So this little number is a story from my memory book.
My younger childhood, to me, was often an adventure. Perhaps this is why we still see this reflected in my adulthood. The adventure was never greater than when my sister and I went to see my Grandmom Tony. Let’s pause a moment. Now I know you are imagining a little ol’ lady baking cookies in a little cottage and knitting stuff. This is not my Grandmom Tony. She is a character deserving of her own blog entry! I love her with all my heart, and don’t want to give you the wrong idea. However, fig nutons aren’t exactly a meal, and supervision wasn’t her strong point. I have told my mother some of the things we used to do at my Grandmom T’s and she said I was causing her chest pain. It was never anything too crazy, but she did not live in the best area and we were certainly a bit unsupervised. I was always a curious child anyway.
Grandmom T lived on a very short dead end street, and across the street was my very first best friend Katie K. She was awesome. She is the only mutual friend of me and my sister Missy that always managed to stay unbiased and refused to choose sides. Missy and I were NOTORIOUS arguers. We had epic arguments that sometimes turned violent. Katie K always kept her cool and united us. Katie K also had a lack of supervision going on, so we were always “investigating.” Since we did not go to Grandmom T’s that often, seeing Katie K was always awesome, times like 10. She also had a super cool club house.
So imagine it: Three little girls, wildly hungry because fig nutons weren’t designed to satiate, almost completely unsupervised, with seriously overactive imaginations and nothing to do! We probably also had crazy hair and sticky faces. Our numerous adventures and forays into a random patch of woods in the middle of the city, through neighbors’ yards, through her crazy basement and bomb shelter, brought us together and united us. The only exception being Missy and I occasionally gruesomely battling. One time we hijacked my grandmom’s kettle –looking flower pot, emptied it and started brewing potions. Of course we were using plants, flowers, dirt, some baby powder, and a giant container of lotion. But we saw ourselves brewing love potions and magic unkown to the world before. We usually looted her house, her grandmom’s house (next to my grandmom’s) or my grandmom’s house for potion ingredients. We treated that dead end street like our little piece of the world. The only hold up was the remaining house: the Daily’s. They never did anything to us, but their house kept the entire street from being “ours”- so they were “evil.” We eventually did the inevitable: legitimized our group by making up a name. Every young girl has united with a group at least once and made up a name. Ours was SKAM! Sarah, Katie, And Missy. GENIUS! Or at least we thought so! SKAM was unconquerable!!! Do not worry, I will write more about these adventures in future postings, but today I want to write about the one that always sticks out in my mind the most.
I do not know how old I was, but we had been SKAM for quite some time. Missy and I hadn’t been to our Grandmom T’s in a while and really missed Katie K. As soon as we got out of the car we ran across the street and knocked on her door. Sometimes, when we weren’t around a lot, Katie K didn’t do the best housekeeping. Missy and I never had a club house of our own- so we could not fathom how this could not be kept in shrine like neatness. We all went straight to the clubhouse and it was as we suspected: jam packed with toys and furniture (which is amazing because it wasn’t very large). So we all 3 worked together to clear out enough space to squeeze in. The windows were blocked, but that was ok, as long as we were inside. Once inside we started to get really cold. All that manual labor had kept us warm, but the cold was setting in. After a bit of discussion, Katie K remembered there was an abandoned heater in the basement. So off we went. We really thought this thing through. It was a plug in kerosene heater of sorts. Those born after like ’88 prolly have no idea what I am talking about. It’s old school. But those suckers could HEAT up a room. We knew the plugs wouldn’t reach so we plugged up numerous extension cords, and trailed them to the club house. All the sudden, I started to get nervous and said, “what if it catches fire?” The other letters of SKAM agreed. We found a beach bucket, filled it with water and took it out to the club house. Lastly, we carried, by ourselves, this huge kerosene heater out to the club house. After much finagling and rearranging we finally got the heater in. The only place the heater could fit (we didn’t totally clear the club house) was in front of the door. So we cleared out space in front of one of the windows to use as a door. We plugged everything up, climbed (and not easily) through the very tiny window and got comfortable. Let’s take a moment and realize how much work we had gone through just to get to this point. When we had a plan, we followed through. Three short, but determined little girls we were!
Katie K was our unofficial leader since Missy and I couldn’t get along. It was also her idea. Therefore, Katie K was to do the honors of turning the heater on. All of the sudden my stomach dropped. I had the WORST feeling about all of this. Maybe it was that the heater was blocking the door. Maybe it was that it took a lot of work and time for us to get in the window, and therefore would probably take some time to get out. Perhaps the thought that we had a small beach bucket of water to help us against an ELECTRIC kerosene heater. It may have been any of those things. Or perhaps it was just my intuition. No matter the reason, I just knew it was a bad idea.
“Guys, I have a bad feeling about this, “I said in a very calm fashion. We talked about it and agreed that perhaps this wasn’t so smart. It was all very democratic and civilized. We climbed back out through the window and went about on to some other adventure, I am sure. Or possibly to raid her grandmom’s pantry. We, of course, had no interest in returning any of these things, and we left them as they were.
Fast forward a month or so. Missy and I return to Grandmom T’s house and immediately run to Katie K’s house. (Poor grandmom drove all the way to MD to bring us up so that we could play with Katie K!) Katie K informs us that her dad found our little set up and was SUPER ANGRY. Apparently that heater was in the basement because it had caught fire or something dramatically horrible that would have definitely caused our deaths. I am bit fuzzy on the details since it was like 15 years ago. But, OMG! we almost barbequed ourselves alive! Then we talked for about half an hour how lucky we were that I said something at the last moment!
Moral of the story: trust your gut (or possibly just use your common sense!) oh, and supervise your kids! lol
picture at top: This is what i imagine our clubhouse would have looked like: except that our clubhouse was waaaaaay smaller. Also, this image popped up on goggle when I typed in kerosine heater. What did the caption say under pic? "Fires that start from kerosine heaters"
Picture below: The three of us somewhere around my Grandmom T's house. I know it looks like we are in the country... but we are NOT! lol. That is just my grandmom's foliag. I am on the left, Katie K in the middle, and Missy on the right. Do not ask what is up with her face right there. And my apologies that it is so fuzzy. I am sure its some 1989 throw away camera.
I think we look a little creepy.
