Writing Prompt: Photo #2
When I was five I went to "zoo school" at the Portland zoo. It must've
been during the summer when my mom was in the Teacher Corps. I say that
because besides us living in Portland in an apartment on the second
story of a house when she did that, I didn't normally go to summer camp.
I can only think she signed me up because she had things to do. Or
maybe I begged her. It was only a week but zoo school made a lasting
impression on my psyche.
My primary memory? Riding in the small open train cars and looking
up at the huge deciduous trees singing Puff the Magic Dragon and looking
for him between the negative spaces made by the leaves and branches.
The teachers said they could see him and I believed them. Always a
sucker. Naive. Gullible. Easily swayed. Then I felt the frustration of
searching for a creature I could not see, trying to believe that I did.
As an aside, this also happened to me when I walked barefoot in the
rain, scraggly hair and wet clothes, into a church with one of my summer
best friends. They had us stand in a circle holding hands with the
clean cut gawking but not unkind children and accept Jesus into our
hearts. It scared me. Who was this "Jesus" and how was he going to get
into my heart? The grownups all smiled so benevolently, and the children
seemed perfectly mellow. So we sang, prayed and I waited for someone to
materialize and walk inside my chest. Never happened, but I did get
free cookies. I've always been a sucker for cookies.
In fact, this trend of looking for creatures where they didn't seem
to exist continued into college when my friend Gretchen The Purple and I
were convinced by a middle age new agey white woman with straight brown
hair and big beads that we could go to some land south of Olympia and
see little people. Like really little people. You know, Irish-type
little people. Naturally we went and tripped around the place. It was
beautiful, lush green Salal, ferns, the undergrowth of a wet Northwest
rain forest. But did I find little people or fairies? No. Of course,
Gretchen did which made me feel wholly inadequate and jealous.
Don't even get me started on my aunt's guru, whose head I was often
fearful to find laughing at me in a disembodied state in the linen
closet on top of a pile of folded cotton towels.
Do you see that face in the wood? It's totally looking at you.
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