Monday, August 27, 2012

Purrsonal Story: How my childhood was like Stephen King's IT

 

It's a strange title for a blog post, isn't it? But my childhood was like Stephen King's It in two ways: the Barrens and the sewers.

Of course, we didn't call it the Barrens. To us, it was the Jungle. The untamed wooded area was located perpendicular from our street. Beside it, apartment buildings loomed. We kids weren't allowed to cross that road, since it was a busier than our own, but we found a way without disobeying. You see, there was a sewer drain from one person's yard and it led into the Jungle. We crawled on hands and knees through it, and we were on the other side. We were explorers of around six or seven years of age trailing through the forest, getting stuck in thorn bushes. We had a blast.

Then, there were the sewers. They weren't nearly as fun as the Jungle. They smelled. They were dark. And worst of all, there were spiders. *cringes* When I was five, some older boys tossed me into the sewers. I begged them to let me out, even though I really did try to be brave for a whole two seconds. I couldn't stand the dark. Or spiders. One time a neighbor lost their pet rabbit in the sewers. We went looking for it on the other end, where it opened up above ground. That wasn't as scary, since there was a lot of sunlight.

But we did spend a lot of time around sewers and the Jungle. I can see how Stephen King came up with It.

14 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Good thing clowns weren't involved, huh?

Kyra Lennon said...

You certainly know how to write attention grabbing titles! As terrifying as IT is, I couldn't resist finding out more lol!

I agree with Alex - I am very pleased there were no clowns in those sewers!

Unknown said...

Clowns! Gah! lol Still hate them because of that book/movie. :-)

Stephen King left such a mark on me as a young reader... lost a few hours of my life trying to sleep with the lights on because of that fella for sure.

Christine Rains said...

I was waiting for the clown too! *LOL* It's fun to be explorers. And though the sewers were stinky and full of spiders, it adds to the cool adventuring stories you have from when you were young. :)

LynnRush said...

NICE!!!! Yikes on the sewers thing...those freak me out. I've watched WAY too many scary vampire movies...LOL

Samantha May said...

My heart...it stopped for a minute after reading that title...

I hate clowns. HATE. THEM.

The sewers do not sound plesant either...

...


I'm still freaking out about the clown thing.

Jay Noel said...

Growing up, we had a GIANT runoff sewer entryway in a giant creek. We'd climb down into the creed and skip rocks. Luckily, it wasn't sewage water.

The entry was a giant tunnel that when you followed it, led all the way to a shopping mall manhole. It was kinda freaky, though, walking in it.

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

Sounds like you had an awesome place to grow up in. I used to LOVE doing all that exploring stuff (though I'm not a fan of spiders either hehehe).

Ted Cross said...

I thought all kids grew up with such things? I had my own sewers and barrens and jungles to romp around in when I was young. It was hard to get us to come home. Being boys, my brothers and I weren't scared of things like the sewers, so we tried to explore them as far as we could. Great memories!

Ghadeer said...

Sounds like an exciting childhood..

Tracy MacDonald said...

I'm with Kyra - you had me at the title. I loved IT and while I didn't like clowns before reading that book, I really bared them afterwards . Still do. We had Tonys brook and a myriad of backyards to run they. Hours of fun!

Unknown said...

I'm still scared of clowns thanks to IT. I remember a street was off limits too, but it seems like my daredevil antics as a child pale in comparrison to yours. I never got so exciting at 7 years old :-)

Unknown said...

Oh the things little kids do. I don't have anything that cool to compare to it. Darn.

Cher Green said...

Nice article Title. :) I'm sure you grabbed some new readers with this one.

Clowns have never been an issue for me, but I wouldn't want to run into the one from IT, lol.

Can't say I had much cool exploring in my days, wish I had. We lived in farm area, so just a bunch of fields, a few ponds, and some cows. :)