Spooky experiences grab us by the neck and shake us up, don’t they? Tis the season ghosts and great big black spiders show up unexpectedly to give us a thrill.
Spiders are actually pretty smart creatures. Except for the jumping spiders, most of them spin a sticky web, and when the web moves, Dinner is served!
Maybe we’re not so different from the spider in that we are surrounded by a web of past experiences. When something touches a memory, or we visit an “old haunt,” the memory comes back to life.
I was sitting in the bleachers at the Mesa City Junior High wrestling tournament last week when it happened to me. Yes, I know this isn’t exactly the spookiest setting for a spider/web story, yet I swear on all the creaky doors of a haunted house, it really happened.
I was there to see Tru, my grandson, wrestle in the finals when I realized that I was the spider, and this tournament was a very familiar setting—with the smells of the gym, the sweaty guys (and now girls), the whirl of activity with three mats going on at the same time, coaches yelling, parents holding their breath as they contort their mouths and twist left or right, as if they’re helping their wrestlers who’s competing—all of it. I literally looked back behind me and realize that this tournament was touching a set of decades old memories from high school.
It was more than a single memory; it was a web of connections. What’s more, it wasn’t just my memory. That setting threw me back to the teenage me who wore a red cheerleading outfit and bounced around on the floor cheering for “my” wrestlers with the undying support only a young girl gives. Wrestling was my world, the only thing I cared about for several years. (Well, that and boys.)
It tried to explain it to my son, who asked if the tournament brought back memories. Yes and No. I didn’t try to explain how the web surrounding me opened up with dreamlike qualities—if just for a moment—while I sat there re-experiencing my 15 year old girlhood thoughts about boys, jobs, and questions about where I’d live and who I’d become.
It was a spooky experience that made me glad that most of those questions have already been answered. My life turned out differently than I had planned, yet better than I could have imagined—because at that age, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
My web of memories was set off as the result of A PLACE.
Where are your OLD HAUNTS? Maybe this is the perfect season to revisit the places you spent your teen years. And while you’re at it, grab a pen and paper (or trusty computer) and write about it so the memory won’t slip away.