More of the Scintilla Project

Day 6: Monday, March 19, 2012

Prompt A: Talk about your childhood bedroom. Did you share? Slam the door? Let someone in you shouldn't have? Where did you hide things?

My room that I think of as my childhood bedroom was my only bedroom for many years, but my parents split up and got back together then split up again and divorced, so that first time they split up, my dad lived in two different places so I had two different bedrooms, both of which I shared with my sister--then when they split up the second and final time, my dad bought an awesome little house (I say little, but it was so much bigger than the house I own now! which isn't to say it wasn't little) and I got the whole second floor, which was one room. I ended up moving in with my dad, and that was my room, for sure--but it wasn't my childhood room in the way the one at my mom's house was. I grew up in that room at 201 Valleyview Place. I sat way in the back of the closet and ate those little sample tubes of toothpaste. I had a pink canopy bed. I was five when we moved into that house, and I chose the pink carpet, pink bedspread, then I had to live with it. Granted, I didn't really start outgrowing it until middle school--but I did outgrow it. I became a girl who would wear pants, unlike my elementary school self, who only wore dresses--to school, on the weekends, 24/7. Pink satiny nightgowns with capped sleeves and lace trim. I think there was a period of time when the nightgowns and the pants overlapped, but nevertheless...

Where did I hide things? Honestly, I can't seem to remember. I kept a journal--a diary--but I think I trusted my family enough that I didn't hide it. Plus for many years it was the kind of diary that locked. I was sure that kept me safe.

Plus I don't think I had many secrets as a kid. Not much to hide.

What else? I was scared of what was under my bed. The monster. I was scared of that monster for a long time. I tended to enter my room and my bed at night by running down the hall and jumping into the bed, so the monster couldn't grab me. It seems to have kept me safe; I'm here to tell the tale! Of course, I also still have the piece of pencil lead in my knee from the time that I ran and leapt and there was a pencil in my bed. But the monster never got me, and the graphite hasn't killed me, and it's been--maybe 30 years? So, lesser evil, I'd say.

My bed now is raised up on bricks, because, as I mentioned, my house is tiny--so tiny that under my bed is my main storage. There isn't room for a monster under there. Maybe a tiny monster, or a really stretchy manipulative one--but let's not think about that. Just now, I'm safe. I like thinking of it that way better.

My childhood bedroom was full of books. My bedroom now is too. My whole house is full of books. My childhood house was too, but I think my own home, my grownup home, might have more. Certainly, per square foot, there are more books--but my childhood home had triple the square footage, at least. More than triple, I'm pretty sure. My house that I bought in Portland is 704 square feet. Yeah, you read that right--704 square feet. Whereas my childhood home was 2,630 square feet--God love the internets.

Enough of this.