When You're a Kid and You Think No One is Listening

Just when you think you're safe and secret, which is a secure feeling I always craved as a kid, you probably are being watched, listened to, or are in someones intuitive radar range.

I used to have all kinds of secret, quiet, sacred places around my yard. I used to dream of having my own secret hole under the grass by the tennis courts on the town square across from where my mother grew up. In this hole, I was basically just buried under the grass but with a golf ball sized hole to breathe. No one could get my back.

Anyway, one night I was sleeping in the garage with my sister but not in the loft. We thought it was just us. We were staying up and talking. It was always very hard for me to quit talking and say goodnight to my sister, especially if she would go to sleep first. I would sometimes have to ask her if she was asleep yet. Come to think of it, I have always been that way ever since. All through my 20's even, I just could never let the night end, whether with my friends or alone after they crashed. I took many a night ride on the old Triumph.

So anyway, we were talking and I told her the name of each girl I loved in each grade I had been in so far. I'm not sure when it was - I guess all the way up through about the 8th grade. After I finished this saga, my brother's voice came from the loft to be quiet so he could sleep. I was mortified. I could tell my sister that stuff, but not my brother - not like that.