Behind the Banana Plant

Here is my response to what Anita Marie wrote and the Self Portraiture prompt.

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There are a few strong childhood memories that periodically percolate from my memory.

For example, when I was about three years old I crashed Julie Pierce’s birthday party much to the mortification of a certain nine-year old relative who shall remain unidentified. I have a flash of recollection of this — being lodged under a redwood fence — hearing shrieks of protest and laughter from the party-goers. The aforementioned nameless relative exacted her revenge when I was five years old and she and a friend tied me up, gagged me, and hid me in a bedroom closet. This memory is a little clearer and does a lot to explain why I am slightly claustrophobic to this day.

But there is one event that stands out with extraordinary clarity and had a profound effect on my development as a creative person.

When I was about eight years old, a group of us neighborhood kids were hanging out in Kimberly’s backyard. Unlike the rest of us who lived in houses, Kimberly was cool and lived in apartment complex that had lots of passages around the units and between the carports. With its labyrinth of hiding places, it became our favorite place to be whenever we felt in the mood to create imaginary worlds and act out make-believe dramas.

This particular day Inez, her three younger sisters, me, Kimberly and Val were all standing in a little grassy area behind Kim’s building telling each other scary stories. I had started the ball rolling by telling everyone that dinosaurs had not really died out, they were real, and some grown ups I knew had seen them roaming around our neighborhood. Inez and Val, who were my age, said I was making it all up and to stop scaring the little kids. After brushing me aside, Inez commenced telling a story to the rest of the group — something about ghosts or vampires — I really don’t remember what she was saying because, in my miff over having my story dismissed, I slowly extracted myself from the group.

I slipped out of the yard, around the entire building, and up a narrow passage that led to another entrance to the yard. The passage was partially obscured by the large leaves of a dwarf banana plant. As Inez was finishing up her lame excuse of a story, I grabbed the leaves, shook them as hard as I could, and let out a giant ROAR!!!!!.

Shrieking kids went running in all directions and Inez’s littlest sister, Aggie, just out of diapers, began wailing at the top of her lungs. I scurried back out of the passage and intercepted the band as they came tearing out of the yard. I was nearly in tears myself as bent over in laughter.

“What so funny?,” Inez growled at me as she tried to comfort Aggie. “There’s a dinosaur back there!”

Between laughs, I tried to explain that I had made the sounds and the ruckus in the banana leaves.

Inez who never liked to be wrong about anything glared at me and said “No, there is a dinosaur back there. YOU said there were dinosaurs around here. And we just heard one.”

As bossy as she was, Inez, I knew, was not stupid, so I had a hard time believing that she had believed me. But the other kids — the little ones — were absolutely terrified, so much so that I did get in some trouble over “telling tales” and scaring the daylights out of them. Did I feel bad about scaring them? Maybe I did feel a little bad for making Aggie cry…. But the rest, especially Inez, not so much. I even remember feeling a little superior for having told a good story and making them believe it enough to go running in terror.

So whenever I am in the mood to write a story or create an image, I draw upon this memory. For a few minutes, I made Inez, Kim, Val, and all the rest of them suspend their disbelief. If I can do that same thing again with writing or making art, then I’ve been successful.

Yeah, a story told well can be quite empowering.

Lori G. (c) 2010

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