This my submission for the Extreme Writing Now Group,  Memoir Writing,  prompt of remembering fear…

When I commented on Rachel’s memoir submission, Undefineable Sound, I said I thought I was eight when that particular incident occurred. I was wrong. The memory of my first real fear has come wafting back through the filter of the dirty gauze curtains hanging over my window.

Clearly, now that I have been giving considerable thinking to this submission over the past few days, I was eleven and in the sixth grade. In fact, it was fall, and I was sitting at my desk, next to a window on the second floor of the Greek Orthodox Learning Center that was actually about a mile from the school I was attending.

Our school had become overcrowded and church classrooms were filled with the overflow.

But none of that mattered to me for about three days that fall of my sixth grade school year. It all started when I was sitting at that desk. Well, the fear did anyway. Everything that led up to that fear had been going on for at least eleven years (philosophically, I’d bet you could argue the time span to be longer).

Everywhere I looked, disaster lurked, threat beckoned, and doom was on the doorstep. For millions of children, the journey down the dead end street of life was cued up and readied to be a short trip. Everyone who had a nuclear trigger had their finger on it and were ready to apply the last half a pound on that 5 pound pull.

Don’t think we children didn’t know about the threat.

How could we not? All those ‘How to Survive a Nuclear Attack’ films we had to watch in elementary school, or how about those flicks that had just about every monster imaginable created as a result of the Nuke Kids and their happy toys? Wasn’t exactly Sponge Bob caliber stuff that infected us, was it?

And there is the fact that I was the man child of the family; not only the eldest son, but the eldest child, an honor that my parents didn’t remind me of, just my peers. I wasn’t called chubby, slim, carrot top, freckles, or dirty butt, yet the names I were called, although seemingly opposite in nature, had a similar effect. Big Al and Alexander the Great; two names that put a terrible onus on me. I wasn’t ready to shed my childhood for the responsibilities of adult manhood.

I wouldn’t allow myself to show weakness. I couldn’t tell anyone about my fears.

It is true that I had seen my first, freshly dead human body just weeks before my first encounter with fear. A body that hadn’t been prepped and put on display in a wooden box; some sort of morbid stage act produced to trick us all into believing that maybe the loved wasn’t really dead, and when the lid closes, it’s just the front door closing, “Pops will be back for more coffee tomorrow. Wave bye-bye to him.”

I was the first to see that old man dead. His lifeless body splayed out on his back lawn; still clutching the hedge trimmers that he was using moments before. One moment the clippings were filling the air at the hands of the old man’s artistic talents, the next moment, he was lying in the bed of clippings he’d made for himself.

That’s how it was for me on a particular fall day in 1969. Just sitting in my sixth grade make-do classroom, when I was struck with the omniscient knowledge of my own death. No vision of my mangled body. No prescient prediction of when I would die. Just my death.

The fear started as if someone had stretched a single strand of spider silk inside of my body and gave the thread a single ‘twang’ with their finger. The strength of the silk thread allowed it to build a harmonic resonance that grew stronger by the second; each frequency getting closer to the last, each peak growing taller until the fear was one lead filled shroud of dread.

I lost touch with everything that was going on around me. I was quaking hard at my core. I remember wanting to cry, but in no way could I even consider that, not in front of those who called me Alexander the Great. Not in front of my teacher.

I wanted to bolt from that classroom. I wanted to run and not stop until I was certain I beat death at the foot race.

I cannot recall any interaction with anyone for three days. What I do remember is sitting in my bedroom for two nights, looking out the window from the third story room and wondering where death was hiding, waiting to jump out at me. I was so torn by the weight of my fear and the resistance to tell anyone that I’m sure they fed off of each other.

That was the worst emotional onslaught I have ever experienced. The feeling that my life could be snuffed in an instant, because death liked to swing his sickle at the most unsuspecting moments, wore on me. My existence was becoming threadbare.

Then, almost to the moment, three days later, while sitting at that same desk, the fear began to slowly retreat until it was totally gone, and I was back to normal. Maybe.

Certain events occurred early the next school year that now lead me to believe that although I hadn’t allowed anyone in on my secret, somebody knew. I along with four other classmates, were ushered into several sessions with a “special” school counselor. Although I can’t recall the tone of those sessions, I do remember the man clearly as someone who looked like a participant in a Sigmund Freud look-alike contest.

That fear had remained locked away for many years, only to come knocking on my soul’s front door, not to haunt me about the one way dead end alley we are all in, mind you, but as a reaffirmation of my beliefs.

Life happens now. The moments passed belong to the memories that are lessons for the now, and the moments yet to come belong to memories not yet made. Live as wide as we can, and the clock will slow down.

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

Years ago I started writing Flash Fiction for just the sheer enjoyment of writing, and now it has turned into a full blown addiction. I can't quit the horse, man! Another dirty little secret about me is my ability to write all kinds of web content. SEO content, articles, blog posts, manifests; you name it, I'll write it. Looking for some help? My gun hangs at r.alex.crabtree@gmail.com

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Tags: death, fear, memoirs, Writing

This entry was posted on July 28, 2010 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Memoirs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.