Contact Info:

K.T. Thacker

The following was written for my creative nonfiction class. If your local college offers a course in this subject I suggest you take it. It was a lot of fun.

My email is ashez2ashes at yahoo dot com.

Feel free to email me if you liked this, or if you didn't. Hell, spam me I don't care.

----

Old People Smell Funny

On one fateful summer day which changed the very formation of the universe, and make God look down and go: 'Wow! That is cool!'; an important event took place.

Actually, it was a series of events and it wasn't very important at all, but it sounds much more interesting if the cosmos was effected.

On that day, I had been exiled to my grandparents home. My mother called it "babysitting" but it felt like exile to me nonetheless. Away from my friends and trapped in a house full of shiny and neat things I wasn't allowed to touch, a childhood hell lay before me. I slowly dragged my seven year old feet through the screen door. I swung my "Speak and Quiz" educational game at my side. It wouldn't bring any solace. I had long since grown tired of this whole "learning buisness" and was wondering when it was going to stop.

"Give your Grandfather a kiss hello." My mother told me, and preceded to tell my grandmother something. I took a step toward the second living room. My grandparent's house had two. One was also my grandmother's room. My grandfather's bed was mechanical and could be lowered and raised. Sleeping in two different beds was not that unsual to me. Fifty years will make you sick of anyone.

The length between me and my grandfather seemed a wasteland of wood floor. I knew it was best to get it over with. I don't know why it mattered to them. Be a good girl. Look cute and get them to buy you Barbies. Play the game that you care. That's how it was with this side of the family.

I took another step toward the living room.

I was quite sure my grandfather was the oldest man alive. I had a secret suspicion that the world really didn't begin with Adam and Eve. It began with Adam, Eve, and my grandfather in his green recliner.

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY GOD MADE THE OLD MAN AND GREEN RECLINER...

AND IT WAS GOOD.

A few million years after that, a house was built around him and television was invented. I knew that somewhere along the line, he must have met my grandmother. But it was too much for my young mind to wrap itself around. Or my mind now. Or ever for that matter.

I gritted my teeth. It was now or never. I distintly heard my mother say something to me.

I had never seen my grandfather leave his green recliner. He magically appears places.

Poof!

He was in the kitchen.

Poof!

He was in the living room.

Poof!

He was mowing the lawn (a miracle of epic proportions).

I walked into the room. He was sitting in his green recliner, wearing his green outfit that he wore everyday. He was spotted and had white fuzz on his head. The room smelled like old people. The old people smell is a distinct non-food smell, much like the infamous 'shoe store' and 'county fair' smells. It was smoke, dial soap, and a hint of some kind of medical ointment. I tried not to fixate on where the latter was coming from.

I stood up straighter. Future F.B.I agents are not afraid! That was what I was going to be when I grew up. I was going to wear cool buisness suits, gun down serial killers, and blame their deaths on self defense. Something like this shouldn't bother me.

Grandpa muttered something to me. I could never understand what he was saying. I walked up to the primordial green recliner. Medicine smell wafted up to my senses. I leaned down, puckered up and--

"Iloveyougrandpa!"

--pecked him on the cheek and ran out of the room.

There wasn't much to that story.

Pillow Forts

Grandma hated it when I made pillow forts.

I never understood what the point of having that many pillows could be, other than to make forts. They were scattered everywhere throughout the aged home, hiding under doiles, lounging about on chairs. Big orange circles, green ruffly squares, one giant orange cupcake, pillows shaped like chickens, lacy white expensive ones, musty couch cushions, they all beckoned to me.

MaAaAake a fooOoort, Kaaassssey.

Maybe it was my inner creativity manifesting itself through play. Maybe it was an unconscious urge to make a fort and shoot down indians after all those so called 'Indian meetings' I had been forced to attend as a child. Maybe I just needed to be let outside more often.

I also was a bit of a brat, so that probably had something to do with it.

Whatever it was, my eight year old self was a fort making fiend. I had perfected it down to an art. It took a steady hand, and superhuman patience.

I balanced the last white doily on top of the fort and gazed in awe of my creation. Something was missing... I stepped off the white pillow I had been standing on. Now, where was the chicken going to go?

The rustling of K-mart slacks was my only warning of the surprise attack.

"Whathaveyoudone?" Grandma towered over me.

Making a pillow fort wasn't the right answer.

"Don'tmove."

Where was I going to go?

Grandma went to the backroom to check if Grandpa was dead yet. Satisfied that he was indeed alive, she walked back into the second living room. She gazed at her white pillows like fallen comrades in arms. Grandma was the mighty general surveying the damage to her pillow army and I was the cornered enemy.

I had invaded Russia in the winter and now it was time to pay.

Giant Killer Wasps

Giant Killer Wasps lived on the second floor of my grandparent's home.

I titoped up to the stairs, glancing around for my grandmother. The second floor was forbidden, like most things in the house. However, the door at the top of the white painted steps had its own allure.

I had been told not to go up there, because the wasps would sting me death. In my family, I was never told a sugarcoated reason for not doing something. Most kids heard things like, 'don't go into the road or you'll get hurt'. Mine was, 'don't go into the road and you'll get hit by a car and die a horrible death'. Go into the woods by yourself? Then it was death by bear. Eat too much candy? Throw up and die. With all this plethora of ways I could die, it was no wonder I was afraid of everything.

It took another step up the wooden steps, trying not to let them creak. I had already met Mr. Paddle (litterally a piece of wood with, "Mr. Paddle" written on it) once today and my backside didn't feel like a repeat performance.

On retrospect, if Granmda had just let me go up there once, I wouldn't have been curious anymore. There wasn't much of interest there, save two beds that had been made since the nineteens seventies. But, she had forgotten what it was like to be young and curious. Her youth was too deeply buried underneath half a dozen children and more grandchildren than the old lady in the shoe.

In my mind these wasps were huge, venom dripping monsters whose wings buzzed like helicopters. They flew from the attic window like winged monkeys, searching for little children to sting and devour alive. So naturally, I wanted to go upstairs and check them out.

My socked feet and reached the small white door at the top of the stairs. I reached for the door knob and hestitated, feeling fear bubble up within me. Bitting my lip, I pushed it back. Mulder and Scully wouldn't be afraid. Of course, Mulder and Scully had guns, but I wasn't thinking it through that clearly.

Finally I ripped open the door and peeked inside.

I screamed as something big black and flying flew at my head.

"Grandmaaaaaa!" I jumped down the steps two at a time, and bumped into the register.

The big black thing flew into kitchen, where my grandmother had been fixing lunch. I waited behind the register, hearing my heart thudding in my ears. All was silence until...

SQUEEK!

THUD.

SQUEEK!

THUD.

squeek...

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Several more moments of silence passed as I waited for my heart to stop threatening to explode. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and crept out of my hidding spot and prodded over to the kitchen. My eyes widened and my stomache churned at what I found.

Grandma had beaten to death a bat with a broom.

I'm surprised PETA didn't swarm that house instantly. A bloody mop was propped up against the trash can as grandma was stuffing the little batty pulp into a coffee can. It'll stick less that way she told me, as she went to sit it outside.

I'd like to say my kind young soul cried for the bat that day, but it'd be a lie. I had more of a renewed fear and respect for my grandmother. I went back to cartoons and the bat pushed itself to the back of my mind. All was good. Well, all wasn't good for the dead bat, but there weren't any PETA people around to complain.

Ironically, I think the bat ate all of the wasps.

Funerals Are Boring

Well, my grandfather was dead. He died from cancer at age 89, the news paper clipping my mom had saved said. His funeral was full of relatives I did not know, most of which knew him less than I did. There was one man though, a solitary childhood survival. My mother had whispered to me who he was on her way between talking to relatives I did not know. He stood alone in a corner by himself, staring at the casket in silece.

I remembered him before I was reminded. Once on a photography project, I had asked if I could photograph his historic barn. He lived alone. His house had holes in the ways He had never had any kids. There was something infintiely more sad in this man, who had never had grandchildren running about, ruining pillows and making fun of how he smelled. He had killed himself about a year after that. Did anyone go to his funeral? I didn't.

He had kept his huge yard perfect to an amazing degree. Someone else owns it now. They've let the grass grow over and left junk in the yard. I hate them, whoever they are. I want to mow the grass and right the wrong they've done. But I can't. I'm a helpless kid.

I had a hard time feeling bad about his death. He seemed to have been near death ever since I could remember. I think some people reach a certain age and stop living. Life becomes a nusiance as they wait around to die.

Everyone sat down and they began the long talking part of the funeral. I shifted in my seat and tried not to pull at my pantyhoes. Someone I did not know began singing about heaven. Grandpa wasn't in his green outfit. He should have been. Would they bury the green recliner too? I had the inappropriate urge to laugh. I held it in. It might affect future christmas presents.

"Don't worry, honey." One of my aunts puts her arm around me, misunderstanding. "It'll be ok."

Guilt wormed its way into my heart. I was an evil heartless child. I felt bad, about feeling bad, but it's not the same thing. Heaven's song had gotten the wires tangled, and the audio screeched. The old man with the clean yard sat stoicly. The song was over. People fawned over the corpse. How the funeral ended, I don't know. All the important parts were over.

A year later, the same aunt threw away the green recliner. It was like he had never existed.

----

Contact info:

K.T. Thacker

My email is ashez2ashes at yahoo dot com.

Feel free to email me. C&C is welcome too. I'll even try to review your stuff in turn.