Guess which of the following is NOT true.
1. My earliest memory is of my mom and my sister being pregnant at the same time.
2. Several years after my sister died, her husband, who’d been in and out of jail for various reasons, moved into a trailer with his girlfriend. He was gone for a couple weeks for his job, and while he was gone, his girlfriend fell asleep while smoking. The whole trailer burned down, with her in it.
3. I’m terrified of spiders.
4. My niece, while living in an old broken down apartment building in a gang neighborhood, witnessed her friend and neighbor shoot her other friend and neighbor in the thigh, and then shoot himself in the head. She held him in her arms as he died.
5. My mom once called the Poison Control Center because my younger brother ate a caterpillar. They laughed.
6. We were so poor and broke when we were first married and living in Hawaii, I would scan the ground for change as I walked, hoping to find busfare (it was only a quarter if you were a student). To this day, if I drop change on the ground, I leave it there for someone else to find.
7. When my other niece was 15, she decided she wanted to meet her real dad. She didn’t remember him at all, and only had one photo of him. It was in black and white, and he was standing in a prison yard. When she started asking her mom and my parents about him, they told her all kinds of horrible things about him, trying to discourage her. Things like if he found out my sister had buried their son with another man’s name on their son’s gravestone, he would kill my sister. My dad told her if he showed up at their door, he’d answer it with a gun in his hand. My mom told her–this was supposed to be the clincher–that he’d raped my other sister. But my niece didn’t care–she just wanted to meet her dad. She found out he’d had other kids, so she contacted her half-sister, who was much older and had kids of her own. She went to California to stay with her and to meet her dad. When he came over to meet her, she noticed her half-sister’s daughters’ behavior changed when he was there. She recognized the signs and after he left, told her half-sister she suspected he’d been abusing her daughters. Her half-sister questioned her little girls and found out he’d been molesting them. They called the cops. He was arrested, and my niece testified against her father in a hearing (it was a violation of his parole) before coming back home.
8. When my youngest son, Elijah, was 3 or 4, he had a couple imaginary friends. They were called Elijah 2 and Elijah 3. They made up a song together, and it went like this:
Ooooh, yeah
I will save you from the bad guys
Ooooh, yeah
I won’t let them get you
9. I grew up on a farm. Animals we had included pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, a goat, and a horse.
10. My sister called me once and told me she’d been raped. By the Green River Killer. Who was a black man she’d met while out drinking. But he wasn’t the only one–the Green River Killer was actually several different people. It was a chain reaction. She’d called the cops, but they didn’t do anything. She was a paranoid schizophrenic, and there was no telling how much of anything she’d said really happened.
I’m guessing maybe you aren’t really afraid of spiders..? While the rest of it is pretty fansastic, I can’t see how you could have made it up. Truth is stranger than fiction, any day.
Comment by Tracy M — October 18, 2005 @ 3:22 pm
Yeah, I’m going with the spider thing…
Comment by gabby — October 18, 2005 @ 3:41 pm
Actually, I am scared to death of spiders. My husband’s the best about it too. If he sees one he totally protects me from it, won’t let me in the room, and disposes of it quietly. Our youngest won’t let him kill them, so he has to take them outside. When I say, “Where did you take it?” He’ll say, “All the way to the other side of the apartment complex!”
When we lived in Seattle we got HUGE spiders in the house all the time. Well, there was usually one week during the summer, when it got super hot, that we’d get gigantic spiders in the house every night. At least as big as a silver dollar, sometimes bigger.
Once one was on our living room floor and I was on the couch screaming. My oldest, who was about 3, was standing right where it was heading. Those things can move FAST. I yelled at my son, “Run, Nathaniel! RUN!” and he ran *towards* it–nearly gave me a heartattack–and jumped up on the couch with me. I don’t remember this, my brother was there and told me this story. He thought Nathaniel would be scarred for life, but Nathaniel is my deputy spider-disposalist now (when his dad’s not around).
Anyway, it was a trick question. They’re all true.
Comment by Susan M — October 18, 2005 @ 6:10 pm
I’ll second you on the spiders in Washington… Never have I seen such big, gross spiders in California as we get here in the summer when it’s hot. YUCK!
Comment by Tracy M — October 18, 2005 @ 8:40 pm
Wow. That’s some tough stuff. You should really write a book.
On a lighter note, I always pick up change I drop because I have this silly idea that people will think that I think I’m too good to pick up a nickel that I dropped. It’s stupid, I know, but I still do it.
Comment by NFlanders — October 19, 2005 @ 7:49 am
So, Susan, can others post a list of wild, outlandish, and surreal things that have happened to them?
Comment by Kurt — October 19, 2005 @ 11:12 am
Hey, have at it.
You think these are wild, outlandish, and surreal? They’re just the tip of the ice berg in my family. Stuff like this is the norm for me.
Whenever I start talking about my fam, people say I should write a book. But it’s just too depressing. I’ve got lots of scriptwriting material though. I’d attempt a screenplay if I had any ambition. Which I don’t.
Comment by Susan M — October 19, 2005 @ 2:15 pm
Boy, no wonder you built a BMX track in your backyard and married a man who builds surfboards. I thought my family was bad.
Comment by Kim Siever — October 19, 2005 @ 3:17 pm
My husband is kinda like the black sheep of his family. But he’s like the golden son-in-law in mine. He’s not a drug addict, wife beater, child molester, ex-(or current)con? Woohoo! (And he builds snowboards, not surfboards.)
Comment by Susan M — October 19, 2005 @ 3:30 pm
All true? You should really write up some of these in more detail!
Comment by abel — October 20, 2005 @ 5:28 pm
I probably will eventually. The story of Elijah and his imaginary friends is hilarious.
Comment by Susan M — October 20, 2005 @ 5:33 pm
Hey, what I think is funny is that I got this massive fear of spiders from you. I saw a big one in my apartment about 5 years ago and freaked. I ran towards the kitchen and looked out into the dining room/living room where I saw it. About 10 seconds later I realized I needed to sit down because I was about to pass out. And what I find especially funny is that I had no problems going over to your place every week to kill those spiders when they showed up…mostly because you’re fear is so much worse than mine and one of us has to do it!
Comment by Danny — November 21, 2005 @ 6:52 pm
The worst is when I have a dream about a spider. Because I just KNOW it means one was crawling on me while I was asleep.
Comment by Susan M — November 21, 2005 @ 7:11 pm