in which i am revealed to be a deranged eight year-old

for those of you who don't know, i'm actually d.c. born and bred. i came into this world at georgetown hospital on january 11, 1980, and was raised from that point on at 1417 44th st.nw, an oak-lined street not too far from georgetown.

it was a great street to grow up on. there were billions of kids in the neighborhood, and we'd play hide and seek, and kick the can, and the game of "fill your red wagon to the brim with millions of acorns and try to sell them to your neighbors for a penny."

my brother and i were best friends with a brother and sister who lived two houses down from us. they were named j.c. and katy. j.c. was exactly my age, and katy was exactly peter's age, and we were a little terror-welding group of freaky children. we'd have races on the big wheels, swing from the rope behind our backyard in the glover archibald park forest, and eat apples slices with peanut butter almost every afternoon. life was good.

life became even better when our little sister, margaret, was born the day after christmas in '87. i remember, upon hearing that my mom had given birth, that peter and i jumped wildly around our basement, screeching "marggie's here! marggie's here!" (we'd decided that margaret was too long and hard to say, hence the marggie. with a hard G.) we were thrilled to have a little sister...to torment!

what we didn't know were the nefarious plans that our parents had for our future in d.c. seems they thought that a 3 bedroom, rather small house in an urban setting, where private school was costing them $12,000+ a year per kid, was perhaps not the best place in which to raise three children.

and so we up and moved to vienna, va, around 1988. i liked our suburban neighborhood alright; it was a brand-new development with six houses on the edge of a development from the 50s. there were a few kids around, but we still missed j.c. and katy; no one could replace them as our true neighborhood pals.

a month or two after our move, j.c. and katy finally came out to visit us. my brother and i were thrilled - but when they got there, we realized that, well, crap. there wasn't shit to do in vienna. we didn't have a playground to mess around on; the neighborhood was rather open, and not really a good site for hide and seek; and there weren't enough kids around to get together a game of kickball.

so the four of us sat in our unfurnished basement, mulling over our options for entertainment.

i don't remember who suggested it, or who seconded it, or what in the world prompted anyone to get this into our heads, but it was somehow eventually decided that the best way to fill the afternoon was to write several threatening notes and leave them, unsigned, in our neighbors' mailboxes.

yes! this was a great idea! what fun! our neighbors will be so scared! moo ha ha look at the power we are welding in our grubby little hands! we didn't actually articulate these words, but i'm sure similar thoughts ran through our tiny brains. so i grabbed some sheets of paper from the printer, a red sharpie (because the notes needed to look like they were written in REAL BLOOD), and we set to work.

half an hour later, we had a multitude of notes, ripped around the edges and crumpled and uncrumpled a few times for authenticity's sake. the only thing we didn't do was dip them in tea to make them look like they were from 1776. they contained such various terrible and deadly threats as, "leave now no one likes you here go away," "we are going to kidnap you if you don't leave," "we are watching you, watch out, we will get you," "we will come to your house in the middle of the night," and "we are coming for you and maybe will kill you." all written in wobbly capital letters with a plethora of exclamation marks. no kidding, this was some sinister shit. we grabbed the notes, covertly shoved one in EVERY SINGLE NEIGHBORHOOD MAILBOX, and ran away, giggling maniacally.

then, as children do, we found something else to occupy ourselves and promptly forgot all about the psychotic letter writing campaign.

later that night, as my brother and i were watching tv in our bedroom, our mother stood in the doorway with a confused look on her face. as soon as i saw her, my stomach dropped. "oh shit," i said to myself, "i totally forgot i wrote all those psychotic letters and now my mom found out and i'm about to get fucked up." or something along those lines. probably not as profane.

"catherine," my mom said, "i just talked to mrs. brown on the phone. she said she got a strange letter in her mailbox. do you or peter know how it got there?"

peter and i stared straight ahead at the tv, silent for a second or two. then, with the praticed poker face of a decades-long liar, i spoke up. "nope. i have no idea what she's talking about."

"okay," said my mother, leaving the room, obviously relieved that her children were not insane sociopaths, bent on wrecking the harmonious atmosphere and relationships of our new home and new friends.

peter and i stared at each other, stricken. the look on our faces totally meant, "shit, we totally fucked up by writing those crazy-ass letters, and now we've lied about it to boot, and we're basically going to burn eternally in hell." it's a tough thing when an eight year old girl and her six year old brother realize they're going to dance with satan. seconds later we had tackled our mom in the hallway and were sobbing hysterically as we confessed our sins.

anyway, this entire story has nothing to do with halloween, or anything, really, except i was bored at work, but the moral is: do not write threatening notes to your neighbors, or as punishment, you WON'T GET TO HAVE A BIRTHDAY PARTY THAT YEAR. and really, what's scarier than that?