Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:07:02 -0800 From: "Maureen S. O'Brien" Subject: NEW: Vacation 1974 Title: Vacation, 1974 Author:Maureen S. O'Brien Rating: G Category: V Keywords: Pre-XF Spoilers: Pilot Disclaimer: The X-Files belongs to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen, and Fox. Author's Note: We didn't go to Quonochontaug or anywhere else that summer, but everything else is true. I got the idea for this after reading "Halflife 1974" by Joanne Humby. Because around here, 1974 still means just one thing. I am this many...one, two, three...and I will be four. On August... I don't remember. But last year I leaned too far, and I burned my chin on the big "3" candle on my birthday cake. It hurt. But my daddy took me back to the bathroom and put cream on my chin, and then it was all right. And I got all kinds of Raggedy Ann things, but I liked my finger puppet best even though it was the smallest. Well, that and my Flatsy doll. Because it is flat. I don't have any sisters. I have two brothers. And mommy, and daddy, and grandma, and grandpa, and great-grandpa. We are on vacation. With grandpa. We live at home. Oh. We are from...from Beavercreek. Not from Xenia. But my daddy works in Xenia. He is a teacher. At Warner. Well, except Warner fell down. It fell down. Like this. Boom! Because of the tornado. In April. Yeah. It was on the news. Mr. Cronkite came to Xenia. I didn't know he could go places. I thought he was just on TV! No, we weren't there. My daddy, he had the flu, so my mommy said he had to stay home from school. So I couldn't go to nursery school, because it was in Xenia too, at the Nazarene church. It fell down, too. No, the other kids were okay. My nursery school was in a basement. That's where you go if there's a tornado. Did you know that? Or a closet. Or a bathroom. And you cover your head like this. And the wind gets real loud, like a train, and it goes around and around like this.... I didn't get to see it. But we had hail. We never have hail, almost. But it hailed and hailed, and you could hear it hitting the roof. And when we looked outside, it was like snowballs thiiis big falling down from the sky, and the wind was blowing like this. Oh, yeah...and the sky, it was yellow.... The sky shouldn't be yellow. It looks like it ought to be bright and sunny, but it's not. It's bad. It's scary. But Mr. Whitney, he knew the tornado was coming. He said so, on the TV and the radio, and he showed it on the brand new weather radar. So all the people went and hid, and when the houses fell down and the trees fell over, there weren't as many people hurt. And my daddy's track team went home earlier, so they weren't there when the school fell down. And the kids that were there went and hid, and they were okay, too. And my daddy was home, so the school didn't fall on him, and now he can play with us every day. Except when he is taking a nap, so he can get up and teach the Xenia kids at night. When the other towns aren't using their schools. I'm glad he is home. I'm glad he is okay. I would have been okay. I would have hid in the basement when the wind got loud and the church fell down. You don't have tornados here, do you? Oh. I've heard of hurricanes. Are they scary, too? Oh. That sounds scary. But you can see them coming for days and days, at least. It's the stuff that happens fast that's really scary. Of course I'm smart. I read books. They make you smart. You are pretty nice for a boy. My big brother, he's mean. He likes to play like he is a hijacker when my little brother and I are playing that we're in a plane. He jumps on the bunkbed and he makes a finger gun and he says he's going to shoot us unless we do like he says. You wouldn't do that, would you? Well, sometimes he's mean and sometimes he's not. But sometimes I'm mean, too. And boy, my little brother can be really mean! Oh, I forgot. I'm s'posed to ask if you have brothers and sisters. Oh. That's sad. Don't worry! She'll come back! Well, yeah, sometimes people don't come back. Like the people who didn't hide from the tornado good enough. But you can't do anything about it. It's not your fault. If you can't remember what happened, why do you think it's your fault? You were probably knocked out. You should have covered your head, like this. Or hid. If you can't remember, how can you tell it wouldn't help? What I mean is, you can't sit around feeling sad. The people in Xenia had to start fixing things up and pulling the trees out of the street and stuff. My daddy had to go teach school to the Xenia kids at night, in schools in different towns, because you still have to go to school even if it fell down. And then you also have to figure out how to see the tornado coming earlier next time, and how to teach people to hide better, and how to build houses and stuff so they don't fall down. That's what you have to do. But you can't forget. Because sometime the sky is going to turn yellow again. And if a tornado comes, everybody has to know what to do. Maureen S. O'Brien mobrien@dnaco.net http://www.dnaco.net/~mobrien/archive