There is a memory from childhood that haunts me.<\/p>\n
I was in bed last night, staring at the ceiling, and the memory came to me, demanding attention.<\/p>\n
It may have been in elementary school, though junior high seems more likely. I can’t place it exactly in my mind. Seventh grade, perhaps? 1984? That seems not unreasonable.<\/p>\n
It was a science class. The memory feels like a biology class. I don’t feel it was a health class.<\/p>\n
We were watching a movie on an old reel-to-reel film projector. The film was about fire safety. Smoke detectors, escape routes, stop-drop-and-roll, all that jazz. The things everyone should know.<\/p>\n
That’s not the part that haunts me.<\/p>\n
Part of the film was about how dangerous and deadly fire could be. And it showed something rather graphic.<\/p>\n
What I remember was a little boy. He had been caught in a fire — a house fire, perhaps? — and he had been burned badly. Very<\/i> badly. Extremely<\/i> badly. He had survived.<\/p>\n
I won’t to go into details. The image is seared in my mind. That’s enough.<\/p>\n
I can’t place the memory exactly, but the image on the screen still haunts me.<\/p>\n
It looked like a school picture. It had that kind of backdrop.<\/p>\n
He was wearing a long sleeved shirt and pants. Corduroys, maybe?<\/p>\n
The detail that caught my attention the most was his belt.<\/p>\n
It was a Charlie Brown belt. It was wide. It was blue. It was made of vinyl. It had pictures of Charlie Brown like comic panels all the way around.<\/p>\n
I knew that belt. I knew that belt because I had owned that belt, when I was a year or two younger perhaps. Even if I’d outgrown it, I may have still owned it at that time.<\/p>\n
He and I owned the same belt. And in my mind, that was a connection. He could have been me. I could have been him. I can’t imagine that particular style of belt was on sale for more than a year — styles come and go, after all — so I’ve always suspected that he and I were roughly the same age. I suspect that’s why the image seared itself into my mind, why it has haunted me for thirty years.<\/p>\n
I wonder who he was; if the film gave his name, I’ve long since forgotten it. The image overwhelmed everything else.<\/p>\n
I wonder what happened to him. He was severely deformed by the fire. He likely suffered lung damage. I imagine he lived a life in excruciating pain. Perhaps he didn’t live to see ten. If he lived to see twenty, would that have been a blessing or a curse?<\/p>\n
I think about him. When I do, I don’t pity him. Instead, I feel overwhelming sympathy and sadness. I think about a childhood shattered and a life devastated.<\/p>\n
I weep for a stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a memory from childhood that haunts me. I was in bed last night, staring at the ceiling, and the memory came to me, demanding attention. It may have been in elementary school, though junior high seems more likely. I can’t place it exactly in my mind. Seventh grade, perhaps? 1984? That seems notContinue reading “A Haunting Memory from Childhood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4093,3967],"class_list":["post-28664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-life","tag-memories","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}