Climbing through the false ceiling of my old boarding school seems a surprisingly grand idea even now. It's a wonder I didn't get kicked out for those moonlit roof capers, and certainly I would not be where I am now if I had.
Yet, there they are; tiny memories that carry a terribly heavy weight, and an even brighter light. If you were to wander through the corridors of my brain (I do not suggest this) you would eventually stumble on a door with locks that appear well used and oiled yet are there merely to fool the passerby. These doors are far more forbidden than one would guess, which I suppose is the reason it has taken me fifteen years to put some of them on paper. Are they sinister? Funny? Dramatic? Spicy? Maybe a mixture of all, like the final moment I finished carving, gluing, sanding and veneering my mom's coat-peg rack, a project which cost me far more than the sweat which dripped down onto the wood shavings pile. Or maybe the memories just stick out of the floor in the room like sharp chipped teeth, and it's too dangerous to walk around. I don't know. But here are a few for you to...chew on.
My sixth grade friend Jeremy was not normal. Nor was I for that matter. My semi-wavy walnut-brown hair was parted on the side, combed over on a normal basis according to the dictated style of our boarding school boy's dorm regulars. I had lanky arms and legs, not quite tall, not quite short. My eyes saw everything, I never stopped moving. Jeremy didn't either.
After all, he was the one that suggested taking the bows and arrows from our Amazonian Yanumami dorm-mates, and attempting to shoot them over a hundred yards into an oncoming lane of traffic. Or, another day, my companion to the live feed store to buy chicken hatch-lings in order to feed our dorm's pet boa constrictor: Alex.
He also came up with the idea of taking rasparaspas, a mini cherry bomb of sorts, filling large aluminum cans (think restaurant-sized drums of sunflower oil) with about ten of these fireworks and then hunting for wood cockroaches. These specific species of cockroach can easily reach 4'' in length, down in the tropics, and move soporifically between molding and wall as if they are too good to be caught. Wrong. Jeremy and I caught a half-dozen of these behemoths, tipped them into the cans and watched excitedly for a few moments while they explored the patiently waiting explosives.
With that fevered look of anticipation so often accompanying two young boys ready to do something stupid, we lit the string connecting all the rasparaspas, capped the can tightly and ran for our lives. The fact that tiny pieces of metal shrapnel impaled themselves into the board we hid behind, or laced a small section of the basketball court wall with shards did nothing to dampen the thrill. My next statement, 'now let's climb that tree over there! I've heard if you get to the top the branches sway back and forth enough that you almost fall,' came a few seconds after examining the charred remains of the can, which held no traces of fireworks or cockroaches.
'Where'dju here that?' Jeremy asked me suspiciously.
'From myself, obviously,' I replied, with that crooked grin which comes after spilling a secret you've held too long. Like lightning, bugs and bombs forgotten, we were shinnying up the tall pine without a thought in the world except who would crown himself height-king first. This was life with Jeremy. Death, danger, fire, poison and sound were our everyday cravings. The day I got lost in The Pines, a lonely forest which served as the location for some of our night-time dorm games, who do you think was my partner? Whose eyes do you think gleamed asking how long I thought it would take for the chaperones to find us? Who do you think agreed wholeheartedly when I suggested leaning out over Mt. Baldy's steepest ledge as far as possible? This, on a mountain where such slow, steady and calm hills meandered to the top only to arrive where deceptively precarious ledges and ridges pocked the top of Baldy's crown. Jeremy of course. And it was there we found the largest, hairiest wolf spider we had ever seen. Think tea saucer size.
On previous 'hunting' excursions around our dormitory grounds, Jeremy and I had found a half-dozen wolf spiders between old chunks of cinder block and rotten pieces of wood. This spider exceeded those by double. Ecstatic at our find, we whipped out the small insect kit we always kept handy, and with little difficulty trapped the insect who appeared to be lazily soaking in some sun on a rock. Peculiar habit, but poor choice of time and place. Hours later, back in our dorm room, we uncapped the 30 gallon terrarium converted aquarium, and gently slid out our find onto the blanket of rotted leaves and earwigs below. Instantly fearful of their newest 'neighbor', the current resident spiders scuttled off into corners of safety. Our eyes, glued now to the side of the glass cage, couldn't help but get bored after a few minutes of inactivity on all fronts.
'What this needs is some competition,' Jeremy stated in a way indicative of trouble around the corner. 'C'mon, let's let them rest, I have an idea.'
The long hallways of our dorm, oddly decorated in whole-wall murals of forest and sky, were lined on the bottom with thick rubber molding. This would be all and good, save the fact that the old glue connecting them securely to the wall had long ago cracked and dried, leaving large sections hanging loosely an inch or so from the wall. An ideal place for an insect to hide. Such as the seven inch long electric orange, black and yellow millipede we found lurking in the corner between kitchen and living room.
'Bonanza...' Jeremy whispered quietly, as we slowly lowered the trap over its curving body. In retrospect, I'm impressed we did not get stung, whipped or crawled upon by this insect with mind-boggling speed. Perhaps actions like this can only be accomplished with the feeling of invulnerability cut off so often by an exit from childhood. Either way, we had him slithering and squirming around our trapped container so fast it was difficult to follow him with our eyes. Moments later, before our dorm dad Uncle Doug (Uncle Bug depending on who you asked) came tramping out to bellow at us through his lumberjack beard, we had escaped to our room and were greedily opening the lid of the aquarium in a state of what can only be called a frenzy. Out slid the millipede and its deadly colors, hiding carefully behind a rock and leaves strewn around the edges. For the most part, the wolf spiders remained calm, though one decided to test the edges of spider territory and quickly succumbed to the millipede's lethal attack.
'Whoaaaaaa' we said in unison, as the millipede receded back into shadows leaving the quivering spider where it lay dying.
'So fast...' I muttered, half fearful half in awe of what we had created. 'I wonder who will be left tomorrow?'
Without hesitation, 'Spider. For sure. It has to be,' replied Jeremy, tapping gently on the side of the tank to aggravate the millipede into another attack. We did not have to wait long.
I nearly forgot my backpack, didn't shower and left half-dressed to school the following morning as I stood enraptured in front of the war cage, embalmed and dessicated insects strewing the landscape. Our mountain friend stood champion, alone in a corner as if contemplating how such a marvelously fast insect had come to be in his arena. Sticking out of a tightly spun cocoon was the millipede's forked end, food for the wolf's thought.
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