Demolishing These Childhood Memories…

and nope, not my photograph…

This would be, a MORE-THAN-ONE-MAN-JOB, but I’m the only one who showed up for work this morn, so, I’d better just get a “headstart”…

Demolishing these childhood memories, I’d asked my client (the person who’d hired me!!!), are you sure, that you want, ALL of your childhood memories gone?  ‘Cuz there would be NO turning back, after that first ball and chain started swingin’!  He’d looked at me, told me YES!  And so, I’d started the machines…

Been doing this demolishing gig for oh, since I could remember now, and, I’d seen, a TON of childhood memories get wiped OUT completely, underneath my bulldozer, or whatever it is that I took to the particular jobs, and, I couldn’t help, but wonder: why, are people working so hard, to rid themselves of their childhood memories?  And, aren’t childhoods supposed to be a wonderful time when you’re growin’ up?  So, why would ANYONE want to get rid of that?

It wasn’t, until this particular job that a woman called me out to, did I slowly, come to the realizations of why people are so eager, to demolish their childhoods.  That, was on a bright and clear Monday morn when I’d started working for her (the woman who hired me???), I went to the site, it was, a house, of good-enough condition, looked almost brand new too, barely used, and, I’d turned around and asked the lady, “Ma’am, is there anything ELSE inside, that you want to get out, before I get crankin’?”, she’d told me no, and so, I’d started, working from the outside, and, that house, it wasn’t like what I was used to demolishing, that particular house had, steel frames, that looked like a cage, instead of the wooden pillars, you know?  It took us (my crew and I), a very long while, to finally get THROUGH that first outside wall, and, we moved our ways inside…

And, we’d found, scattered pieces of the childhood that this woman wanted get rid of, and, we didn’t know if she’d wanted to keep it, but, she did, tell us, that she’d gotten everything she wanted to salvage, but, just to be safe, me and my crew, we’d still bagged up, those smaller “artifacts”, just in case the woman regretted leaving everything behind.

That job took us the entire day, until six in the evening, and, we were nearly HALF-WAY done yet, so, I’d tipped my hat, told the woman, that we couldn’t finish, and asked her if it was okay that we’d come back again the next morn.  And that, was when she told me, that she didn’t need the demolishing job to be completed!  And that struck me as REALLY odd!  Unless we’d gotten RID of the portions of the house she didn’t like at all, that reminded of something awful in her past, I can’t see WHY she wouldn’t want the job to be done completely, plus, it’s not like my crew and I had, ever left a job undone, and so, I got to chatting with her, and, bits and pieces of her truth came out.

What she told me, I was sworn to secrecy (well, sorta!), so I won’t mention it to y’all, but, the gist of it was, she grew up in that house, where every weekend, her family would get together and have a brunch, and hung out until early in the evening, and that there would always be those older cousins of hers, who’d played a secretive game with her, she, being the only girl in the children and all, they’d all, taken advantage of how young AND naïve she was, the eldest boy, he’d taken her into the closet in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and did things to her, and threatened her if she’d told, he won’t play with her anymore.  And, growing up as an only child, she’d wanted the company of other kids too, and so, her lips were totally, sealed…

And, that was, just ONE of the MANY numbered bad things that happened to her, inside that childhood home of hers, and I didn’t wait for her to tell me another horrid tale of her childhood years, and I’d, tipped my hat, said, “Ma’am, me and my crew here, we’ll, work through the nights, and see how much we can tear down, and, I won’t charge you extra!”, the very next day, around noon-ish, she came back to see the progress, and, all that’s left, of those BAD memories inside that house were, SCRAPS, and, those SCRAPS, well, they can’t haunt her no more that’s for sure!!!