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Do you really know anyone?
Apr. 26th, 2007 10:51 pmMy Mom thinks that I was the sweetest and most generous little girl in the world. I guess all moms think that about their little girls, but my Mom thought she had proof; proof of my goodness in the form of a little story:
"When we moved to the house in Oakville, you gave the biggest bedroom to your little sister."
Mom's story had meaning beyond its few words; this was my mother summing up my personality as a child.
The facts are true: I gave the biggest bedroom in our new house to my sister. There wasn't a fight. I gave her the room very willingly.
The full story is a longer one, and it starts more than a year before the move to Oakville. One afternoon just before the end of the school year, my grade two teacher lowered all the blinds and turned out all the lights in the classroom. She had us all close our eyes. She turned on an audio recording of a children's story and let us listen to the opening scene.
I can't remember what the teacher's point or lesson was (or if there was one), but I remember the story:
A little girl, Sophie, wakes up during the "witching hour" and hears something out on the street. She goes to her window and sees a giant – a huge, scary giant – walking down the empty street, peering in the bedroom windows. She's terrified and tries to hide, but the giant finds her. He reaches into her bedroom window, captures her in one giant hand, and carries her away, never saying anything to her.
The recording ended there.* We all blinked into the classroom lights and resumed class. No one else seemed worried about Sophie.
I worried about Sophie, but, even more, I worried about me. We lived on an isolated road outside of town; if a giant came, he wouldn't have many other children to choose from, and there were fewer people around who might hear me if I screamed. But I comforted myself with the knowledge that the bedroom I shared with my sister overlooked the backyard, so the giant wouldn't be able to peer in our window from the street. We were safe.
A year later, we moved from the small town in Northern Ontario to a suburb of Toronto. My sister and I were promised our own separate bedrooms.
There were three bedrooms besides the master bedroom: two that faced the backyard and one that faced the street. My sister and I were basically left to figure it out between us.
The front bedroom, the one that overlooked the street, was the bigger and brighter bedroom. I never considered taking it for even a moment. I took one of the back bedrooms – which was a perfect fine room, just not as fine as the other one – and my sister gladly took the front one. I didn't tell her about the risk of being kidnapped by a giant.
"You sacrificed your sister for your own safety?" my Mom exclaimed in a mixture of amusement and horror.
"I didn't really believe in the giant, you know? But I wanted to be on the safe side. Anyway, she could've taken the other back bedroom."
"I thought you were so nice..." Mom's laughing and shaking her head.
"Well, it was still a nice thing to do, I guess, since the giant didn't get her in all those years that she slept in the front bedroom."
*I only recently figured out that the scene was the opening of one of the few Roald Dahl books I didn't read as a kid: The BFG. Anyone who knows the story will understand why this discovery was so amusing to me in light of the effect the story fragment had on me.
"When we moved to the house in Oakville, you gave the biggest bedroom to your little sister."
Mom's story had meaning beyond its few words; this was my mother summing up my personality as a child.
The facts are true: I gave the biggest bedroom in our new house to my sister. There wasn't a fight. I gave her the room very willingly.
The full story is a longer one, and it starts more than a year before the move to Oakville. One afternoon just before the end of the school year, my grade two teacher lowered all the blinds and turned out all the lights in the classroom. She had us all close our eyes. She turned on an audio recording of a children's story and let us listen to the opening scene.
I can't remember what the teacher's point or lesson was (or if there was one), but I remember the story:
A little girl, Sophie, wakes up during the "witching hour" and hears something out on the street. She goes to her window and sees a giant – a huge, scary giant – walking down the empty street, peering in the bedroom windows. She's terrified and tries to hide, but the giant finds her. He reaches into her bedroom window, captures her in one giant hand, and carries her away, never saying anything to her.
The recording ended there.* We all blinked into the classroom lights and resumed class. No one else seemed worried about Sophie.
I worried about Sophie, but, even more, I worried about me. We lived on an isolated road outside of town; if a giant came, he wouldn't have many other children to choose from, and there were fewer people around who might hear me if I screamed. But I comforted myself with the knowledge that the bedroom I shared with my sister overlooked the backyard, so the giant wouldn't be able to peer in our window from the street. We were safe.
A year later, we moved from the small town in Northern Ontario to a suburb of Toronto. My sister and I were promised our own separate bedrooms.
There were three bedrooms besides the master bedroom: two that faced the backyard and one that faced the street. My sister and I were basically left to figure it out between us.
The front bedroom, the one that overlooked the street, was the bigger and brighter bedroom. I never considered taking it for even a moment. I took one of the back bedrooms – which was a perfect fine room, just not as fine as the other one – and my sister gladly took the front one. I didn't tell her about the risk of being kidnapped by a giant.
"You sacrificed your sister for your own safety?" my Mom exclaimed in a mixture of amusement and horror.
"I didn't really believe in the giant, you know? But I wanted to be on the safe side. Anyway, she could've taken the other back bedroom."
"I thought you were so nice..." Mom's laughing and shaking her head.
"Well, it was still a nice thing to do, I guess, since the giant didn't get her in all those years that she slept in the front bedroom."
*I only recently figured out that the scene was the opening of one of the few Roald Dahl books I didn't read as a kid: The BFG. Anyone who knows the story will understand why this discovery was so amusing to me in light of the effect the story fragment had on me.
