I love my basement. Every time I go down there it smells like Kid Pix. Ah, but Kid Pix is a computer game, and so therefore has no smell, you say, you clever thing, you. But when I was younger I used to go down there during the summer and play Kid Pix to my heart's content, back when there was no warehouse and no summer reading and no worries at all.
So whenever I smell that summery basementy smell, it immediately makes me recall Kid Pix. Smell is my strongest memory-sense, as they say is usually the case with most people, so when I smell an old smell that I hadn't been around for a long time, the memory comes back with such force that I am completely transported to that time and place long ago. So it is with my basement.
I used to spend a lot of time down there, doing all kinds of various and sundry things. I used to do my homework down there, and I used to close the door softly behind myself and then throw my back pack down the first flight of stairs and I'd throw myself down after it, and I'd hit the turn in the stairs with a WHAM! and then I'd pretend that I just woke up from being unconcious and I'd pretend I didn't know where I was and sometimes my leg would be broken and sometimes my arm or collar bone and I'd discover it as I was trying to get up to look around at this strange new place. I'd have to favor it and try to not use it as I levered my tired body enough to look around. Sometimes it was a prison, and I'd run to the top of the stairs just to pretend that the door was locked and there was no way out. I'd pretend to pound on it, but not really because then someone in the house might have actually heard me and come to see what I was doing and there was no good way to explain that ... . Sometimes I'd pretend that I'd been transported into another world where I had spent many years and had many adventures and then suddenly, inexplicably, I was back in my old childhood basement and no time had gone by at all, like in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. If this was the case I would see my backpack on the ground beside me and I'd go through everything inside like I hadn't seen it in a million years. My old stapler! My old desk, new again! I would have completely forgotten how to do complex division, of course, because no one uses that in real life, but I'd have an entire assignment on it that... my god! was it 1999! I was in highschool! It was due tomorrow! Then I sit at the desk and do my homework and marvel at how I still remembered My Antonia even though I had only half read it many years and many memories before. If it was the prison scenario, I would get bored of shouting, "I'm innocent!" and I'd wander down the stairs to see what the deal was. There I would see that I was being well kept, there was a piano and a foosball table, and I'd tinker with these before I discovered the backpack- which was full of history assignments and science worksheets that some lazy student (who could it be? the last inmate?) had never done. Knowing that I was going to be here for a while, and enchanted that I knew all of the answers as if I had just been studying this stuff that very day (how convenient!) I would occupy myself by doing the student's homework for him or her.
Sometimes I'd lug my dad's legal dictionary into the basement and pretend that I was afraid to open it because it was dangerous. Instead, I'd run my hand along the swirls that the pages made when the book was closed and pretend that the magic was tempting me to open the book... it was irresistable... I must open it! BUt NO. I put it away. My will was stronger than that!
le sigh. I never pretend like that anymore.
Ah the basement. Cool- musty- strange dead bugs in dusty corners. You can hang up a Sky Chair under the deck and trail your hand along the rough cement and absent-mindedly pet the dog. Find picture albums from Super Bowl Sunday of 89, that model plane I started making but never finished, the canvas that Carol and Katherine and I painted of a swamp just because everyone else was painting something happy and we wanted to be contrary, a framed drawing of a fish. Just messy enough to be interesting.

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:[email protected]"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.