Day One: My Childhood...memories?

I vaguely have a reminisce of what once used to be. Or maybe that's just my psychotic mind going into overload from using such complex vocabulary words today.

This challenge for my first day ties in perfectly to correspond with the book I'm reading. It by Stephen King is mainly about the pasts of the main characters and a clown. We'll forget about the dastardly clown and focus on the grownups and their childhoods. My childhood certainly isn't as horrific as Bill Denbrough's was, but it certainly was oblivious and innocent. Too innocent.

I was a very hesitant little girl back then. I was the "passive" one, as some might put it. I do not disagree with it. When a friend of mine would want to go somewhere we shouldn't go, I'd be too scared, and I would back out. I was always conscious of the fact that I could be caught and then punished. Maybe even go to little girl prison in Las Vegas where all the other bad little girls were.

Because of this deficiency, I wasn't a very fun kid to be around.

I was such a goodie-two-shoes that I lost friends because they went down the "path of evil". During which time, I was mormon, so I was very particular about what was evil and what was good. For instance, the day I threw rocks at poor little Peter under the influence of Kaylynn, I cried while overwhelmed with guilt. Kaylynn just shrugged it off. It was then that my little sixth grader mind put Kaylynn under the evil category. Between the years of sixth grade and eighth grade, I hadn't talked to her much.

That was only getting a point across. The childhood story of the day is still on it's way. I'll be honest with my readers. I've typed only about my childish personality, not about an event, because I am completely at a loss as to which childhood event I would write about. My childhood was very boring. Most potent are the memories I share with my cousin, but those are confidential and strictly forbidden to the internet world. Why I would mention it at all in this post is beyond my reckoning.

My imagination was its own adventure. The thoughts and ideas I've had in my head as a little girl were mostly fantasies larger than my heart, which at that time, were very large. I'd like to point out that my heart was very big. When I ran around, I'd get tired because my heart would pump quickly and it would scare me. I sometimes thought I was having a heart attack. I've never liked playing Tag with the other children.

The biggest adventure I've probably had might make your heard spin with complete boredom, but that's alright. At least it's a story. I'll spice it up if I must.

Bedtime had become my enemy when I turned four. When I felt a rush of excitement and had to go to bed, my only reasonable response was to complain. I always thought the next day was going to hold some drastic event that might make me hate waking up the next time around.

This particular night was the night before Tyler's third birthday, and my mother had made a Sesame Street cake to honor the big day. Cake + Mindy = Fire. Just remember that equation. It's very vital to the story.

Father put me to bed, but Father didn't tell his usual bedtime story to me, or killed off the gruesome monsters that inevitably lurked in my closet. That resulted in a very restless night. I don't remember the dream I might have had, if I had any that night, but I do rememeber the want for that cake downstairs. It wasn't a want to eat it, per se, but to put candles on it ahead of time so Mommy would be proud of me. Maybe even light them while they were in the refrigerator. Whatever I wanted, I wanted it. And badly.

So I awoke very early in the morning. It was as if I were a ghost, slowly and surely taking the stairs one step at a time. Baby David was still sleeping, as was toddler Tyler in the bunk bed. The parents were still sound asleep in their lovely master bedroom as well. It was only me, and my desire to see the cake alight with candles.

I cannot say why Father left the matches on the counter. I cannot speak his mind. However, I can say how I got to those candles. Even through the scraping of the wooden chair to the counter, Mommy and Father did not wake. I simply climbed up, grabbed the matches, and waddled over to the refrigerator. I remember the magnetic door being harder to pull open than usual, but maybe it was because I was so giddy with anticipation.

I saw the blue cake with its Sesame Street characters sitting on its shrine high above my head. I could feel that cold breeze emenate from the refrigerator. I had chills of happiness. A garbage sack, already sinched tight and ready to be taken out, sat next to the counter and in the way of my chair, but I propped the refrigerator door open with the chair and managed to reach the cake anyway.

I did not climb on the chair though. Instead, I thought it best to light the match like Father always did first, and them climb on and light the cake.

When I dragged the candle across the surface of the match box, nothing happened. It took my stubby little fingers three tries before I was able to light the match, and when I did, all hell broke loose in my mind.

I must have seen the devil in that flame. The way it sprouted with life scared the living soul out of my four year old body, and my fingers dropped the match. It landed in the crevice between the garbage sack and the counter. There, it began to burn.

Smoke rose up, and so did my girlish little scream of horror.

I clearly remember Mommy and Father running down the stairs in alarm when the fire alarms went off. They both were asking me what happened in their adultish tones, with a tinge of panic to it, and putting out the fire with wet rags.

Looking back at this traumatic moment in my life, I finally realize where it is that I've gotten my phobia of house fires, fire, and fire alarms. This girl is not a pyromaniac.