I blew off my birthday challenge due to a severe lack of creative motivation, but felt guilty and compelled to find the inspiration to write. Fortunately, the University of Utah offers excellent Continuing Education classes and had a writing class that is right up my ally. I enrolled in a creative non-fiction workshop; last night was the first night and I am inspired already. We went over planning and free-writing in class with an activity to write non-stop for ten minutes, don't reread, don't cross anything out, just write. the first two words... "I remember." This was my end product - in the raw.
I remember watching spotlights in the New Mexico sky, but I remember - or recall - this activity as frantic, dancing around, begging my Dad to admit it wasn't true; being humiliated by the smiling and sometimes laughing adults. My father; my trusted, respected, and feared father took such delight in telling me that the lights were witches. Witches coming to get me. I was young enough that I really didn't know what these big moving lights in the sky were. It was my first experience with them, and WITCHES! This was a serious thing. I lived in fairy tales. I knew they ate children. My father knew this. He knew I believed it. I was so distressed. Distraught. I still wonder... Then there were the gypsies. My father picked a house one night and drove by it telling us that it was where the gypsies lived and he would sell us to them if we weren't good. I remember the window. The window behind which was the pot where they boiled the children. That's what he told us. Boiled children.
My little brother recently had his wisdom teeth out at one of those pain medication trial clinics where they pay you to remove your teeth. They asked him after surgery to rate his pain on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain he could imagine and one being no pain. He told them "about a three". For several hours this was his answer until they finally sent him home - without any meds and without any money - you need to be above a five to get into the trial. When I asked why he didn't say he was in pain he said, "Well, I could imagine being boiled alive - and that would be REALLY painful - so I figured I was 'about a three'." I laughed. Yeah, I remember.
