Panda Rider

Besides my "Rainbow People," I can't recall really experiencing anything out of the norm in our manufactured home. However, the next home I lived in, the duplex, proved to be a lot more active. After all, I received a visitor my very first night there.

I believe I was either five or I had just turned six when we moved into the duplex. Given how big my brothers and I were at the time it seemed huge. Now I'm sure it would feel cramped. Anyway, we had to be out of the manufactured home by the next day. The move was very sudden and my dad had to spend the entire night moving things to our new home. Since I was just a little thing I got the luxury of going to sleep at 9 and not having to help at all, since I was pretty weak and useless.

Here's the layout of what that room looked like (shhhhh, it's a quick sketch!):

Yes, very pretty and artistic, I know, but this is going to have to be the representation for my stories that take place in the duplex, so get used to it. Anyway, this room really was large so there was a lot of space between my bed and the bin full of stuffed animals.

I was trying to sleep (facing the wall and under the blankets because that's the only safe way to sleep when you're a child) when I felt something hit the back of my leg. I was used to my cat, Cookie, crawling up in bed with me and setting in the crook of my legs so at first I thought it was her. And then I remembered that our cats were outdoor and indoor cats and they had not yet been brought to the new house. Very slowly and with great caution I started to pull the blanket down from around my head and peek over at the foot of my bed.

Staring right at me were the marble eyes of a stuffed panda that I knew for a fact was sitting at the very top of my stuffed animal bin when I had crawled into bed. Naturally, I did the only thing a five/six-year-old could do. I opened my mouth and let forth a blood curdling scream.

Over the years I have replayed this event in my head many, many times. My door had been open just in case I called out for my mom. This means that I was able to see her and both my brothers come running up the stairs to try and figure out what had caused me to scream so loud. While I would have loved to blame my brothers for this act of terror neither of them were quick enough or quiet enough to have thrown my stuffed animal at me and gotten away without me noticing them.

I don't know how my mom convinced me to stay in my room that night, or really any other night. That room would hold some of the scariest moments of my life over the next few years. I should have made my brothers switch rooms with me right then, but I didn't. I mean nothing like that had ever happened to me before, so why should I expect it to happen again, right?

FLY PANDA CALL ME CRAZY!  

@FlyPandaFly