Childhood innocence...

Reading today about The Peanuts Queen hilarious story on evil marshmallows, I took a detour toward Steve's Nude Memphis Blog and found another great story, this latter about a broken old rotary phone and man who still hangs on to a weird childhood fear.... Well, you can visit their sites and see all the details... The thing is that Steve's memory brought also a similar memory to my mind and I thought I'd tell you about it...

LOOOONG, LOOONG time ago, when I was probably less than 10 years old, I was playing with my older brother at home and in one of our ordinary "thrash around the house" and "wreck the hell" out the place routines we happened to be chasing each other and ended crashing against this huge cupboard, coronated on top with a horrible and old ceramic jar which had been up there forever. Or at least, for as long as we could remember...

Aside from being ugly, the jar had also a considerable size and was baroquely decorated to the extent of wondering who, on earth, would put such an ormanent in his/her house. The answer, in this case, was my grandma (it was a gift from her younger days). And since we all knew she had been the one to place it there, the jar pretty much stayed on top of the cupboard more or less like a picture in a museum. That is respected, unmovable and overlooking the scene.

My brother and I, being kids, had never liked the damned jar. Kids sort of have a talent to know what antique things just ruin the whole aesthetics of a place, and probably the reason why we really crashed against the cupboard, it was because that jar was meant to fall and we were meant to fullfill such a destiny. Of course, as you can imagine, the ugly jar fell from the heights and smashed when hitting the floor. My brother and I suddenly growing pale and exchanging desperate glances of fear...

Just a few seconds after the tragedy ocurred, we started to think about what the hell we were going to do, all the points scored to a WELL DESERVED AND LONG LASTING punishment. Time seemed to freeze. My brother yelled at me: "It's your fault, ASSWHOLE!!!!". Something completely untrue, but that he felt that he could say, with that stupid sense of authority he usually threw at me, because he was a year older. Then, he yelled again: "Do something, ASSWHOLE!!!!" And my lights went on...

I told him we could fix the jar. He looked at me like "yeah, sure" and I just told him back: "Let's get some office tape"...

At this point, I'll just make a short stop and let you know that I sort of knew what I was doing. For my short age, I had always had abilities with my hands (painting, clay sculptures, even fake signatures...) and was usually NÂş1 in my Art classes at school.

With extreme patience (that sort of trance you experience when involved in artistic creativity) I put back all the pieces of the jar and managed to tape them from the inside. It wasn't that firm if you pressed it when I finished, but it had so much tape inside that it would hardly fall apart again easily. The "masterpiece" done, we climbed again the cupboard (yeap, little boys don't use folding stairs) and place the ugly jar back on its majestic place. Luckily enough not much light got on top of that piece of furniture, so we figured it would take a few days before anyone noticed the jar was cracked. At least, a few more precious days of freedom before submitting to punishment... Or that's what we thought.

Fortune smiled on us with more kindness than deserved. The days went by and nobody did seem to notice anything strange about the jar. My brother and I had always known the jar was a piece of shit unworthy to even set your eyes upon. But we weren't quite sure if our parents felt the same... Days continued to pass. Then weeks. Later months. And finally years... The jar being alone as high on the cupboard that nobody even cared to reach a chair and dust up there.

Three years later, approximately, a big earthquake shook our city. Our house was undamaged, but most of the things on high places ended up down on the floor. The ugly jar, of course, was no exception. Our father started cleaning the mess and suddenly he came across these broken pieces of ceramic all sticky with office tape. He was puzzled, but a father is a father and he smelled we had something to do with it.

There was no denial from our part and we explained him the whole thing...

He had a great laugh.