It Wasn’t Just the Forbidden…
…that fed my hunger for stimulation. It was the unknown. I think, at age seven, my real, underlying desire was “to go where no kid had gone before!” Not surprisingly, I had a budding passion for fantasy and science fiction. But I didn’t want to just read books or see movies about unknown worlds – I wanted to visit them!
And then I found one! Or rather, Somebody’s Cousin found one. True, our little suburb was only about ten minutes old, and so were our little one-size-fits-all tract homes. But on the edge of town, where Somebody’s Cousin lived, was a dead-ringer for the Adam’s Family house! It was a condemned Victorian masterpiece with five stories, if you counted the attic and the basement where “the bodies” were buried! And right there on the front door was an invitation. It said, “No Trespassing!”
Somebody’s Cousin’s mom was delighted to hear he’d suddenly acquired a dozen of new “playmates,” so she invited us all to come over for a Play Day.
Like Appendixes…
…bejeebers have no known purpose. Hence, it’s best to lose them. And that’s done by having them scared out of you. Halloween was coming, and we were all in the mood for an extraction. And so, for three magical Saturdays in October, a dozen of us would arrive, thank SC’s mom for the bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, and then slink off to play in the haunted house at the end of the street.
We spent hours sneaking up on each other, making otherworldly noises, and whispering, “Who said that?” “Not me!” But the unquestionable E-ticket ride was the dumb waiter! We’d challenged ourselves by seeing how many of us could squeeze into it at once. Then we’d ride lurchingly, screechily down from the attic to the basement where the murder victims were entombed. This, we had it on good authority, was how the Evil Butler had transported them.
We never wanted it to end! But heartbreakingly, our haunted house was boarded up and torn-down shortly before the annual Halloween night invasion of beer-bashing teenagers.
But Then I Discovered Another Magical Place!
It may not sound like it, but the upstairs Men’s Restroom at the back of Hiram’s Supermarket housed the secret portal to another world. One day while I was “ocupado” in a stall, I spotted a trapdoor in the ceiling. I told my buddy Rory about it, and we did what any seven-year-old adrenaline-addict would do. We stood on a stack of toilet paper rolls, and pulled ourselves up into Hiram’s Heaven!
It was thrillingly perilous, to be sure. To step on any of the drop-tiled foam panels would result in a twenty-five-foot plunge into the frozen foods. Or worse, the canned goods. If we did, we would thereafter hear the words, “You are in so much trouble, mister!” when we awoke in the hospital–assuming we’d survived the canned goods. But…if we walked spread-eagled across the wooden beams (do eagles actually do this?), we could go anywhere in this vast alternate universe.
And from there, we could look down like gods from Mt. Olympus through any lighting fixture hole, at the mere mortals below, who naturally assumed no one was watching them. What we saw was sometimes dull, but often funny, embarrassing, or even illegal. We’d finally gone…
Where no kid had gone before!
Photo by Biljana Martinic
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