unintended results
About four years ago, I slipped on a pair of sandals and shuffled out into the backyard so that I could take inventory over my modest tomato patch. The said tomato patch was raked over and transformed into a crib of grass sprouts the spring afterwards because of a personal discovery that I came to grips with after occasionally watching over my tomato patch for a few months. I wisely concluded that tomato patches reap an inconceivable amount of tomatoes, more tomatoes that an extended family of rabbits could even consider tackling and claiming as their own.
So anyway, after I had established that the tomato plants were still relatively healthy when the fact that they were drastically outnumbered by lanky weeds was pointedly excluded, I meandered aimlessly around the side of the house so I could scuttle back inside. On the way back, however, I noticed a robin innocently hopping around in the shade created by a formidable army of bushes. Due to my strong love of animals, I immediately abandoned the idea of retreating back into the house. I watched the little red-breasted bird for several minutes, attempting to get as close as possible by projecting my resolve that I wouldn't bring harm upon it.
Then when I began to sing to the robin, that's when my neighbor made her presence known, and my gaze shot up in alarm and I realized that she had been leaning over the railing of her deck and watching me serenade a little bird. I instantly straightened my posture and raked a hand through my hair, attempting unsuccessfully to convey that I was normal, that I wasn't trying to communicate with a creature that slams its skull against the ground in the hope of retrieving an earthworm. My neighbor initiated the obligatory interrogation regarding school despite the awkward tinge that stained the conversation. Easing up from the railing of the deck and moving towards the sliding door, she mentioned offhandedly that her son, Aaron, was currently toiling over his homework at the kitchen table, and that maybe when he had completed it he and I could rollerblade on their driveway or something.
'I don't know how to rollerblade,' I replied truthfully, my thoughts elsewhere. A rush of thoughts came to mind, but one was predominant among the rest: How can that woman look at me like I've just declared I'm the ringleader of the flying monkeys when she's taken it upon herself to find friends for her own son?
When my neighbor had stepped back inside of her home, I didn't hesitate whatsoever in running like hell into the house. I mean, if Aaron couldn't develop his own friendships without the aid of his mother, he must've enjoyed setting small animals and kitchen utensils on fire, or something.
Hey, I suddenly remembered why I seem to hold the mentality that Aaron's a sick fuck. When I was in elementary school, I visited his house with another girl who was apparently a friend of mine. I can vividly picture his crooked grin within my mind as he shoved us into his room and cornered us there, commanding us to remove our clothes. Shortly thereafter his mom called him downstairs, whereupon my friend and I gathered our belongings and crept to our freedom beyond the doors of his house as hurriedly as we could manage.
Every time another memory of one of my countless encounters with sexual harassment and abuse resurfaces, it feels as though I've lost another shard of my innocence. I resent the way people seemed to enjoy using me to experiment sexually, the way they took advantage of my youthful ignorance so that I wouldn't be able to comprehend what they were doing. Nevertheless, under the sadness, I'm grateful that I was given the chance to remember. It provides me with the opportunity to understand more about myself and why it is I'm so frightened to be touched.
It's interesting that I started molding this entry with the intent of creating a humorous reflection of a mother's odd, odd control of her son's social schedule, but that it tripped and skidded along the way and ended so solemnly.