Tag Archives: childhood adventures

The Great Pirate Escapade

by

Disclaimer: No actual pirates were harmed in the taking of these photographs.

“Mooooom!!” I clumped over toward the house, frustration steaming out of every pour.

“Tasha, stop whining,” Mom said as she turned toward me. It was her standard reply so I didn’t worry too much about it.

I was dragging Lilly with me. My goal in life, at that point, was to drag my best friend everywhere I went. It helped fix the numbers a bit. Three boys and two girls. With the superior talents of women, we were dead even.

She was my best friend ever; even though she was younger (almost a whole year!) and quite a lot shorter. She put up with me rather well. Even my bossiness.

I wanted her to come visit every single Sunday. Even when there wasn’t evening church. And it wasn’t just because her big brother was cute. I mean, I liked him, but really, I had enough boys around.

“Mom,” I said more un-whine like, “The boys won’t play with us. They say we’re just girls.”

I wasn’t always crazy about playing boy games. I really liked my dolls and frilly dresses. But I really disliked being told I wasn’t allowed to play. Especially when it was suggested that I was somehow the scum beneath their feet. It was like declaring war.

Mom got her that ain’t gonna fly look and I knew this was one battle I had won. Hands down. “Boys!” her voice carried and they came slouching around the side of the building casting Lilly and I evil looks. “You can all play together.”

It sounded like a statement but everyone knew it was a command.

“But Moooomm,” they whined, “she thinks she can tell us what to do!”

Which, of course, was completely untrue. I knew I could tell them what to do.  Besides, didn’t they know that Mom hated whining?

With a stern look Mom went back to her work.

The boys formed a huddle and whispered among themselves. After a bit of laughter they turned to us. “Let’s play pirates,” they said, “We’re the pirates and you’re the prisoners.”

They wanted to start right in (boys know nothing about playing make-believe) but I instructed them on the proper art of preparation. Where was the ship? Where were the cannons? Did they have anything to use as an eye-patch? Who was going to have the wooden leg?

They stared at me, dumbfounded at my brilliance, no doubt. Probably shocked to their toes at how much they would have been missing if they had decided to play alone.

The Great Pirate Ship was the side yard with the tree in the middle as the pole for the mast. The big red fuel tank by the house was the ship header and I could almost imagine the miles of white material unfurling and snapping to attention against the sky.

From somewhere one of the boys produced rope. “We should make you walk the plank but instead we’re just going to tie you to the tree.” They laughed and smirked. I sighed. It was a pole. And what Pirate smirks? I thought about giving them a lesson on pirating but they seemed dead set on tying us up right then.

Lilly was looking a bit unsure but I wasn’t frightened, even one tiny bit. Those silly little boys. Didn’t they know that I read Nancy Drew books all the time?!

Getting kidnapped is an art. One that I was pretty sure I could handle. The key to getting kidnapped by Pirates is keeping your cool. I smiled a bit and carefully turned my wrists, holding them slightly apart as they tied us to the tree.

Once they had us secured they all looked at each other and took off.

“Hey!” We called.

“Have fun girls!” one of them laughed, “We’re done playing pirates.”

It was a pretty good trick, for amateurs. But truly, if I wasn’t around to help them out, they would fail at almost everything they did. Lilly was casting me wide-eyed looks but I just shrugged my shoulders. “They’ll be back,” I said, eyes rolling, “But when they come there will be a great surprise for them!”

I started to tug at my wrists and the rope tightened. I almost panicked. Almost, because for a moment I forgot that I was a master at solving mysteries and saving myself from near death.

Of course, Nancy Drew never faced abandonment by pirates but I was certain I had learned my lessons well. Besides, the boys were so helpless at pirating; the only things they knew were the things I had told them. It really was a surprise that they had left my presence at all.

Despite my (often) wild daydreams about being rescued by a great Hero, I knew this was time to put my “save-yourself” abilities into action. (Besides, if a Hero did show up he’d probably pick the adorable straight-haired Lilly over the tall, gangly, frizzy-haired me.)

I went to work on my wrists, turning and twisting. To my great surprise, um, relief, um, satisfaction, the rope loosened and slipped off. I quickly freed Lilly. “Let’s hide and scare them when they come back!” I whispered, in case my voice carried the great distance they had put between us. We snuck behind the big fuel tank and waited. When our legs began cramping I said, “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go spy on them!”

Just like Nancy Drew, we were going to track down the bad guys and gather information to deport them to prison forever. We snuck through underbrush and braved the pushki forests. The dread pirates were on their last war-party.

They weren’t hard to find, at all. I needed to teach them a lesson about sneaking. Obviously, it would have to wait for another day. Maybe when they were on my team instead of the opposing team. We spied on them for hours, or at least ten minutes. They were putting on a great act, pretending to play a different game besides pirates. But spying on pirates pretending not to be pirates is actually quite boring.

We snuck back and disappeared into the bedroom to play with my dolls, Annabelle and Sally. Just before supper Mom stuck her head in. “I thought you were playing with the boys,” she said.

“Shhhh!” I admonished, “we’re playing a trick on them!”

“Yeah,” Lilly offered, “they think we’re still tied to the tree but we escaped.”

Mother’s eyebrows rose, probably in shock that her sons were such terrible pirates.

“Yeah, Mom,” I said, “they really are pretty much the worst pirates ever, even for pretend ones.”

She had a funny look on her face. I’m sure feeling a bit proud that at least her daughter had some common sense.

When the dinner bell rang, Lilly and I were sitting at the table with smirks on our faces. (It’s a well known fact that prisoners who escape are prone to smirk.) It took them awhile to show up so I know they were probably out searching for us.

They were terrible pirates but I have to admit they did quite well at hiding their shock and dismay that we had freed ourselves. “Tricked you, didn’t we?” I couldn’t help but comment when the sat down.

That brother of mine, he’s such a good actor; all he did was roll his eyes and say, “Don’t be dumb, we tricked you.”

But everybody knows that pirates never trick the prisoners. It doesn’t even make good story-book sense. (And I’m positive that Nancy Drew would have escaped too, maybe almost as skillfully as we did, if she had been kidnapped by roaming pirates.)

Disclaimer: despite the events of this story being almost entirely true, my oldest brother claims he has “no memory” of such an incident. This is understandable as it is a well-known fact that childhood trauma can cause memory loss. I can’t imagine the state of his poor mind when he came back for us and found all traces gone. We’ll try to get therapy for him at some point.

Read part one of the childhood adventures here.

Pieces of the Sky

by

The forests of my childhood were wrought with adventures and breathtaking beauty. Land marks set boundaries and our world spanned several acres of wooded terrain.

On one side was the man-made cave, which was called that simply to differentiate between it and the bear cave on the other side of campus. It was dark and damp, full of cobwebs and spiders. I never liked it but I kept my mouth shut. You don’t speak of such things when there are mostly bigger boys around. Nothing would please them more than tying you up, dropping you off and letting your screams of terror bring the ceiling down, burying you alive.

You may think I’m overreacting but I was well aware of how much my oldest brother wished he could have his own room. It was survival of the fittest or rather, the most quick-witted. Never show weakness. Ever.

The platform was several hundred yards away from the cave. I suggested one time that we find a more, well, exciting name. “The South East Fort” or something like that.My brother gave me a blank look, “It’s a platform,” he said.

Four trees in a square with a framed in plywood platform eight feet in the air and a ladder. So Platform it stayed.

I rarely went there alone. Eight feet in the air was quite high and there were no sides, just open air. (And to be honest, heights were not my favorite thing, but I never admitted to that either.)

One spring, when I was about nine, I ventured that way. My original plan was to play in my pine tree house but when I arrived I found the sad remains of my doll that had been left over winter.

I paused for a small burial with a lovely rock pile as a marker. If you found it and looked carefully, you might still be able to see the name “Sally” scratched into a stone.

She wasn’t my favorite doll, so it was all good. But who wants to stick around after a funeral? So I went on my way. I don’t think that I meant to go to the Platform that day but my wandering took me in that direction and when I saw it, peaking from between the pine trees, I had to climb up.

It was a lot scarier when there weren’t big boys daring you with their eyes and saying things like, “Ah, she’s probably scared. Little Miss Prissy might fall down and hurt herself.”

Anger has a braving effect on me and in the face of taunting I would hardly noticed the great distance to the ground. I bluffed my way through it this day, imagining the big boys and their dares.

When I reached the top and was safely sitting down in the middle, I stared up at the blue sky that peeked through the swaying tree branches and fresh green leaves. Up there it was almost like I was a lost princess trapped on a sky-island with the vast world below me.

“Princess!” my Hero would call as he swooped in, fighting his way with death-defying acts of bravery. He would take one look at me and fall in love. We would plan a lovely outdoor wedding (we fell in love under green leaves and blue skies, after all) and the most delightful part would be…

A distant clanging of a cow bell yanked me from my day-dreams.

I scurried for the ladder. The rule in our family was simple: when the bell rings you run for the house. And the further away you were, the faster you had to run.

I was a long, long ways from home.

Just as my foot hit the forest floor a twig snapped to my left. I looked up, directly into the eyes of a huge, hungry mama moose.

There are some lessons you learn early on the Alaskan frontier: you don’t mess with mama moose. Ever.

I shot up that ladder quicker than a chipmunk on steroids.

My daydreams were feeling incredibly like reality. I really was trapped on an island in the sky. The unfortunate part was that a hero probably wouldn’t be coming (and most certainly wouldn’t be interested in marrying a nine year old).

From my perch on the Platform I tried to stare down the moose. It never blinked. I tried screaming and yelling and waving my arms. It never moved.

It was then that I heard the bell ring the second time. Horror clutched me. I knew very well what would happen if the bell rang three times and I wasn’t home.

Should I make a run for it? I was pretty fast. Maybe I was faster than that big lumbering mama moose. I climbed down. My feet rustled the dried up leaves. The moose took a step toward me.

I was fast all right. In no time at all I was back on that Platform.

I was desperate. Would I be trapped forever? Maybe I would be one of the stories that never got told because my hero never came. Maybe when they found me in a year or two they would bury my bones in the man-made cave because they didn’t even know that I was scared of all the spiders and being buried alive.

Well, I’d be dead, of course, but still.

I lay down and stared at the pieces of blue. The way the branches were and how the leaves grew almost made the shape of a heart.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, “I don’t really want to die on the Platform.” I paused for a moment then continued, “But it does seem better than being eaten by a moose.”

I glanced over hoping that prayer made the moose disappear. Big black eyes stared back at me. Then I heard it. Distant but clear.

“Tasha!” It was my brother, Zac.

I jumped up, screaming, “I’m on the Platform! There’s a moooooooose!”

Through the clearing came my big brother. At ten years old he was taller, stronger and most importantly, carrying a big stick.

The moose looked at him then turned and walked away. (Probably going off to warn the other wild animals of the stick wielding warrior that threatened to slaughter it for dinner.)

I wanted to jump up and down, hug him and maybe cry a little. It’s not everyday that one is almost left to die alone in the woods and then be buried in a cave full of spiders.

My brother offered no sympathy for my plight. “You’re in big trouble,” he said, “Mom sent me to find you.”

All the way home I rehearsed my story. I couldn’t really talk about the cave, of course, because the boys might hear and threaten me with it. Nor could I mention dying because Mom might forbid me from playing in the woods. I only had one option left.

“I’m sorry, Mother, of course…” my voice droned on in monotone as I carefully explained why I felt that I had made the wisest decision possible. Mom and Dad were big on being wise. If I could just convince her…

Thankfully, Mom was completely distracted and just said, “Don’t go so far away so close to lunch time. We have people coming.” And then sent me to the bathroom to wash up.

I stared in the mirror at my stringy blond hair that hung in thick clumps around my face. I could almost picture a crown nestled in. Perhaps made out of pine needles and pieces of blue sky.

I knew right then that when I got bigger I was going to write a new kind of fairytale. The one about the Princess who was always getting caught in life-threatening situations who had three brothers who took turns rescuing her. Then, eventually, when they were all practiced up on rescuing and being rescued, the boys could go find other princesses to save and a hero could come for her.

Preferably, however, she wouldn’t have to be saved from the spiders in the man-made cave.