home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
DP Tool Club 19
/
CD_ASCQ_19_010295.iso
/
vrac
/
rah9412r.zip
/
7
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-12-01
|
3KB
|
81 lines
Childhood Epiphanies
by Dean Earlix
The classic utterances of childhood may be responsible for more split
guts than an enteric surgeon with the hiccups, but epiphany--the
lightning bolt realization that what you believed all your (short)
life is the teetering misconstruction of juvenile intellect--holds
the most wonder in my own memories. Not to mention trauma.
* * *
"Teacher, Teacher!" I yelled "Someone wrote the F-word on a post!"
"Where?" She asked, horrified.
"Outside," I answered, with a six-year-old's notion of precision.
"You'd better show me."
I showed her, along with half the first grade class. It was 1967,
when curse words still had _umph_, and I was short of breath just
thinking about the scandal my discovery would cause. Instead, she
laughed.
"What's so funny?" I demanded.
"They actually wrote 'F word'," she replied, still chuckling.
Another in the class asked the question burning in my own mind: "You
mean that's not it?"
* * *
"Mommy, mommy!" I shouted at age eight in the allergist's waiting
room. "This lady is deformed!"
"Shhhhh. Which lady?" she quietly asked (people in the room where
already staring). I pointed to the magazine photograph of a huge
growth on the upper torso of a famous actress.
"No, Hon. Those are breasts."
I looked at Mom's blouse, which held my definition of "breasts" and
back to the picture. "You sure?"
I'm told everyone in the waiting room broke up.
* * *
"Can I ask you somfin, man?" said my fellow nine-year-old at summer
camp.
"Okay."
"The sun follows me around everywhere I go. Like, does that mean I'm
the savior?"
Well, since he mentioned it, I realized it followed me around too. I
gave it some careful thought. "No," I told him. "I think it does that
to everyone."
"Oh," he replied. "That's a relief."
* * *
I once thought that when we departed childhood we left all those
childish misunderstandings behind. That must've been asking for it.
An epiphany at age 21 proved it was a lifelong chore: For the
hundredth time, I read "SIGNAL AHEAD" painted on the road asphalt.
From the age of seven on, I had seen my parents signal a turn
whenever we came to such a sign, so I already knew what the request
meant. As my own signal blinked and I waited for the light to
change, I wondered absently how someone from another country might
misunderstand "SIGNAL AHEAD". Hah hah hah, they might think it meant
there was a traffic signal ahead. Hah, hah, hmmmmm. {RAH}
--------------
Dean Earlix can be reached at dearlix@teleport.com. In real life, he
is a waterscaper and fish doctor in Southern Oregon. Really.