The Disney films of my childhood had it right: if you want to apply an immediate stranglehold on a kid's feelings, one that will still shake him awake terrified and gasping well into adulthood--use animals. Separate Dumbo from his mommy. Give Ol' Yeller rabies and force his people to shoot him. Kill Bambi's mom.
Real-life animal-induced traumas work even better, and I've certainly had my share. When I was six, I had a pretty sweet deal: my dad cleaned the Biology building on the Brigham Young University campus in Provo--which meant I could spend a couple hours each week filling my hungry eyeballs in the Reptile Room. Gila monsters, chameleons, horned toads, lizards...and more snakes than I thought there could possibly be in the whole world. Cages on shelves, stacked as high as a tall adult's head, all the way around the 30' X 30' room, with only a thin glass layer between me and copperheads, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, and, in an 8' X 8" cuboid cage in the center of the room, insanely huge snakes as big around as a man's waist, eight feet, ten feet, twelve feet long! I couldn't get enough of looking, especially at those monsters in the middle.
One evening I was watching two scaly titans in the center cage, noticing how they neither quite ignored each other nor ever commenced open hostilities, and gee, what would they do anyway, try to swallow each other? or maybe the boa would try what he does...but no, how could the boa constrictor squeeze another snake to death, and...where was that boa, anyway? Oh, he's right there--wrapped around the outside of the cage. And there's his head, sailing smoothly my way like Kaa in The Jungle Book, mouth closed but forked tongue flicking and dead black eyes gazing through my tiny soul and clearly meaning business. I had enough nervous-mammal sense to scamper out the door, just ahead of the unmistakable THUNK of a fist-sized head hitting the door I thought to close behind me.
Henceforth, the very sight of a snake terrifies me. Garter snakes might as well be car-length cottonmouths.
Our first year in Malad was a rough one for animal-related trauma. My family adopted our first cat, a juvenile female Siamese mix we named Socks. In those days, the Mormon church hadn't yet adopted their three-hour-block format for Sunday meetings. Instead, we'd attend Sunday School (everybody) and then Priesthood (boys) or Junior Relief Society (girls) first thing in the morning, then return in the evening for an hour-and-a-half Sacrament Meeting, which typically featured speakers, most of them deadly boring but a few polished and interesting. Mom and Dad let us stay home from a few Sacrament Meetings each year, when certain favorite movies would air on TV: The Ten Commandments, The Sound of Music, and The Wizard of Oz. If only we'd stayed home that Sunday night!
We three boys trooped dutifully across the slush, exhaling breath plumes in the January cold. My mom started backing down the driveway. There, in the glaring headlights, pure horror that still shakes me: little sweet Socks, who knew nothing of cars or tires or getting out of the way, her head and front end bloodied and immobile while her hindquarters thrashed violently. Dad was still in the house, probably looking forward to a couple hours' kidless quiet, and we had no better plan than to hand him poor Socks and beg him through tears, "Help her! Help her!" He had no better plan than to set the suffering cat into the sink, to at least avoid painting the whole kitchen in blood.
He told us to get back in the car and go to church.
Until recently, I thought this was unbearably cruel of Dad. Like, our poor Socks is suffering horribly! Do you have any idea what nightmare I just saw in the driveway? This stupid church meeting is so important compared to that? What is wrong with you?
But now I see myself in his position, and I understand he did the best anyone could. Instead of a nice quiet evening, maybe a little 60 Minutes: three boys crying like it's the end of the world, which for them it actually is, a rapidly dying little cat, no vet, no help, no good way out of this. I never asked him, but I feel sure what he did is: send us to church as a mercy, keeping us in the dark as to details; then stand with Socks for the couple minutes she had left on earth, speaking softly to her and patting her kindly.
Kindly, I believe, despite his habitual grumble that he "didn't care for cats." A decade later, he was still grumbling--but my sister caught him early one weekend morning at the stove, cooking scrambled eggs especially for Mom's cat Pretty. (What can I say: we didn't name animals very imaginatively.)
I do know that when we returned from church that awful night, Socks was dead and sealed in a shoebox. Dad told me I could bury her. I dug the hole and put the box in, then the whole family stood around her grave while Mom said a prayer. We cried a lot. A couple nights later I sat up in bed and begged out loud, "Sooooocks! Come back! Please come back!" I marked her grave with a spare scrap of plywood about the size of a school textbook, shaped like the state of Nevada, on which I scraped with a paring knife the name "Socks."
Real-life animal-induced traumas work even better, and I've certainly had my share. When I was six, I had a pretty sweet deal: my dad cleaned the Biology building on the Brigham Young University campus in Provo--which meant I could spend a couple hours each week filling my hungry eyeballs in the Reptile Room. Gila monsters, chameleons, horned toads, lizards...and more snakes than I thought there could possibly be in the whole world. Cages on shelves, stacked as high as a tall adult's head, all the way around the 30' X 30' room, with only a thin glass layer between me and copperheads, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, and, in an 8' X 8" cuboid cage in the center of the room, insanely huge snakes as big around as a man's waist, eight feet, ten feet, twelve feet long! I couldn't get enough of looking, especially at those monsters in the middle.
One evening I was watching two scaly titans in the center cage, noticing how they neither quite ignored each other nor ever commenced open hostilities, and gee, what would they do anyway, try to swallow each other? or maybe the boa would try what he does...but no, how could the boa constrictor squeeze another snake to death, and...where was that boa, anyway? Oh, he's right there--wrapped around the outside of the cage. And there's his head, sailing smoothly my way like Kaa in The Jungle Book, mouth closed but forked tongue flicking and dead black eyes gazing through my tiny soul and clearly meaning business. I had enough nervous-mammal sense to scamper out the door, just ahead of the unmistakable THUNK of a fist-sized head hitting the door I thought to close behind me.
Henceforth, the very sight of a snake terrifies me. Garter snakes might as well be car-length cottonmouths.
Our first year in Malad was a rough one for animal-related trauma. My family adopted our first cat, a juvenile female Siamese mix we named Socks. In those days, the Mormon church hadn't yet adopted their three-hour-block format for Sunday meetings. Instead, we'd attend Sunday School (everybody) and then Priesthood (boys) or Junior Relief Society (girls) first thing in the morning, then return in the evening for an hour-and-a-half Sacrament Meeting, which typically featured speakers, most of them deadly boring but a few polished and interesting. Mom and Dad let us stay home from a few Sacrament Meetings each year, when certain favorite movies would air on TV: The Ten Commandments, The Sound of Music, and The Wizard of Oz. If only we'd stayed home that Sunday night!
We three boys trooped dutifully across the slush, exhaling breath plumes in the January cold. My mom started backing down the driveway. There, in the glaring headlights, pure horror that still shakes me: little sweet Socks, who knew nothing of cars or tires or getting out of the way, her head and front end bloodied and immobile while her hindquarters thrashed violently. Dad was still in the house, probably looking forward to a couple hours' kidless quiet, and we had no better plan than to hand him poor Socks and beg him through tears, "Help her! Help her!" He had no better plan than to set the suffering cat into the sink, to at least avoid painting the whole kitchen in blood.
He told us to get back in the car and go to church.
Until recently, I thought this was unbearably cruel of Dad. Like, our poor Socks is suffering horribly! Do you have any idea what nightmare I just saw in the driveway? This stupid church meeting is so important compared to that? What is wrong with you?
But now I see myself in his position, and I understand he did the best anyone could. Instead of a nice quiet evening, maybe a little 60 Minutes: three boys crying like it's the end of the world, which for them it actually is, a rapidly dying little cat, no vet, no help, no good way out of this. I never asked him, but I feel sure what he did is: send us to church as a mercy, keeping us in the dark as to details; then stand with Socks for the couple minutes she had left on earth, speaking softly to her and patting her kindly.
Kindly, I believe, despite his habitual grumble that he "didn't care for cats." A decade later, he was still grumbling--but my sister caught him early one weekend morning at the stove, cooking scrambled eggs especially for Mom's cat Pretty. (What can I say: we didn't name animals very imaginatively.)
I do know that when we returned from church that awful night, Socks was dead and sealed in a shoebox. Dad told me I could bury her. I dug the hole and put the box in, then the whole family stood around her grave while Mom said a prayer. We cried a lot. A couple nights later I sat up in bed and begged out loud, "Sooooocks! Come back! Please come back!" I marked her grave with a spare scrap of plywood about the size of a school textbook, shaped like the state of Nevada, on which I scraped with a paring knife the name "Socks."
Our cats were KiKi (kitty kitty) and Gracie (he's gray, see?). Socks is a fine name. My father also claimed to not like cats, but he constantly sent along missives about how he and Gracie were doing at home when I left for the Air Force.
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