#corni lore

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

I don't remember if I ever posted about this, but, when I was in Louisiana, we lived on an ARMY base called Ft. Polk. At the time, it was legitimately one of the worst army bases at the time, like. Like, "You fucked up bad to get assigned here." kinda base.

So, at this particular time, my dad had been deployed to Bosnia, This was like, 97? 98? So major shit was going on over there and I was about about 8 or 9, maybe? My mom was still home with me until she got the call to go to Florida for training. (this wasn't the first time I was left behind, CUE ABANDONMENT AND SEPERATION ANXIETY!! 8'D)

It was so short notice that she had no time to contact family to send me there, so she ended up leaving me with a baby sitter, who was the wife of another squadron member. She was an army wife, (not enlisted) and she had literally just had a baby some weeks or a month or so prior to him getting shipped off too.

Nobody was having a great time. Both my parents were gone. My closest family was on the east coast. I didn't know WHAT the hell was going on with my dad, my two dogs were in the kennel and my only cat was relegated to the bedroom I was given because my babysitter did not want her around her new baby, but I couldn't just stay in the room because baby sitter wanted me to hang out with her and her brand new baby, (yeah. No.) So only time I could hang out with my one family member, I could only do at bedtime. And the babysitter would always put my hair in braided pigtails WHICH I HATED!!!

I'm explaining all of this to come context to the situation...

I... didn't know/understand this at the time, and it's only something I'm just now (in my mid 30s) starting to realize that the babysitter may have been going through some postpartum psychosis stuff at the time...

One night, around 9pm. I was asleep in my bed, because it was a school night, when Babysitter rushed into the room and shook me awake and telling me to get out of bed and get dressed, because "we have to go! right now! We HAVE to get out of here!!!"

So I'm like, "wha? okay..." and stumble out of bed and trying to get dressed and she was packing the baby in the carseat and i'm like, "what's going on...?"

And she wouldn't tell me. She just said we have to go.

So, I get in the car and she starts driving. And driving. and driving. and not answering any of my questions. I'm just in the back seat and watching this woman I barely know sobbing as she's driving in the dead of night.

I fall asleep eventually and when I wake up, it's like dawn and my mom is there.

So I run up to her, like, "MOMMY!" and she brings me into her barracks where I sit on her bed and watch Twin Peaks while she's making calls and was asking me about the babysitter and I just told her she woke me up and wouldn't tell me anything but she was crying the whole time

So I asking her questions about where we were and why I was there and she was like, "you’re in Florida." and I'm like, "Cool, are we going to Disney?"

and she's like, "No. I'm going to have to drive you back home myself." and I'm like, "Are you staying home with me?" and she explains that she still has the training to do but they're letting her go long enough to take me back.

I don't remember much else. I think she took me back, and I stayed with the babysitter, who seemed MUCH more different after that. But the training ended shortly after that and my mom was able to come back home.

When I was telling my spouse and aunt this (my aunt's been very curious about this time period) they looked at me in horror and were like, "It... sounds like she was having some kind of psychotic break... You're lucky she didn't try to drive you into the Gulf!" (of mexico)

Me: ..... Huh.

So there's some Corni Lore for ya! 8'D

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it