Lizzy Burke
Features Editor
Childhood is a time for change, because each day, we grow and experience new things. However, some of these experiences may not have always been the most pleasant. Every high school student has had their fair share of embarrassing or traumatizing incidents in those pre-pubescent years. Flannery O’Connor once said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” For one of your fellow classmates, this scare to their survivalcame at the ripe age of nine years old.
For junior Ali Reilly, her life changed in the summer of 2005 while she was enjoying a classic summer pastime. She described, “I was washing my Dad’s Volvo for fun with a friend. As I was sitting on top of the car, scrubbing away, the glass of the sunroof shattered, sending me straight down onto the console in-between the driver and passenger seats. I climbed out of the car screaming bloody murder, and my parents rushed to the emergency room. There, I received dozens of stitches but was okay in the end; just scarred…both mentally and physically.”
Ali isn’t the only one who’s been traumatized on behalf of an automobile malfunction. Freshman Peter Swindell was six years old on a trip up to his family’s summer home in Maine when he encountered some technical difficulties. “We stopped at a rest stop and my family started to walk inside. I was getting out of the car, but as I stepped out one of the belt buckles on my pants got stuck to the door handle. I ended up hanging there for a little bit until someone noticed.”
Regardless, Peter found the whole experience more comical than anything else. “My mom and sister came back to help me and we were all laughing hysterically,” he said.
However, some children aren’t able to laugh it off. It seems like every little kid has feared the monsters under their bed at least once in their life. For junior Savannah Shepard, this fear became very real for her one night when she was in fifth grade. “I was half asleep with my arm hanging out over the bed. I felt something prickly on my arm but I ignored it because I thought it was a dream. I tried to go back to sleep and felt the prickle again so I got out of bed and looked around my room for what it could’ve been.”
Savannah didn’t find the monster hiding under her bed, but something much, much worse. “I looked at my window which had a picture frame on it and saw a squirrel sitting on the picture frame. The squirrel was sitting there, haunting me. The full moon was shining right behind it – I will never forget its beady eyes illuminated by the moonlight behind it,” she said.
Although Savannah wasn’t too surprised by the squirrel because a few had been living in her attic, it was what happened next that sealed this night as one she would never forget. “I screamed ‘flyingsquirrel’ and my brother JP came in with my dog, Goocher, who caught the squirrel and killed it right in front of me.”
And of course, we all remember the times when we were forced to grow up and face reality, whether it was falling off your bike before finally getting it right, having blisters on your hands from trying to tie your shoes or the classic case of the fear of the water. Senior Greg Wagner understands what it’s like to lose your sea legs.“When I was younger I was afraid to swim, so one day at the local pool my Dad took me by surprise. He picked me up and threw me over the side and into the water.”
Those who have endured scarring childhood moments can look back on them with a new perspective, recognizing how these memories have contributed to where they are today. “Although broken glass still gives me shivers eight years later, I’m able to look back on those scarring moments and laugh,” Ali said. “It’s all a part of growing up.”
