Memories of Memories

An Interesting One Stops By For A Visit

All this talk of crafting and model building these last few days made me suddenly remember a (somewhat) traumatic experience from when I was a kid that just all came rushing back, and I’ve been thinking about its meaning.

If you remember me mentioning, I was pretty impatient when building those classic hot rod plastic model kits. I just slapped it all together and never spent much time on the details, like glue or painting. It was what it was and I liked doing it that way.

But one time, I had an idea. I had this street rod like the one in the picture above but it just felt too clean to me, too shiny. I was raised pretty solidly middle class, but despite that, I would look around me and see just regular cars with little nicks and bumps and scratches. My dad owned a gray Chevy. My uncle had a dark green Plymouth station wagon.

These were neither fancy, nor expensive cars. So, I got it in my head that I wanted to build a model that, well, looked like the cars that were around me.

So, next door, my aunt and uncle had this little, bricked in side porch. I took my hot rod model there along with a pair of scissors and a rock. I grabbed one of my dads little ball peen hammers and I went to work. I wanted to dent it up, give it some scratches, make it look like the kind of car that would appear in my neighborhood.

Well, wouldn’t you know, my aunt poked her head out the door just as I was in the process of hammering my poor, beat up model. She freaked out and dragged me home over it. None of my explanations really seemed to help my parents. All they saw was a violent kid. Or maybe a kid who didn’t appreciate a present. I don’t think they knew what to do.

They handled it so badly that they even told a friend of theirs who I think, maybe, was some kind of mental health professional and she came over and talked with me. I think I was able to sort of explain it to her as the issue slowly faded away and that was the end of it.

Needless to say, I stopped trying to make cars in my neighborhood’s likeness. Then my older cousin got a hot rod Nova muscle car which I started taking rides in so I suppose those needs went away after that as well.

Strange how those hidden memories come’a knockin’ if jarred by some other incident or event. I hadn’t remembered that at all until the other day when writing about Little Bean’s crafting.

I wonder, has there been any memories that surprised you by coming back suddenly?