Breathless Reality

Imagine this: you are ten years old and backed up to the side of a house, hands clutching the gutter. Your chest is heaving because you are nearly breathless. You have to breathe, you must, but you know that every inhalation you make could give you away. She might find you. And when the witch catches you, she will whap you over the head with a bamboo stick. Game over.

It's all pretend. It's all imaginary, but it is so, so real. It's the greatest game ever played. Welcome to my childhood.

When I was young, my sister and I would get babysat at our grandma's house. Our gram is no white-haired old lady knitting on a rocking chair. No, she keeps it real. Lives it up. Our favorite game to play at Gram's was "Wicked Witch." Gram would uproot a bamboo shoot from her garden and then chase us all over her yard. If we got hit by the stick, we lost. We would be absolutely terrified. She was sneaky. The adrenaline pumped through our veins as we escaped the clutches of the witch.

My favorite memory was when she was chasing us around one of her flower beds. It was probably 5 feet by 20 feet, quite a long thing. She would chase us around, and we thought we were safe on the other side. Rule of Life #489: nothing is ever safe. Gram surprised us by leaping through her own garden bed. She didn't care if she smashed her tulips. She was going to get us no matter what. I swear that stick got longer and longer every time, and the length that she had to reach us by shortened drastically.

It was like we were fugitives. What made the game even better was the possibility of actual criminal escapees. This is because my Grandma lived right next to McLaren, a juvy center. Her husband worked at the jail whipping no-goods into shape. Every time we visited, we entertained the idea of a dangerous teenaged gangster lurking in the trees among the squirrels.

This was babysitting at its best. Going to Grandma's was an adventure every time. It was the pretend real, when imagination shaped every aspect of our lives, when making it up mattered. Much better than the real pretend.