Day 303: The Weirder Tip for today comes courtesy of my childhood. To make sense of it, permit me to tell you a scary story.
On a lovely end-of-summer day, right before harvest when we'd be far too busy for something as frivolous as a picnic, we packed up the car and drove into the hills to meet my parents' friends for a picnic. When it was time for baseball, I opted to sit at the picnic table with my mom and her friend to listen to their conversation. Was that weird behavior for a normal six year old? Maybe. But it was normal behavior for a weird six year old like me.
So, there I sat, waiting for the baseball game to end so we could go home and milk the waiting cows. The meadow was nestled between hills, and the shadows grew long. I sat next to Carma, my mother's friend, and Mom sat across from us. I was explaining to them that I liked raisins, and I liked broccoli, but it was wrong to put them together in a salad. They were laughing at the mound of soggy raisins piled up on my paper plate.
It was 1971. Big hair was all the rage in Idaho. The rest of the country (at least my California cousins) had moved on to feathery Charlie's Angels hairdos, but in Idaho, the bouffant was still going strong - or high. My older sister wasn't at the picnic, but she had the most beautiful big hair I'd ever seen, carefully molded by sleeping in orange juice cans as curlers and then ratted, teased, and sprayed. A work of art. My mom and her friend, Carma, had big hair, too. It wasn't molded as carefully as my sister's, but still set in curlers and ratted into submission. At six, I admired the look, but hadn't graduated from ponytails. Picnic hairstyles seem an unimportant detail, but what came next solidifies the point.
I was in the midst of asking how someone thought to mix raisins and broccoli, when, from out of nowhere, a bat, in its twilight departure from its cave, flew overhead, surveying the meadow. I do not know what drew it to our picnic. The raisin mound? The smell of Aqua Net? We will never know its motivation. What I do know, is that the bat was driven to swoop earthward directly above us, stretch its little clawed feet, and snag itself in Carma's carefully ratted bouffant. It was trapped, snared, like every detail etched upon my six-year-old psyche.
I looked up from the picnic bench, aghast. I'd never seen a bat in real life. It was flapping desperately, working its way deeper into Carma's ratted hair, screeching with all its horrific might. Carma was also flapping and screeching with all her horrific might. It was the most terrifying sight I'd ever beheld. The baseball players ran to see what all the commotion was about. My mother ran around the table, trying to shoo the bat away. I didn't try to shoo. I left shooing to the adults. I got away from Carma as fast as my little legs would carry me, certain a colony of fellow bats was preparing a second air raid. I ran to the car with my hands over my hair, determined not to be the next victim.
From this, I gleaned a healthy fear of bats and a determination to never let one near my head. I avoid bats. I run from bats. I shudder at their photographs. Family trips to Lake Powell include a tradition of sleeping on top of the houseboat. Do I? No. Hello. There are bats up there. Do I have superhuman hearing when it comes to squeaky clicking and flapping noises? Yes. Do I decline spelunking invitations? Usually. Have I ever wondered why it happened to Carma? Yes. Have I ever wondered if it was karma that the bat landed on Carma? Yes. Yes, I have.
Here’s the Weirder Tip: Never sit outside at twilight next to a woman with a bouffant. Nothing good can come of it.
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