My Great Grampa and the Pirates

Somehow this one got lost in the shuffle and saved but never posted. I give to you "My Great Grampa and the Pirates" by Janine aged 8 or 9:
____________________

I thought I would share this fascinating piece of literature that I found while digging through old papers searching for a report card for GISHWHES in August. I give you "My Great Grampa and the Pirates" (sic) circa 1988 or thereabouts, complete with scratch-and-sniff sticker.

It's pretty old, from about second grade I think, so I'll transcribe it, complete with spelling errors (as far as the typed word will allow) for you:

my Great Grampa and the PiRates
_________________________
long ago my Grampa went
on a big Ship to china.
Some Pirets attacked the
Boat Because they wanted
to rob the Boat and kill
the peopl on the Boat
and Grampa helped fight
the Pirets.
and he got home safeley
and Gramma DiDn't
Let him go back
and won day he went Back and got
home Safeley.

_____________
This is actually a true story.  My great grandfather (his second wife always signed letters from them " love, Nana and Grumps") was working on a ship that was attacked by pirates.  It even made the newspaper, but since I want to blog about it I cannot for the life of me figure out where I put the clipping.  The government denied the existence of any pirates and claimed that Grumps and his friends had made up the story.  Decades later, when he was in his last days of life, Grumps hallucinated that the helium balloon at the end of his bed was the mast of the pirate ship that had attacked.  If the pirates weren't real, why would he flash back to that event on his deathbed?  I for one believe his story was true.

Scarred For Life

Recently someone brought up a story about how they were scarred for life by the lies their parents told them, and it got me thinking about the odd things my mom convinced me were true. To be fair, my perspective has changed in recent years, and I am glad my mom taught me how to have a healthy sense of humour growing up. My  mom did a lot of awesome things when I was a kid too, but that doesn't change the minor trauma my mom inflicted in those impressionable early years. (Author's note: I may still be irrationally afraid of earwigs, tapioca and shower curtains, but otherwise I turned out alright.)

The look of innocence.
.

First, a little perspective: I was not a particularly squeamish kid in most instances. I was definitely a tomboy, climbing trees and unafraid to get dirty. In elementary school, the boys would catch garden snakes and try to freak out the girls. Most of them would shriek and run away, while I would say "cool! Can I hold it?" The boys always looked a little disappointed that I hadn't reacted the way they wanted me to.

When I was about 4 years old, my mom told me that Tapioca Pudding was made from fish eyes. It has been 35 years, and I still cannot eat tapioca unless it is ground up as a powder. This became a particular problem when I attended UBC as there was a Bubble Tea kiosk in the Student Union Building. Bubble Tea was all the rage and the mere thought of it made me gag.

When I was 5 I asked why earwigs were called earwigs, which lead my mom to spin a tale for me that earwigs would crawl into a person's hair and then into their ear, where they would eat their brains from the inside out. She quickly refuted her own story, but I still can't see an earwig without wigging out to this day. I can relocate other bugs, spiders, frogs, lizards... but I feel that earwigs deserve to die a horrible fiery death, regardless of their innocence.

There was the incident when I decided to run away: I don't remember why I was upset, but I went up to my mom and said "fine, I'm running away!" Instead of arguing, she helped me pack. Really, this was ingenious of her, and she knew my propensity for devouring books would not let me get far, but at the time I was convinced that she was going to let me run away.

      "Well, you can't go anywhere without your books! You need something to read, take these."
      "You should definitely take your roller skates. You might need them."
      "Don't forget your stuffed animals, which ones should you take?"
      "You'll need a change of clothes of course."
      "You'll need your LEGO."

By the time she finished helping me pack, the clunky old pinkish suitcase was full, and to my young standards, very heavy. I got to the end of the driveway dragging the suitcase behind me, and needed to stop and take a break. I pulled out one of the books and got transported into another world. When I finished the books I decided that this wasn't the right day to run away, and I should really go home and try again some other time... besides, I really needed to pick a new set of books to take with me.

Picture this jumping out at you!

When I was a kid I would sneak through the house into the kitchen where I could see the TV in the living room, and would watch TV and movies "with" my dad late at night. At four years old, I somehow managed to watch Psycho without being caught. At some point I must have fessed up, because a few years later my mom hid behind the shower curtain and scared me half to death. You would think that would be the end of it, but no. Every time my mom cleans the house &/or expects company one of her automatic moves is to close the shower curtain to "hide the mess" (there almost never is a mess - this is just one of her quirks). Every time I enter her bathroom and the shower curtain is closed I have to pull it back suddenly to make sure nothing is hiding behind it waiting to murder me. Every time I see a closed shower curtain there is a brief sense of panic and my heart speeds up. EVERY TIME! (In hindsight, Dad is probably equally to blame for this fear as he was the one watching Psycho with a 4-year old at home. Also, I may have hidden behind a shower curtain or two as a child to try to get her back, so all's fair in love and war.)

Mom, you can expect a bill when I find a therapist willing to deal with this deep-seeded childhood trauma. Or, perhaps I could just pay them in zucchini?

Someday, when I'm a grown-up - an open letter to Wil Wheaton

Project #canidothisin10days on my instagram @Tortoisefly

I spent the last 11 days building this. Instagram @Tortoisefly

I grew up in a geek-friendly home, long before that was considered to be cool.

When I was 8, my mom and I read The Hobbit together, and I thought "someday, when I'm a grown-up, I'll go on epic adventures like Bilbo, Gandalf, and their friends."

I watched Star Trek reruns with my dad and I saw Spock find peaceful solutions using reason, science, and logic, and I thought "someday, when I'm a grown-up, I'm going to be like him."

I saw Star Wars and found a role model in Princess Leia, who proved that you didn't need a man to rescue you, you could save yourself, be the hero of your own story, and maybe rescue a couple of well-intentioned men along the way. I saw this, and I thought "someday, when I'm a grown-up, I'm going to be just like her!"

Then when I was an awkward 8-year old girl who loved Sci-Fi, but struggled to picture myself as I was, being a part of the narrative, Star Trek TNG came on TV. I saw Wesley Crusher, a boy (unlike me), who like me was smart, and sometimes awkward, struggling to find a place in a universe full of grown-ups. Like me, he had important things that he wanted to say, but the grown-ups often didn't seem to listen, because they thought he was just a kid.

I saw Wesley, and the narrative changed. I was no longer thinking about "someday, when I'm a grown-up." Instead, I found myself thinking "there are kids on the Enterprise who are just like me!" Wesley changed the way that I saw Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Finally, I could see myself in a character, and that allowed me to feel like I was a part of the narrative.

Because of this smart, awkward, geeky kid that I saw on TV, I no longer felt like an outsider, too young to be a part of the narrative of the stories that I loved. Suddenly, this genre that I had always been immersed in was something that I could picture myself being a part of. Not "someday," but "now."

Because of Wesley, "someday" had become "today" and I no longer felt like I had to wait until I was a grown-up to be important.

So Wil, thank-you for the important role you played in my childhood, and thank you for turning into a grown-up that other kids will aspire to be like.

You're awesome!

~ Jeanie @Tortoisefly

ETA: I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to vocalize this to Wil when meeting him at FanExpo Vancouver today, so I wrote it out and while he was extremely gracious and kind about my lantern (which he signed - another of those surreal moments) I handed him a card with the above written in a letter. I think I may have managed somewhere between 5-10 words to him, so good call on the writing it out, sleep-deprived past Jeanie!