Another Liminal Space
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So I had a few people ask me to talk about more of my weird liminal space encounters so I’M GUNNA! Because this stuff means so much to me!
Okay, so this one might be one of my fuzziest yet strongest memories. Once when I was really young and visiting my mom in Oregon, I was left to hang out with some random kids. I don’t think I knew them really, just some random kids from a neighborhood. Again, really shocked I was never abducted, the 90s were different. I remember one kid was older than I was and the other kid was around my age. I must have been about six or seven at the time. Anyways, the older kid, let’s call him Harold, told the younger kid, let’s say Timmy, and I that there was an arcade near by and we should go there to win some prizes and play some games.
Me, being a naïve kid, didn’t even think twice about asking an adult or even questioning what we’d do there without money. I just blindly followed Harold, but boy was I glad that I did. Again, it’s vague, but I remember walking down this path behind the houses. It was just a long stretch of grass leading to a hill with a gate at the top. It was so surreal, it looked a lot like this:
I barely remember the trip to the arcade other than it was most likely a Chuck E. Cheese. All I remember is we managed to split a dollar between us and we found some tokens laying around. In the end I won a ton of tickets playing the quarter flip game. You know, the dinosaur one with the volcano? I remember getting a ton of bracelets and vampire fangs. But the only other thing I remember is playing with our toys on the way home and stopping to hang out in an abandoned house. We talked about making it our clubhouse and grandiose dreams of decorating it. Something about each of us getting our own corner in our own color. But when my mom eventually picked me up, I never saw those kids again. I never did make a sweet clubhouse either, but it was fun to dream.
I wish it wasn’t so vague, I almost wonder if it wasn’t a dream. It’s so vivid though, something I see so strongly in my mind’s eye. Especially the houses. They were so perfect and colorful, reminded me of a scene from a Dr. Sues movie. It also makes me so sad to know that things are so different now. I miss feeling safe enough to enter a random house, to hang out with kids I never met before. It’s moments like this I miss a lot from childhood.
