and within a few days there had been even MORE sightings of this terrible, almost supernatural creature. The stories had the peculiarity of escalating as more of them emerged. One girl swore that he had approached her in the shrubs, hissing something in a strange, foreign language. A few boys claimed that he had exposed his thin, razor-sharp fangs at them. A few other children claimed that he had spent the night at their tree house, leaving the place full of ritual-type offerings of small animals. In short, this Dark Man was the author of all the nasty and abominable things a pack of nine-year olds can come up with.
The element of panic was eventually when news of these happenings came to reach the ear of the mother of one class mate of mine (Chairman of the PTA, housewife and an extremely devoted mother). This mother had a few months before distributed a dodgy-looking pamphlet (today known as chain-mail) warning children not to accept candy from strangers, as these could be part of this new gang of organized dealers, straight from the United States, specialists in hooking young children on drugs. In other words, if we ever saw a dodgy-looking character with some kind of foreign accent (American), insisting that we accept sparkling candy with dodgy names like “Fizzy Magic” we should run screaming the other direction.
Anyway, one evening, this mother got told by her kid at the dinner table (who probably, and completely unsuspectingly, told her mother, expecting the same “ooh”, “aah” reaction as she has gotten from the children at school) that there was some Dark Man running around in the shrubs just outside of school.
Panic.
Now, knowing how children can be, knowing how our sleepy suburb usually was (the biggest factor of danger was dying from boredom) she would probably have done best in actually filtering the information her child was presenting to her at that time.
But there is also the point of view that one can never be too careful.
The next day we woke to face a completely different world. The PTA had mobilized a so called “telephone chain” to inform parents that it was not safe at this time to let their children walk alone to school. To my delight (and my mother’s infinite irritation) I was driven to school that morning. In school, we were given yet another pamphlet to the attention of our parents, detailing the description of this Dark Man (Person? Creature? Crazy Shaman in search of victims?) and the encounters, experienced until present date (without the gory details in the nine-year-old version, of course).
The following few days all dodgy-looking persons scouted in the surroundings were under suspect, including the harmless hobos that probably had been hanging around, sitting on their park-benches by the supermarket longer than we had been drawing breath. Some parents I think chose to deem it all to be an exaggeration (my mother being one of them), and would still let their children play outside, and walk to school. Some parents didn’t. The police was phoned a couple of times (I remember a girl screaming that “we would all be heroes” when we saw a Local Police vehicle patrolling the area around the shrubs).
Us children found all the excitement very thrilling and were happy to continue to contribute more stories to the ears that wanted to listen, until it became a must to have seen the Dark Man (those who hadn’t were losers). As for me, the only thing I ever saw was an old mattress amongst the shrubs that could have gotten there for a million other reasons. In my version, I had found the Dark Man’s secret lair.
What’s more, I lived to tell the story.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Field Trip Day
It was field trip day.
The day before field trip day, my mother would run around like a mad woman, trying to juggle the signing of parental slips, shopping of food to make field trip lunches for me and my elder sister, and doing all around stressing. As a kid, I genuinely thought my mother enjoyed stressing.
And the field trip lunches. Oh my lord, do I remember the field trip lunches. The ones my mother made for me stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the wholesome Swedish lunches my class mates would bring.
While they were sitting there, with their baloney and cheese sandwiches on dark bread (only one bread per sandwich) and a recycled flasks of dark baking syrup containing strawberry cordial, I was ashamed to bring out my foreign girl lunch, containing ham and cheese sandwiches with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and a piece of lettuce, all inside two pieces of WHITE (yikes!) wonder bread. And on top of that, a soft drink! Oh, brother, the shame in taking out my bright colored Disney type lunch box, sticking out among all the soberly colored lunchboxes the Swedish kids brought (decorated with the Swedish comic hero Bamse, a small bear with super powers that did NOT like violence and always had a moral story at the end of every cartoon). I ate my lunch in utter humiliation over the fact that I did not have a smiling, rosey-cheaked house wife for a mother (as I imagined everyone else did) , but rather a stressed out foreign woman with an eerie preference for American style lunches, rich in calories.
After The Lunch of Shame it was time for the actual purpose of the field trip. All children were to be divided in different groups and were to complete a route, pre-designed by the teachers. The purpose of this? Officially: to let children explore nature in a safe and pre-determined way, and at the same time get some precious fresh air. Unofficially: to royally torture those little brats, and drag their little lazy bums away from their videogames (mind you, these were the times of the Nintendo Entertainment Systems. I am not THAT old).
Needless to say, in the mind of the troublesome nine year old that I was, that field trip sucked. So, instead of going with my group as so many of my obedient class mates did (although they probably though it sucked as well) I cleverly separated myself from the mob and went en route to my OWN destination. Let me tell you what that was:
Earlier that year, during the spring field trip (we had one roughly twice a year, and for some reason, we always went to the same, sad place) I had accidentally found an old ruin of some sort, my guess would be an old windmill from the beginning of the century. The only thing left of this building, once surely stout and very useful, was the actual base. In lack of usage, it stood there, completely forgotten by the world, and overgrown with stinging nettles. I imagined this to be the scene of some morbid middle-aged torture, where the victim was mercilessly stripped of its clothing and hurled down on the nettles as a desperate cry of despair stopped time. Of course, neither the nettles nor the windmill were present during the middle ages, but for the imagination of a nine year-old who had seen too many movies, nothing is impossible.
There I was, standing on the brink of the ruin, looking down at the nettles, , imagining disgustingly violent scenarios involving evil monks in the dark middle-ages, helpless beautiful maidens and Ivanhoe-type heroes when another type of cry stopped time. This was not the cry of a victim of torture from the middle-ages, but from one of the teachers, herself wondering of from the crown (grown-ups were apparently allowed to) and crying out in outrage over the sight of that impossible child (yours truly) balancing on top of a ruin. The cry not only brought me back to the present but startled me to the degree that I lost my balance, fell… and….
This is the parenthesis where I thank my mother for having bundled me up to the degree that I looked like the Michellin-man (my mother was in constant panic that we would get the flu) for it was the clothes that saved my knees as I fell on the nettles. My hands were not so lucky, but suffered a completely different fate.
The chock of falling down, the chock of hearing that outcry on the middle of all that silence one can only experience in the Swedish woods during the winter. This made me paralyze for a few seconds, not feeling the burn of the nettles as I landed in the dead middle. It was not until the teacher dove after me that I could feel that my hands had swelled up to twice their normal size.
Oh yes, and the pain.
I am yet to experience childbirth and have heard that this is an extremely painful ordeal. I have never been the one to welcome pain as my threshold for it is relatively low. I must however say that if childbirth is half as painful as what I experienced that day then this is not am experience I am looking forward to.
It was an extremely angry teacher dragging back a screaming nine year-old with impossible tangled up black hair and hands the size of baseball gloves back to the base. Although it is commonly known that nettle burns calm down after a while, the grown ups decided that I was to go back to town with one of the teachers in her little white car to get my hands examined by the school nurse. Not going back with the rest of the kids in the school bus was punishment in itself. I cried all the way home, not only from the pain, but from the humiliation of getting caught and to be forced to ride in that stupid white car.
Needless to say, the following week, when the school cafeteria was serving nettle soup, I faked a fever and made my flu-fobic mother call me in sick.
The day before field trip day, my mother would run around like a mad woman, trying to juggle the signing of parental slips, shopping of food to make field trip lunches for me and my elder sister, and doing all around stressing. As a kid, I genuinely thought my mother enjoyed stressing.
And the field trip lunches. Oh my lord, do I remember the field trip lunches. The ones my mother made for me stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the wholesome Swedish lunches my class mates would bring.
While they were sitting there, with their baloney and cheese sandwiches on dark bread (only one bread per sandwich) and a recycled flasks of dark baking syrup containing strawberry cordial, I was ashamed to bring out my foreign girl lunch, containing ham and cheese sandwiches with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and a piece of lettuce, all inside two pieces of WHITE (yikes!) wonder bread. And on top of that, a soft drink! Oh, brother, the shame in taking out my bright colored Disney type lunch box, sticking out among all the soberly colored lunchboxes the Swedish kids brought (decorated with the Swedish comic hero Bamse, a small bear with super powers that did NOT like violence and always had a moral story at the end of every cartoon). I ate my lunch in utter humiliation over the fact that I did not have a smiling, rosey-cheaked house wife for a mother (as I imagined everyone else did) , but rather a stressed out foreign woman with an eerie preference for American style lunches, rich in calories.
After The Lunch of Shame it was time for the actual purpose of the field trip. All children were to be divided in different groups and were to complete a route, pre-designed by the teachers. The purpose of this? Officially: to let children explore nature in a safe and pre-determined way, and at the same time get some precious fresh air. Unofficially: to royally torture those little brats, and drag their little lazy bums away from their videogames (mind you, these were the times of the Nintendo Entertainment Systems. I am not THAT old).
Needless to say, in the mind of the troublesome nine year old that I was, that field trip sucked. So, instead of going with my group as so many of my obedient class mates did (although they probably though it sucked as well) I cleverly separated myself from the mob and went en route to my OWN destination. Let me tell you what that was:
Earlier that year, during the spring field trip (we had one roughly twice a year, and for some reason, we always went to the same, sad place) I had accidentally found an old ruin of some sort, my guess would be an old windmill from the beginning of the century. The only thing left of this building, once surely stout and very useful, was the actual base. In lack of usage, it stood there, completely forgotten by the world, and overgrown with stinging nettles. I imagined this to be the scene of some morbid middle-aged torture, where the victim was mercilessly stripped of its clothing and hurled down on the nettles as a desperate cry of despair stopped time. Of course, neither the nettles nor the windmill were present during the middle ages, but for the imagination of a nine year-old who had seen too many movies, nothing is impossible.
There I was, standing on the brink of the ruin, looking down at the nettles, , imagining disgustingly violent scenarios involving evil monks in the dark middle-ages, helpless beautiful maidens and Ivanhoe-type heroes when another type of cry stopped time. This was not the cry of a victim of torture from the middle-ages, but from one of the teachers, herself wondering of from the crown (grown-ups were apparently allowed to) and crying out in outrage over the sight of that impossible child (yours truly) balancing on top of a ruin. The cry not only brought me back to the present but startled me to the degree that I lost my balance, fell… and….
This is the parenthesis where I thank my mother for having bundled me up to the degree that I looked like the Michellin-man (my mother was in constant panic that we would get the flu) for it was the clothes that saved my knees as I fell on the nettles. My hands were not so lucky, but suffered a completely different fate.
The chock of falling down, the chock of hearing that outcry on the middle of all that silence one can only experience in the Swedish woods during the winter. This made me paralyze for a few seconds, not feeling the burn of the nettles as I landed in the dead middle. It was not until the teacher dove after me that I could feel that my hands had swelled up to twice their normal size.
Oh yes, and the pain.
I am yet to experience childbirth and have heard that this is an extremely painful ordeal. I have never been the one to welcome pain as my threshold for it is relatively low. I must however say that if childbirth is half as painful as what I experienced that day then this is not am experience I am looking forward to.
It was an extremely angry teacher dragging back a screaming nine year-old with impossible tangled up black hair and hands the size of baseball gloves back to the base. Although it is commonly known that nettle burns calm down after a while, the grown ups decided that I was to go back to town with one of the teachers in her little white car to get my hands examined by the school nurse. Not going back with the rest of the kids in the school bus was punishment in itself. I cried all the way home, not only from the pain, but from the humiliation of getting caught and to be forced to ride in that stupid white car.
Needless to say, the following week, when the school cafeteria was serving nettle soup, I faked a fever and made my flu-fobic mother call me in sick.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Killing our darlings
We had just committed murder, for the first time in our young lives.
This was, at least, how it felt, looking down at our little water pets, gutted on the ground.
Maybe I should start by telling you exactly what a water pet is, and how it came to that we so brutally murdered them.
Earlier that summer, I had begged my mother on a daily basis to buy me a kitten. My mother, a neat freak since birth, had however never met these requests of mine, always insisting that little animals are best to be left in their natural environment.
My best friend, the happy owner of a particularly proud and lone star state-of-mind cat was also starving for a pet to call her own, as her cat only was available for cuddling at his own convenience (this was, if he wasn’t out on some adventure involving a lady-cat).
One hot but overcast day in a summer that seem to last forever, my best friend and I were, as we always did, manufacturing a list on what to do. This was a regular procedure, to determine in what order we wished to carry out our very important tasks, involving biking down to the store to get candy, or going to the lake to swim.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the bright idea to manufacture water pets. Now, as exciting as the name implies water pets to be, to a grown up these looked like mere plastic bags, filled with water and securely sealed with a scout-type knot. To us, they were strange, marine animals, and what’s more… they spoke to us!
We decided to name our water pets after our favorite writers (in other words, the authors of the books we were currently reading) as we fancied ourselves to be extremely sophisticated and real book-connoisseurs. We very much wanted to reflect this upon the names of our newly found friends. Thus, my water pet was named Diana, after Diana Wynne Jones, and my best friend’s water pet Silpha, after a writer named Silpha Snyder. For the purpose of the manufacturing of these said water pets, we had used those kinds of plastic bags that mothers use to store things in the freezer. They were transparent with little labels on and to our great joy we found that these labels were excellent to use for printing the pets’ names on. This way we would not confuse Diana and Silpha, for they both had extremely different personalities.
These water pets brought us much joy as we were biking around the neighborhood, water pets securely attached to the back of our bikes. Such pride, to become a mother of such a brilliant creation! And feel that, they almost feel like they are alive, when you hold them in your hands! Why, they ARE alive!
As the evening came, my best friend was called upon by her mother, for supper was on the table. With that shine in her eyes, that only a nine year old can have as she is carrying home a great treasure, she left in a hurry with her Silpha, still riding in the back of her bike.
The next day, our water pets had strangely undergone a metamorphosis. They were not nearly as talkative or as enchanting as the day before. As much as we tried, the thrill of love-at-first-sight was gone. All we could see now were two dull and pretty annoying plastic bags filled with tap water, with big blue letter printed on the labels.
By the time our big white kitchen clock had struck noon, we were royally fed up with our water pets. Nevertheless, it is a very hard ordeal to part with something that has once been the source of joy and laughter (as we grew up we encountered the same type of feeling, translated into a very grown up expression called “breaking up”). So, there we were, contemplating what to do with our now so tedious water pets when one of us (I forget who) suddenly came up with the idea that the water pets were to be dropped from the little roof of our porch.
Said and done, we proceeded, with grave-like expressions on our faces, to head out to our porch. I do wonder what my mother thought, being passed by our small two-person funeral procession, consisting of two very serious nine-year old girls, and two very death-sentenced water pets.
Out on the porch, we agreed that we were both to carry out the death sentence. Climbing up to where the sentence was to be carried out, I could feel my heart racing and I am sure my best friend was thinking the same, for we were not talking. Without a word, we looked at each other, and, with a little quick nod… we let go.
Back to the scene of the crime. As the remains of our formerly beloved water pets were slowly being absorbed by the ground, we climbed down and rescued the ruptured plastic bags, now the only thing remaining of Silpha and Diana. Touched by the serenity of the moment, we decided it was best to give these beings a worthy funeral, and this we did. We marked Diana’s and Silpha’s final place of rest with two crosses, made of ice cream sticks and quietly resumed to our every day lives.
A few days later, we attempted to make a second generation of water pets, but these were nowhere near as wonderful as their predecessors. They were quickly forgotten, to the degree that I don’t remember how they met their end.
But somewhere in suburbian Sweden, there are two tombs, containing a pair of water pets, very much loved and cherished during their short time on earth.
This was, at least, how it felt, looking down at our little water pets, gutted on the ground.
Maybe I should start by telling you exactly what a water pet is, and how it came to that we so brutally murdered them.
Earlier that summer, I had begged my mother on a daily basis to buy me a kitten. My mother, a neat freak since birth, had however never met these requests of mine, always insisting that little animals are best to be left in their natural environment.
My best friend, the happy owner of a particularly proud and lone star state-of-mind cat was also starving for a pet to call her own, as her cat only was available for cuddling at his own convenience (this was, if he wasn’t out on some adventure involving a lady-cat).
One hot but overcast day in a summer that seem to last forever, my best friend and I were, as we always did, manufacturing a list on what to do. This was a regular procedure, to determine in what order we wished to carry out our very important tasks, involving biking down to the store to get candy, or going to the lake to swim.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the bright idea to manufacture water pets. Now, as exciting as the name implies water pets to be, to a grown up these looked like mere plastic bags, filled with water and securely sealed with a scout-type knot. To us, they were strange, marine animals, and what’s more… they spoke to us!
We decided to name our water pets after our favorite writers (in other words, the authors of the books we were currently reading) as we fancied ourselves to be extremely sophisticated and real book-connoisseurs. We very much wanted to reflect this upon the names of our newly found friends. Thus, my water pet was named Diana, after Diana Wynne Jones, and my best friend’s water pet Silpha, after a writer named Silpha Snyder. For the purpose of the manufacturing of these said water pets, we had used those kinds of plastic bags that mothers use to store things in the freezer. They were transparent with little labels on and to our great joy we found that these labels were excellent to use for printing the pets’ names on. This way we would not confuse Diana and Silpha, for they both had extremely different personalities.
These water pets brought us much joy as we were biking around the neighborhood, water pets securely attached to the back of our bikes. Such pride, to become a mother of such a brilliant creation! And feel that, they almost feel like they are alive, when you hold them in your hands! Why, they ARE alive!
As the evening came, my best friend was called upon by her mother, for supper was on the table. With that shine in her eyes, that only a nine year old can have as she is carrying home a great treasure, she left in a hurry with her Silpha, still riding in the back of her bike.
The next day, our water pets had strangely undergone a metamorphosis. They were not nearly as talkative or as enchanting as the day before. As much as we tried, the thrill of love-at-first-sight was gone. All we could see now were two dull and pretty annoying plastic bags filled with tap water, with big blue letter printed on the labels.
By the time our big white kitchen clock had struck noon, we were royally fed up with our water pets. Nevertheless, it is a very hard ordeal to part with something that has once been the source of joy and laughter (as we grew up we encountered the same type of feeling, translated into a very grown up expression called “breaking up”). So, there we were, contemplating what to do with our now so tedious water pets when one of us (I forget who) suddenly came up with the idea that the water pets were to be dropped from the little roof of our porch.
Said and done, we proceeded, with grave-like expressions on our faces, to head out to our porch. I do wonder what my mother thought, being passed by our small two-person funeral procession, consisting of two very serious nine-year old girls, and two very death-sentenced water pets.
Out on the porch, we agreed that we were both to carry out the death sentence. Climbing up to where the sentence was to be carried out, I could feel my heart racing and I am sure my best friend was thinking the same, for we were not talking. Without a word, we looked at each other, and, with a little quick nod… we let go.
Back to the scene of the crime. As the remains of our formerly beloved water pets were slowly being absorbed by the ground, we climbed down and rescued the ruptured plastic bags, now the only thing remaining of Silpha and Diana. Touched by the serenity of the moment, we decided it was best to give these beings a worthy funeral, and this we did. We marked Diana’s and Silpha’s final place of rest with two crosses, made of ice cream sticks and quietly resumed to our every day lives.
A few days later, we attempted to make a second generation of water pets, but these were nowhere near as wonderful as their predecessors. They were quickly forgotten, to the degree that I don’t remember how they met their end.
But somewhere in suburbian Sweden, there are two tombs, containing a pair of water pets, very much loved and cherished during their short time on earth.
Monday, November 23, 2009
When we were going to meet our idols
We were living in a small house in the suburbs of a small town in Sweden. The house itself, a yellow brick town house in a suburb full of fancy 60’s style villas, was located in a neighborhood popularly known as “Nybygget”, the new houses. During the fourteen years we remained in the house, this neighborhood would remain “Nybygget”. The locals would refer to Nybygget with a slight irritation over the audacity of the multinational contractor, so violently ruining the small town landscape with identical houses on top of our suburbian hill, as far as the eye could see. For my family our small house in the middle of all this monotony was a grand delight, with a wooden staircase leading up to the second floor and a small garden. The staircase, to our infinite joy, was absolutely perfect for sliding down, causing all our pants to rip at some point or another. I don’t know if my mother ever understood why all our bottom garments were always wearing thin on precisely the same place.
Although the summers would stretch from July to August, a smaller infinity in the eyes of a child, it seemed like we never ran out of things to do. There were always mysteries to be solved (what WAS the neighbors teenaged son doing in the garden? And who were all those girls sunbathing in bikinis that always seemed to be with him?) places we could go to on our bikes, games to be played. If worse came to worse, we could always dress up in our bathing suits with fancy-tights and hop along the best we could to my mother’s Low Impact Aerobics tape, purchased earlier that summer in another attempt to slim up in face of the bikini season. We never seemed to grow tired of hearing Jane Fonda telling us to put our “heal out” at the end of every exercise and we would put of heart and soul in the prospect of “gaining figure” to our scrawny nine-year old bodies.
It was in the middle of this eventful summer, rather hot and dry as far as Swedish summers go, that my best friend and I decided we were going to enter a talent show on television, where the first prize was to meet your idol. The show consisted on kids mimicking their idol on national television and the best act would ultimately win. Looking back at the program itself I remember that the lucky winner so happened to always have a Swedish b-list celebrity as their idol who was happy to drop by the show (for a decent amount of cash and another fifteen minutes of stardom). But again, this distinction was not made in our expectant nine year-old eyes.
Our idols that week were a teenaged rapper duo named Kris Kross. We were partly amazed that these boys had reached stardom at such an early age, and partly I think we had a crush on said duo. Immediately we put our plan into action, stealing a pair of baggy jeans from our elder siblings and learning to button them backwards (as our idols so happened to wear them). When we had our image all figured out and completed, we proceeded to plan the most important part, the actual act itself. I remember there being a small quarrel about who was going to be who, as we so happened to like the same boy, and very much wanted to be that boy. I am not sure how we ultimately came to the decision that I was to be the shorter boy (it might have been for the fact that I at that time was very short) and my best friend was to be the slightly taller boy (the object of our affection). The song was already a given, seeing as this act furthermore became to be a one-hit-wonder and all we had to do was to wait for it to be played on the radio so we could record it with our little pink portable tape recorders (our little nine-year old budgets were not sufficient to afford the wealth that was needed to buy an LP-single).
Eventually, we finally succeeded in recording an acceptable version of our song. This was easier said than done, as we would always grow bored of waiting after a while and go to the kitchen to fix us a snack, thus always missing the first seconds of the song that OF COURSE would always play when we were away. Our first crude lesson in practice of Murphy’s law.
We had little toy microphones, stolen from my best friends’ keyboard, that we would sing into while working hard to pursue our dreams. My friend would stay so late that it would turn dark without us noticing. As we were both afraid of the dark, this would lead to her spending the night at my house for days in a row, before we finally went to her house to practice. The same procedure would be repeated there, with me staying at her house. We would tune in every week to watch the program, but to our great distress they would never display the number you should call in case you wanted to participate (mind you, this is before the time of the internet, when all information on where to call would be live and at the spot).
In the end, in the light of the fruitlessness of the endeavor, we completely forgot about our initial enthusiasm for this project, ultimately abandoning it for other prospects on the horizon. The jeans were put back in our sibling’s closets, the little toy microphones stored away. The posters on the walls were replaced with new idols (in my friends case, although she would have short interests in other idols, she would never abandon her one true idol and love, Michael Jackson) and pretty soon the whole episode was forgotten.
I don’t think that I, since my childhood, have embarked on a project with the same joy and excitement, the same tenacity and expectation as I did when I was nine. As I sit here, writing these words I cannot help but think that life experience and my transformation from a bright-eyes child to a cynic adult may have contributed to this. When you are nine, the sky is the limit.
Although the summers would stretch from July to August, a smaller infinity in the eyes of a child, it seemed like we never ran out of things to do. There were always mysteries to be solved (what WAS the neighbors teenaged son doing in the garden? And who were all those girls sunbathing in bikinis that always seemed to be with him?) places we could go to on our bikes, games to be played. If worse came to worse, we could always dress up in our bathing suits with fancy-tights and hop along the best we could to my mother’s Low Impact Aerobics tape, purchased earlier that summer in another attempt to slim up in face of the bikini season. We never seemed to grow tired of hearing Jane Fonda telling us to put our “heal out” at the end of every exercise and we would put of heart and soul in the prospect of “gaining figure” to our scrawny nine-year old bodies.
It was in the middle of this eventful summer, rather hot and dry as far as Swedish summers go, that my best friend and I decided we were going to enter a talent show on television, where the first prize was to meet your idol. The show consisted on kids mimicking their idol on national television and the best act would ultimately win. Looking back at the program itself I remember that the lucky winner so happened to always have a Swedish b-list celebrity as their idol who was happy to drop by the show (for a decent amount of cash and another fifteen minutes of stardom). But again, this distinction was not made in our expectant nine year-old eyes.
Our idols that week were a teenaged rapper duo named Kris Kross. We were partly amazed that these boys had reached stardom at such an early age, and partly I think we had a crush on said duo. Immediately we put our plan into action, stealing a pair of baggy jeans from our elder siblings and learning to button them backwards (as our idols so happened to wear them). When we had our image all figured out and completed, we proceeded to plan the most important part, the actual act itself. I remember there being a small quarrel about who was going to be who, as we so happened to like the same boy, and very much wanted to be that boy. I am not sure how we ultimately came to the decision that I was to be the shorter boy (it might have been for the fact that I at that time was very short) and my best friend was to be the slightly taller boy (the object of our affection). The song was already a given, seeing as this act furthermore became to be a one-hit-wonder and all we had to do was to wait for it to be played on the radio so we could record it with our little pink portable tape recorders (our little nine-year old budgets were not sufficient to afford the wealth that was needed to buy an LP-single).
Eventually, we finally succeeded in recording an acceptable version of our song. This was easier said than done, as we would always grow bored of waiting after a while and go to the kitchen to fix us a snack, thus always missing the first seconds of the song that OF COURSE would always play when we were away. Our first crude lesson in practice of Murphy’s law.
We had little toy microphones, stolen from my best friends’ keyboard, that we would sing into while working hard to pursue our dreams. My friend would stay so late that it would turn dark without us noticing. As we were both afraid of the dark, this would lead to her spending the night at my house for days in a row, before we finally went to her house to practice. The same procedure would be repeated there, with me staying at her house. We would tune in every week to watch the program, but to our great distress they would never display the number you should call in case you wanted to participate (mind you, this is before the time of the internet, when all information on where to call would be live and at the spot).
In the end, in the light of the fruitlessness of the endeavor, we completely forgot about our initial enthusiasm for this project, ultimately abandoning it for other prospects on the horizon. The jeans were put back in our sibling’s closets, the little toy microphones stored away. The posters on the walls were replaced with new idols (in my friends case, although she would have short interests in other idols, she would never abandon her one true idol and love, Michael Jackson) and pretty soon the whole episode was forgotten.
I don’t think that I, since my childhood, have embarked on a project with the same joy and excitement, the same tenacity and expectation as I did when I was nine. As I sit here, writing these words I cannot help but think that life experience and my transformation from a bright-eyes child to a cynic adult may have contributed to this. When you are nine, the sky is the limit.
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