Life Without Cornbread Series #1: Because Im Batman

I love sharing stories about my childhood. I've always thought they were funny. But everytime I share them with people, they swear I had the most pathetic childhood ever. Well let me explain,

I wasn't the smallest kid growing up but I wasn't the biggest kid in the neighborhood. I wasn't the smartest kid in the neighborhood but I wasn't the stupidest. I wasn't the kindest kid but I wasn't the nicest. Somewhere in Chester, Virginia you would find me right in the middle. The median on a stem-and-leaf plot. Completely average. So I thought.

These next few blog posts will be a specific series on stories from me in the various neighborhoods I lived in as a military brat, and what many people have described as "sad" or "dismal" or "feeble"

These series of stories are called: 

Life Without Cornbread

One of the more tramautic events of my childhood included the precense of bats. Like the ones from Pokemon. Or Batman. Or Scooby Doo. They came from the attic. To gain access to the attic in my house on the corner, you had to go into the middle bedroom on the second floor, go into the corner of the middle bedroom which had a lovely set of stairs leading up to a space we used for storage. Christmas decorations, old moving boxes, old treadmill machines, bloodthirsty furry savages, etc.

These beasts had the torso of 8 tater tots stacked on top of one another and the wingspan of a sea-glider paper airplane made by a 3rd grader. The one kid who flung actual boogers at people. 

So every summer from maybe 5th through 9th grade, these Ray Charles-sighted-chumps would find a small hole into the attic, fly down underneath the door , and go into the middle bedroom. My bedroom. And of course, only at night time in which they would hit me in the face with a soft WAH-PAH. I would put the covers over my head and start crying like this can't be how I die, oh no! I didn't even play the new Nintendo DS Lite yet!

I would camp out in the backyard, sleep on the sofa, try to sleepover my friends house. Showering? Sleep schedule? My video games? All up on the second floor, and I couldn't go up there. They would eat the livinf flesh from my skin , well , I thought. I've seen Disney Channel. And remember, I overthink now as a 20-something. Imagine me at 11 or 12 years old. What do you think was going through my mind during the day at Vacation Bible School or Engineering Camp or Summer School or any place my parents pawned me off at for a couple of months? Those winged freaks took up rent in my headspace. I was the Demar DeRozan to their LeBron James.

We had multiple people come through to see where they were flying through and it didn't work. But already being a punk growing up, I couldn't take it. I was terrified going to sleep without a night light, missing a note in band class, or walking up the stairs without anyone home. I was just hoping this would make me into a caped crusader or something cool. Maybe fight crime with Alex and Adam and get ripped and leave girls on read when I messaged them on AIM. 

But all it got me was paranoia, overdependency on humans, lack of sleep, and the unquenchable thirst of unlimited TOSTITOS. Years later I mostly got over my fear by misnetting bats by the Tallahatchie River at midnight and going on solo camping trips. 

I would have appreciated doning a cowl and having a sweet Butler. But all I got were way too many wigs.