Thursday, December 23, 2004
Some friends keep telling me that I need to update my blog more, but I've lost interest in just commenting on links. Another friend has told me that I should put my writing on my blog. I don't really want to spend all of my time writing for free, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to put some of the more polished stuff that I've been playing around with up here.
So, without further delay, I present:
Furnace
I got woken up by the noises again. I can hear thumps, and some groaning noises, and sometimes little hissing, shushing sounds. They come up from the vent in the floor almost every night and waking me up ever since I came upstairs.
A while ago, Mom and Dad decided that I was big enough to live upstairs. I used to live in the room next to theirs, but they said they needed it in case a relative came to stay. We never had relatives visit before, so I don't know what that would be like. Friends at school talk about stuff their grandparents give them, so I hope that a grandparent comes to visit us.
Mom and Dad used to live upstairs, but Dad went away for a while. Mom cried a lot. Just about every night. And when Dad came back, he couldn't use the stairs anymore. He said it hurt his new foot too much.
I used to think that the noises were the Furnace. The Furnace lives in the cellar. Every room in the house has vents that send warm air into the room. If you lie on your stomach and look into the vents, you can see a gray metal pipe that goes down. I asked Dad about it, and he said that the pipes go to the Furnace. He said that the Furnace gets oil and that it has a fire inside. The pipes take warm air from the fire to keep the house warm. He said that I was too little to go in the cellar. He said that the stairs are too high and too steep.
When I first moved upstairs and the noises started, I thought that the Furnace was trying to scare me. It never tried to scare me when I was downstairs, though.
Last Saturday, on the Super Action Justice Squad, Captain Hawk and Sergeant Yell took the Hyper Action Turbo Blimp to find out if there was a Yeti in the mountains. The Yeti scared a bunch of people who were skiing, so they decided to go after it. But when they found its cave, they found out that the skiers had put a ski hill on top of the cave where the Yeti's family was hibernating, like bears. Captain Hawk said that the Yeti was lonely, so that's why it was scaring the skiers.
Mom says that it's just a cartoon, but I started to wonder if the Furnace was lonely because I was too far away. I had never seen the Furnace, but I thought that maybe it was just happier when it could hear me. Or maybe the Furnace didn't have eyes, so it was like Lady Mental on the Super Action Justice Squad. She can't see when she is driving the Mental-Mobile, but that's OK because she has telepathy to see where she is going.
That's why, a while ago, when the noises started, I decided to go down and see if that would make the Furnace be quiet.
I had a flashlight in my room that I found in a drawer in the kitchen. Dad couldn't come upstairs, but Mom came to tell me goodnight and to try to tell me boring mushy stories. After she went back down, I would crawl under the covers where I had the flashlight and some comics and read.
The flashlight was pretty small and the light was weak, but it still worked OK. I took it out and stuck it in the waistband of my pajamas. Then I flopped onto my stomach and reached down to the floor so that I could grab my slippers. I wanted to put them on before I walked around because I thought that they would make me quieter. My slippers were kind of small and I didn't wear them anymore because they looked like Tiddly-Wink, and I was too big for kid's shows. But they were pretty soft, so I thought they would help.
After I was ready, I put my feet on the carpet and stood up. I was worried that the floor would squeak like it does when Mom walks on it, but I guess I'm not big enough for that. Next I slowly walked, taking big slow steps, to the door of my room.
The door was open like always since Mom caught me playing with the lights on after bedtime. It was only a couple of more steps to the stairs. I took them, one at a time, until I got to the top. There was a vent there, and I leaned down to listen, The noises were still happening, but they were quieter. I thought that maybe the Furnace was just making noises into the pipe that came to my room, but I stopped because it was making me feel scared. I was already pretty scared.
The stairs were easy. They were sort of round and covered in carpet and I slid down them all the time. I even learned how to do it slow so that nobody could hear once Mom started getting mad. She used to think it was funny, but lately she has been lying down n the couch with the lights off, and when she does that I can't bump around too much. Mom and Dad kept saying that the carpet was too shaggy and old and that they wanted to get rid of it, but I talked them into keeping it since it was so fun to slide on.
After I slithered down the stairs on my bum, I stopped and listened at the bottom. There were no vents close to me, but I could hear the noises quietly coming from down the hall in Mom and Dad's room. Mom and Dad's room was right under mine, so I guess it made sense that the noises were louder for them. I don't know why they didn't seem to notice, though. Maybe they couldn't hear them. My friend Tim's Granny lives with him, and she has hearing aids and still always tells me to speak up. Hearing aids are pretty small, so maybe I should see if I can get them some for Christmas.
I sort of thought that the Furnace might stop making noise when I got downstairs, but it didn't. I guess it wasn't using telepathy. It could probably tell where I was by listening, so I would either have to go into the cellar or wake up Mom and Dad. The way that the noises were coming from their room made me think that waking them up wouldn't be a good idea.
The hallway was tricky. It was carpet a while ago, but Mom and Dad pulled it up one day and polished the wood that was underneath. Now it was pretty smooth, which was fun when I wanted to slide around on the piece of carpet by the door, but it was also pretty noisy.
I decided to get to the cellar door by sliding my slippers along the floor, since they were pretty slippery too. I went up next to the wall and put my back against it like they always do it on TV, and then started to slide along the wall. It was neat since it was actually pretty quiet, but felt like my feet were going to shoot out and make me fall. I decided that I should put some socks under my blankets with the flashlight since they were soft but not as slippery as the slippers.
When I got to the cellar door, I was pretty nervous. I was breathing quickly and my legs wanted to run right back upstairs. I knew I couldn't do that, though, since it would wake Mom and Dad up and they would be mad. So instead I pulled the flashlight out of my waistband and turned it on. It was actually not too dark so far since light from the streetlights came in from some of the windows, but I knew that there were no windows in the cellar. The flashlight was pretty weak so I shook it a little bit, but that didn't help the way it sometimes did. The light looked brown instead of yellow, and it left a curly little light mark where it landed instead of a spot of light. I almost went back upstairs again, but I didn't.
I tried to turn the knob on the door, but I needed both hands so I stuck the flashlight in my mouth. The knob was stiff and slippery, but I managed to twist it without being too noisy. Then I took the light in one hand and pushed the door open very slowly.
The door creaked when it opened, so I turned off the light and froze with it opened part way. I tried to listen for Mom or Dad, but all I could hear at first were the noises quietly drifting down the hall and a pounding sound in my ears. I felt like there were people standing in the dark corners of the hallways, watching me, and I started to wonder if there was a robber in the house or if my Mom and Dad were sneaking up. I almost shouted, but I stopped myself and kept waiting.
After a little while I started to calm down. There were no lights and no noises except for the Furnace. I breathed more and more slowly and I could see that there was nobody really in the hallway.
Finally, it was time to go down the stairs. I turned on the flashlight and used it to peak around the door into the warm, dry, dusty basement.
I could see that the steps were taller than the ones to my bedroom, and there was no carpet. I stepped around the door and down onto the first step.
The first step was a little weird since I could feel a cool draft on the back of my ankle above the slipper. I took another step down and then another, trying to use the flashlight to see where I was going, but I only got metal glints and glimpses of the steps. At least the steps weren't creaky. Then I turned to look up at the door to make sure it wasn't closing or anything.
I couldn't believe what I saw! The steps were wide open at the back, and it was too dark for the flashlight to show what was behind. I felt shivers go up and down my back, and I thought I had to pee! I wanted to just charge right upstairs and hide in my bed! There could be anything under there! That's the number one place for monsters! And with no backs on the steps, anything could just reach out and grab my ankle!
I took a couple of backward steps further down the stairs in case a monster was waiting to grab me, and then I hit bottom. Even through the slipper, I could feel that the floor was much harder and cooler than the steps had been. I was in the cellar! And I was super scared! I turned around and waved the flashlight around, and that's when I saw the Furnace.
It was huge! It was a big, boxy thing, taller and wider than me. Pipes and things were sticking out of the top and I could hear it making a low, roaring sound. I could tell by the glow that there was a fire inside of it and then I caught a glimpse of dark eyes looking at me from the front of it.
I couldn't stand it. I took off like a shot. I was shouting: "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" I flew up the stairs, hoping that my ankles were moving too fast to be grabbed. I banged open the door at the top of the stairs and then slammed it as hard as I could. Then I took off down the hall and, still shouting and crying, burst into my parents' room to dive into bed between them.
I guess the noise wasn't the Furnace after all. If I ever stop being grounded, I should go back into the cellar and apologize.
Comment: This is an exercise in trying to capture the rambling, naïve-yet-aware voice of a young child and place it in the larger context of a normal family.
Joel M.
So, without further delay, I present:
Furnace
I got woken up by the noises again. I can hear thumps, and some groaning noises, and sometimes little hissing, shushing sounds. They come up from the vent in the floor almost every night and waking me up ever since I came upstairs.
A while ago, Mom and Dad decided that I was big enough to live upstairs. I used to live in the room next to theirs, but they said they needed it in case a relative came to stay. We never had relatives visit before, so I don't know what that would be like. Friends at school talk about stuff their grandparents give them, so I hope that a grandparent comes to visit us.
Mom and Dad used to live upstairs, but Dad went away for a while. Mom cried a lot. Just about every night. And when Dad came back, he couldn't use the stairs anymore. He said it hurt his new foot too much.
I used to think that the noises were the Furnace. The Furnace lives in the cellar. Every room in the house has vents that send warm air into the room. If you lie on your stomach and look into the vents, you can see a gray metal pipe that goes down. I asked Dad about it, and he said that the pipes go to the Furnace. He said that the Furnace gets oil and that it has a fire inside. The pipes take warm air from the fire to keep the house warm. He said that I was too little to go in the cellar. He said that the stairs are too high and too steep.
When I first moved upstairs and the noises started, I thought that the Furnace was trying to scare me. It never tried to scare me when I was downstairs, though.
Last Saturday, on the Super Action Justice Squad, Captain Hawk and Sergeant Yell took the Hyper Action Turbo Blimp to find out if there was a Yeti in the mountains. The Yeti scared a bunch of people who were skiing, so they decided to go after it. But when they found its cave, they found out that the skiers had put a ski hill on top of the cave where the Yeti's family was hibernating, like bears. Captain Hawk said that the Yeti was lonely, so that's why it was scaring the skiers.
Mom says that it's just a cartoon, but I started to wonder if the Furnace was lonely because I was too far away. I had never seen the Furnace, but I thought that maybe it was just happier when it could hear me. Or maybe the Furnace didn't have eyes, so it was like Lady Mental on the Super Action Justice Squad. She can't see when she is driving the Mental-Mobile, but that's OK because she has telepathy to see where she is going.
That's why, a while ago, when the noises started, I decided to go down and see if that would make the Furnace be quiet.
I had a flashlight in my room that I found in a drawer in the kitchen. Dad couldn't come upstairs, but Mom came to tell me goodnight and to try to tell me boring mushy stories. After she went back down, I would crawl under the covers where I had the flashlight and some comics and read.
The flashlight was pretty small and the light was weak, but it still worked OK. I took it out and stuck it in the waistband of my pajamas. Then I flopped onto my stomach and reached down to the floor so that I could grab my slippers. I wanted to put them on before I walked around because I thought that they would make me quieter. My slippers were kind of small and I didn't wear them anymore because they looked like Tiddly-Wink, and I was too big for kid's shows. But they were pretty soft, so I thought they would help.
After I was ready, I put my feet on the carpet and stood up. I was worried that the floor would squeak like it does when Mom walks on it, but I guess I'm not big enough for that. Next I slowly walked, taking big slow steps, to the door of my room.
The door was open like always since Mom caught me playing with the lights on after bedtime. It was only a couple of more steps to the stairs. I took them, one at a time, until I got to the top. There was a vent there, and I leaned down to listen, The noises were still happening, but they were quieter. I thought that maybe the Furnace was just making noises into the pipe that came to my room, but I stopped because it was making me feel scared. I was already pretty scared.
The stairs were easy. They were sort of round and covered in carpet and I slid down them all the time. I even learned how to do it slow so that nobody could hear once Mom started getting mad. She used to think it was funny, but lately she has been lying down n the couch with the lights off, and when she does that I can't bump around too much. Mom and Dad kept saying that the carpet was too shaggy and old and that they wanted to get rid of it, but I talked them into keeping it since it was so fun to slide on.
After I slithered down the stairs on my bum, I stopped and listened at the bottom. There were no vents close to me, but I could hear the noises quietly coming from down the hall in Mom and Dad's room. Mom and Dad's room was right under mine, so I guess it made sense that the noises were louder for them. I don't know why they didn't seem to notice, though. Maybe they couldn't hear them. My friend Tim's Granny lives with him, and she has hearing aids and still always tells me to speak up. Hearing aids are pretty small, so maybe I should see if I can get them some for Christmas.
I sort of thought that the Furnace might stop making noise when I got downstairs, but it didn't. I guess it wasn't using telepathy. It could probably tell where I was by listening, so I would either have to go into the cellar or wake up Mom and Dad. The way that the noises were coming from their room made me think that waking them up wouldn't be a good idea.
The hallway was tricky. It was carpet a while ago, but Mom and Dad pulled it up one day and polished the wood that was underneath. Now it was pretty smooth, which was fun when I wanted to slide around on the piece of carpet by the door, but it was also pretty noisy.
I decided to get to the cellar door by sliding my slippers along the floor, since they were pretty slippery too. I went up next to the wall and put my back against it like they always do it on TV, and then started to slide along the wall. It was neat since it was actually pretty quiet, but felt like my feet were going to shoot out and make me fall. I decided that I should put some socks under my blankets with the flashlight since they were soft but not as slippery as the slippers.
When I got to the cellar door, I was pretty nervous. I was breathing quickly and my legs wanted to run right back upstairs. I knew I couldn't do that, though, since it would wake Mom and Dad up and they would be mad. So instead I pulled the flashlight out of my waistband and turned it on. It was actually not too dark so far since light from the streetlights came in from some of the windows, but I knew that there were no windows in the cellar. The flashlight was pretty weak so I shook it a little bit, but that didn't help the way it sometimes did. The light looked brown instead of yellow, and it left a curly little light mark where it landed instead of a spot of light. I almost went back upstairs again, but I didn't.
I tried to turn the knob on the door, but I needed both hands so I stuck the flashlight in my mouth. The knob was stiff and slippery, but I managed to twist it without being too noisy. Then I took the light in one hand and pushed the door open very slowly.
The door creaked when it opened, so I turned off the light and froze with it opened part way. I tried to listen for Mom or Dad, but all I could hear at first were the noises quietly drifting down the hall and a pounding sound in my ears. I felt like there were people standing in the dark corners of the hallways, watching me, and I started to wonder if there was a robber in the house or if my Mom and Dad were sneaking up. I almost shouted, but I stopped myself and kept waiting.
After a little while I started to calm down. There were no lights and no noises except for the Furnace. I breathed more and more slowly and I could see that there was nobody really in the hallway.
Finally, it was time to go down the stairs. I turned on the flashlight and used it to peak around the door into the warm, dry, dusty basement.
I could see that the steps were taller than the ones to my bedroom, and there was no carpet. I stepped around the door and down onto the first step.
The first step was a little weird since I could feel a cool draft on the back of my ankle above the slipper. I took another step down and then another, trying to use the flashlight to see where I was going, but I only got metal glints and glimpses of the steps. At least the steps weren't creaky. Then I turned to look up at the door to make sure it wasn't closing or anything.
I couldn't believe what I saw! The steps were wide open at the back, and it was too dark for the flashlight to show what was behind. I felt shivers go up and down my back, and I thought I had to pee! I wanted to just charge right upstairs and hide in my bed! There could be anything under there! That's the number one place for monsters! And with no backs on the steps, anything could just reach out and grab my ankle!
I took a couple of backward steps further down the stairs in case a monster was waiting to grab me, and then I hit bottom. Even through the slipper, I could feel that the floor was much harder and cooler than the steps had been. I was in the cellar! And I was super scared! I turned around and waved the flashlight around, and that's when I saw the Furnace.
It was huge! It was a big, boxy thing, taller and wider than me. Pipes and things were sticking out of the top and I could hear it making a low, roaring sound. I could tell by the glow that there was a fire inside of it and then I caught a glimpse of dark eyes looking at me from the front of it.
I couldn't stand it. I took off like a shot. I was shouting: "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" I flew up the stairs, hoping that my ankles were moving too fast to be grabbed. I banged open the door at the top of the stairs and then slammed it as hard as I could. Then I took off down the hall and, still shouting and crying, burst into my parents' room to dive into bed between them.
I guess the noise wasn't the Furnace after all. If I ever stop being grounded, I should go back into the cellar and apologize.
Comment: This is an exercise in trying to capture the rambling, naïve-yet-aware voice of a young child and place it in the larger context of a normal family.
Joel M.
