The Intrusion

Eight

(Friday, March 16, 2018)

[Andy]

When I was around nine years old, I developed this terrible fear of heights. Whenever I'd stand on the edge of something, like a cliff, or a balcony, or a bridge, I'd get this swaying, off-balance feeling. My stomach would drop, and I'd picture myself falling. Everything moved around me, even the ground. I would go into that state if I so much as thought about heights. I could be sitting in my room alone with my eyes closed and think about the idea of being on a ledge, and I would drive myself into that state of vertigo.

To be honest, sometimes I did it on purpose.

I kind of liked the feeling. It was a sort of high for me. A terrifying high, albeit, but a high nonetheless.

It's weird, I wasn't always afraid of heights, and I'm not afraid of them anymore, but for about a year during my childhood, I had this inexplicable fear of them.

It was because of a dream I had, but it wasn't the typical falling dream.

When I was around eight or nine, my sister Alice and I found a treehouse tucked away somewhere in the thick of the ravine behind our house. It was old and abandoned, and to this day I can't explain where it came from or who built it. It was like it had grown up from the ground along with the tree, alone and forlorn in a ravine filled with crumbling leaves, poison ivy, creeping spiders, and fallen trees. We used to play up in that splintery, old, soggy wooden treehouse together, my sister, me and sometimes the neighborhood kids.

It was our secret. My parents didn't know about it. That is, until one day I sliced my stomach open on a rusty nail sticking out of the tree where one of the steps that had surely fallen years ago used to hang. The gash bled a whole lot—I remember that much. But Alice probably remembers the blood better than I do, and I think she was crying more than I was.

I was wearing a white T-shirt.

It was only my sister and me out at the treehouse that day. Alice left me there alone in the woods and ran and got our parents and then they took me to the emergency room and I got stitches and tetanus shots and everything. I still have a small scar on my stomach from it, but you can't see it unless you are looking for it.

Anyway, that nail in my stomach was (oh hell I'll just say it I can't help myself) the nail in the coffin of that treehouse. After my parents found out about the treehouse, it was declared "DANGEROUS" and we were no longer allowed to play there.

But we had some good times before that. I have a lot of memories of that treehouse. They are those fond, childhood memories that I can't really recall too many details of, just the feeling of happiness and the smell of decaying leaves and the fact that they were good. Like that picture my dentist in the suburbs where my parents still live has hanging up in his office of some kids circa 1994 sitting on scooters and tricycles and eating freeze pops.

I love that photo.

I still go to that same dentist, even though it's probably an hour and a half trip to get there. It's just, that's the dentist I've always gone to, and I couldn't imagine going to another one. Every time I go, I stare at that photo on the wall as the dentist pokes around in my teeth and I smell latex. It reminds me of my childhood. And I had a good childhood.

I didn't have many of my own friends as a kid, but that was okay. I hung around with my sister's friends and the neighborhood kids, so I wasn't lonely or anything. And I remember one hot summer day Alice and I were over at the neighbor's house playing. They had this in-ground swimming pool, but the cover was on it at the time. It was one of those dark blue, heat absorbing covers that latched down at the corners. We were playing kick the ball, and our neighbor Jackie kicked the ball across the yard and over the pool. Instead of going around the pool to get it, my sister started walking across the cover. I don't know why she did that, to this day. Maybe she forgot it was there, or maybe she thought the cover was solid. Either way, Alice got all the way to the center of the pool before she realized her feet were soaking wet.