Creativity and Nerve

I’ve never thought of myself as creative. I do believe it’s a skill that can be expanded upon and honed, but I would never consider myself to have been a creative child. I existed wholly within books, so perhaps my creativity remained exclusively in my mind.

As an adult, my lack of ability to ‘play’ is stark. When my stepdaughter was young, we were one of those ‘Elf on the Shelf’ households at Christmas. My husband and I would try to alternate nights of responsibility, of what mischief the elf might cook up.

I was far better at the ‘he’s stuck in the blinds’ nights, or tying him to the ceiling fan and cranking it on high like an amusement park ride. Once, I tried to set up a scene where he’d been playing with some of her little woodsy animal figurines, of which she had an easy three dozen. I was extremely proud of the result: I incorporated all of them, setting them out on a table in her playroom with the elf in the opposite chair, like he’d designed the scene all by himself.

I had to show it off to my husband (validation is like chocolate, and if you ask me whether I mean the caffeine bit or the aphrodisiac bit, the answer is ‘yes’), who blinked a few times, and gently informed me that it was more like a shopfront window. Maybe a school diorama. Too pristine and orderly to ever be a child’s play scene. He patted me on the back and said, “I’ll mess it up a little. We can’t tip her off that it was you all along, this early.”

I hate playing princesses. This isn’t a gender thing: I hate playing pirates, too. The floor isn’t lava, couch cushions belong on the couch, and I’m an utter bore.

My favorite game when my stepdaughter was four or five was the “baby and babysitter” setup, wherein she was the babysitter, and I was the baby she put down for a nap. She’d put me in her bed, tuck the covers around me, shut off the lights, close the door, and forget about me for at least fifteen minutes. It was divine.

Yes, someone else was home. I didn’t leave the toddler alone for fifteen minutes unsupervised, even though I spent the vast majority of my childhood left entirely to my own devices with my nose reliably stuck in a book. Now, it’s a DFCS call.

~~~

I first tried my hand at writing when I was somewhere around eleven or twelve. Everybody says to write what you know (there are pros and cons to this, but we’ll get to that), and I knew I enjoyed riding horses so my story was about a girl who rode horses. I don’t remember what I called it. I don’t even remember what I called her. Creativity hindered me, even then.

I can’t recall her encountering any particular difficulties or memorable obstacles. Somehow, I still managed to write almost 80 pages in Microsoft Word. My parents were gently encouraging.

I have no idea whatever happened to the draft. It was undoubtedly saved to the computer’s local hard drive, because the cloud didn’t exist, and I do hope it ended up at the “nice country farm” where old electronics get sent upon their replacement.

~~~

I’m almost positive it was for my thirteenth birthday that my parents said my present was the possibility of $1000. All I had to do was bungee jump off Amicalola Falls. It’s 729 feet high, which might as well be 5000. After a certain point of “if this goes wrong, you’ll die,” high is high.

Because I’m a stickler for research, I just tried to see if that’s even possible. It would appear not. Georgia does not permit bungee jumping. Maybe it was allowed back in 1997 (didn’t get that far into research — I hit an official point of diminishing returns), but researching it in 1997 didn’t occur to me. In that day and age, nothing parents said was in doubt.

If I had the guts to do it, and could fling myself off the tallest waterfall in Georgia, I’d be rewarded with a prize of $1000.

I fixated on this for a solid week. Maybe longer. Could I do it? Did I have the nerve? At the age of not-even-thirteen, you exist in a constant state of invincibility meshed with crippling insecurity and existential terror. (No, I don’t have a generalized anxiety disorder as an adult. It came and went in childhood. I’m completely normal.)

When the fated morning arrived, there was no bungee jump. They were joking. To this day, I don’t know if they expected me to take it seriously (and diabolically kept the joke going) or expected me not to, and laugh it off. I was too relieved to question it. I’ve never been more relieved about anything in my life.

I told my husband this story, laughing about it. Semi-incredulous, he asked me to repeat it. Then, he said it explained so many things about me. So many. Then, he asked what my actual 13th birthday present was.

I have no idea. I have no recollection, at all. I was too relieved that I did not have to actually get strapped up to one stretchy cable and throw myself off a waterfall before my braces had even come off.

So, parents: if you ever truly have no clue what to get your kid for some birthday or holiday, try this. Give them a week (or three) to panic, and then reassure them that you’d never do something like that. They’re off the hook. It’s the gift of life and they won’t look for anything else.

My husband says this explains a lot about me, too.

~~~

I once stole my boyfriend’s car and left him in another state.

I don’t have much defense for it, really. It was a giant loss of temper combined with a spiteful sense of, “well, fine then, see if I do.”

We were on a long weekend trip to visit his cousin. We were to be up early Monday morning to drive home, for which I’d take the first shift. I had sleep the second half, because I had a night shift at work and I’d have to be awake.

Sunday night drinking was a continuation of Sunday day drinking (football had just started), which continued from Saturday’s, and Friday’s. I left them to it and tried to go to sleep, prepared to wake around 5:30 to get on the road. We were packed up already, bags in the car.

They were so loud, every time I tried to fall asleep, I got yanked awake. And this is my meager level of defense, because if you’ve ever laid there for 6 hours, deliberately stewing every single time another loud crash comes from the other room, you know. I was… livid. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so angry in my life.

By almost 4am, I’d have had to be up in an hour and a half, anyway. I decided we might as well get started. I was wide awake. It was mine to drive the first half. Let’s just go.

His cousin was passed out on the couch, if I remember. My boyfriend, who was five inches and a hundred pounds larger than me, swayed where he stood. I told him we could just go ahead and leave. He could pass out in the car. He refused. I told him we were absolutely leaving. He refused that, too.

I was… 22? Young enough to still be a temperamental idiot, and I’ve always had a contrary streak. I might as well have a thought bubble bobbing over my head at all times that says, “Oh? Watch me.”

I tried to get him outside. I couldn’t move him. He stood there like a literal statue. Even swaying on his feet, I couldn’t get him to budge. I was beyond furious. I was beyond logic or any kind of rational argument. I tried to shove him. Nope. I smacked him in the bicep (okay, more than once). He looked at me. I pushed some more.

The cartoon vision of a character leaning at 45 degrees with arms outstretched, red-faced with steam coming out their ears, shoving into their counterpart, who might as well be a brick wall? That was me.

Finally, he told me if I wanted to go so badly, I could just go. He wouldn’t stop me.

That wasn’t the point. He was supposed to be in the passenger seat (or at the very least, sprawled across the back).

Three times, I tried to call his bluff. I’d stomp outside to the car. He wouldn’t follow. I’d go back inside and try again.

Finally, he stood on the other side of the sliding glass door, him on the inside threshold and me on the stoop, looked me in the face, and flipped the lock shut.

It was almost 5am, by that point. He turned around and walked further into the house, and I started the car and drove away.

Five or six hours later, I crossed state lines and pulled into a rest stop. I called my best friend (who thought it was hilarious) and my father (who may have, but hid it well) to tell them that teeeeechnically, I had stolen a car and was now crossing into the next state: baby’s first felony. If my boyfriend woke up and reported a stolen car, I was pretty sure the cop wouldn’t laugh it off.

This was an unfounded worry. Boyfriend didn’t wake until the afternoon. He texted me, “Did you go grab us lunch?”

Not exactly.

He had no recollection of it, at all. He had to buy a Greyhound bus ticket home to find an empty townhouse. My mother met me there with her truck when I pulled in. I could leave his car there while removing my stuff. Two birds, one stone.

What annoyed me as much as anything else was that I couldn’t work that bar shift for Monday Night Football. I was exhausted and had to call in. My replacement said it was one of the best nights he’d ever had there, and made almost $300 in tips. Salt in the wound, friend.

~~~

A friend I’ll call Lila lived a few streets down from my childhood home.

I had long blonde hair. Long. I always wished it was more of a strawberry blonde, but drugstore hair dye kits never did the trick. My other friends had more distinct hair ambitions, trying blue (this would fade to a sickly seawater color sooner than you’d like) or purple (which would end up pinkish — not a color my group was much interested in).

Lila was a fan of the blue hair attempts, but had a fresh idea: what if we tried Kool-aid instead of actual hair dye? We decided to do mine red, since I’d had the worst luck of anybody, and we bought thirteen packs of red cherry Kool-aid (why thirteen? Why not twelve? Fourteen?) and a Halloween coloring book at the supermarket.

In her bathroom, which was along the central hallway of the home, we got to work. I wore one of her old swimsuits and sat in the bathtub. She mixed the Kool-aid in a pitcher and we dunked my hair in it. I don’t recall how long we waited before we got bored and she dumped the rest of the pitcher over my head.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spilled Kool-aid, but it stains. There’s no piddly hair dye BS designed to fade in six weeks to make you buy more dye. Kool-aid is the Sharpie equivalent of artificial color.

Her mother arrived home about that time. We heard the garage door rumble and Lila said, “Quick, play dead!”

I made my best attempt on short notice. I splayed out in the tub with one leg dangling over the side, and a terrifyingly vivid red splashed everywhere.

I’ve never heard anybody scream so loud.

When they sold the house ten years later, the bathtub grout was still pink.