“The foxes,” whispered my sister, “have sharp little teeth and sharp little claws and like to feed on little boys just like you when you’re sleeping!” Squinting her eyes, she would lean towards me and start wiggling her fingers around as if she were one of them. “I’d watch out, if I were you!”
Then she’d jump in the air, wave her claws at my head, and scream, “Fox attack!” I’d scream and pee a little in my pants.
At night, I would lie in bed, the blanket pulled up to my nose, staring wide-eyed at the ducts in my ceiling. My only protection from the foxes was the three-foot Jesus nightlight hanging on the opposite wall, looking down on me. I knew that, as long as Jesus was watching, the foxes were too afraid to crawl from their hiding place to eat me alive. I sang church hymns to keep his attention.
Every now and then, I thought I saw one of the foxes stick his head out of the duct to see if I was asleep yet. He would look at me, smirk, and then shake his head at the foxes behind him as if to say, “No, not yet. The kid’s still awake, and Jesus is watching.”
This is one of many memories I owe to my mischievous sister, Pam, to whom I dedicate this month’s column in honor of her 30th birthday. Now my sister’s all grown up with a baby daughter of her own – a baby daughter who, if there is any justice in the world, will turn into a raging terror of practical jokes and messy pranks as soon as she learns how to walk.
Don’t get me wrong – I love my sister dearly, and will admit to everyone but her that her childhood jokes were funny. But you can be sure that, as soon as my niece understands English, I’m going to make sure she knows all about Mommy’s incapacitating phobia of mold.
My childhood terrors weren’t limited to the foxes in the air conditioning ducts. There were also the mutant spiders hiding behind the downstairs toilet. They were big, fat, hairy spiders with fangs as long as your pinky finger. Woe to the unlucky soul who sits down unawares on the toilet of death, for here come the bloodthirsty spiders to bite him, wrap him in their gooey web, and carry him into their den of darkness for a midnight snack.
While I didn’t ever see the spiders for myself, I knew they were there, because my older sister told me so. And, as everyone knows, older sisters don’t lie.
I was terrified. Mutant spiders were even worse than tiny foxes! I pictured them with napkins tied around their necks, rubbing four sets of knives and forks together in greedy, drippy-toothed anticipation of eating me for dinner.
Coming into physical contact with the toilet was clearly out of the question. But even when I was standing up, how could I be sure the spiders wouldn’t crawl across the floor and onto my feet? Clearly, my only option was to hop back and forth from foot to foot to make sure they didn’t. I may have sacrificed some accuracy, but at least I would be alive to sprinkle my tinkle another day.
Fortunately for me (and for the carpets), there was also an upstairs bathroom. Unfortunately, there were alligators in the upstairs toilet. It’s true. Just ask my sister. Little alligators lived in our pipes and waited for you to sit down on the toilet, at which point they would crawl out and give you a bite on your most tender of parts. My sister wouldn’t just make up something like that.
Man-eating spiders downstairs, nippy little alligators upstairs – it was a precarious situation. But sometimes nature calls, and when it does, it doesn’t concern itself with the wildlife that may or may not be lurking near the toilet facilities.
I would stand in the bathroom as far away from the alligators as possible, which sometimes meant taking my shoes off and stepping into the tub. Then, facing the toilet, I would get up on my tip-toes, arch my back, and do my best to hit my mark. Sometimes I didn’t. I blamed the dog.
Maybe now my parents can finally understand why I resorted to peeing in my trash cans. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly logical compromise between peeing on the floor and having my hiney bitten by a miniature alligator.
My mom discovered my new habit one day while emptying the trash from the wastebasket in my room. She looked up at me with a mixture of wonder, confusion, and annoyance. “Honey,” she said, “Did you pee in your trash can?”
I was going to explain the whole complicated matter of the mutant spiders in the downstairs bathroom and the miniature alligators in the upstairs bathroom, but thought it would be easier to just run out of the room crying.
It was a traumatic period of my life. To this day, I still get creeped out in the bathroom until I can check behind all of the fixtures to make sure there’s not a pack of miniature monkeys waiting to stab me with their tiny bananas. For example.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that my sister was lying to me. For all I knew, packs of wild animals were simply a harsh reality of domestic life. But I did think it was odd that my parents were so relaxed all the time, considering the fact that wild foxes, mutant spiders, and miniature alligators were running rampant throughout their house and trying to devour their children.
If you ask my sister about the terribly mean childhood pranks she pulled, I’m sure she’ll bring up some petty example of mean things I did to her, like hiding under her bed in the dark for hours at a time and grabbing her ankles when she came near.
To which I say: That’s a complete lie. And Mom always liked me best.
To which she says: In the end, truth and justice will prevail!
To which I say: Yeah, but truth and justice don’t have their own opinion columns, and I do. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
I spent most of my childhood in constant terror of the tiny foxes that lived in the air conditioning ducts of our house. I knew the foxes were there because (thank goodness) my older and wiser sister was there to warn me of the danger.
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