Fear Itself

I was five years old when my father left for work, leaving me and my brand new dress alone to occupy ourselves. It was just after lunch time, just after my father had rushed home to cook me a grilled cheese (a very common lunch during the week seeing as my father is often pressed for time). He came and left as usual. I was lonely as usual, but at least I had a new dress.

It quickly became my new favorite. From the second my father brought it home from work the night before, I had fallen in love, and I insisted on wearing it today, even though I had no one to impress and would never have anyone to impress. It was an empire-waisted dress, mostly white with subtle pleats in the skirt. It had assorted coloration: patterned with an assortment of poppy flowers and leaves that looked like I had finger-painted them on the dress myself. The back was line with red buttons. I loved everything about it. I wanted to put it on when I received it, but my father had chuckled and told me to wait until tomorrow morning.

So I did. I behaved. I usually behaved, or at least I tried, but like most kids, I had a habit of getting myself into trouble, and it certainly didn’t help that I was very bright for my young age and very curious to boot. I was constantly sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. As a child, I used to break through the safety locks on the kitchen cabinets and spill the contents all over the floor. I wasn’t a bad kid, merely a bored one with no friends, no pets, and a father who spent most of the day working. He was a very important man, he would tell me. That was why he had to be away so often.

It was a fact I accepted; I didn’t really have much of a choice, honestly, but it left me restless. I had just learned to read, and coloring books could only occupy me for so long. My father knew all too well that I had a habit of rummaging through anything I could. He started locking the doors, and only he had keys, but I was just a bright as he was, if not more. It only took me a matter of days to figure out that those little pins he used to keep my hair out of my face worked rather nicely in place of a key if I wiggled it around enough, which was exactly how I managed to find my way into his office the day I was wearing my pretty new dress.

I pushed the door open, clutching Wiggles tight in my left hand. Within my father’s office was a world of mystery: I had never been allowed in here, and with good reason, I assumed, but I figured that I could get in, poke around a bit, and then leave when I was satisfied with plenty of time left before my father returned home. Easy.

My feet shuffled across the hardwood floors of the study, feeling the smooth texture of polished wood beneath them. My eyes scanned the surroundings: lots of bookshelves, a television (the only one in our home), but what really caught my eye was the desk. The desk itself was neat and organized; the drawers were what really intrigued me. I made my way over and hopped into my father’s rolling desk chair, seating Wiggles comfortably beside me as I began to open the desk drawers on my right. I looked through the first, sifting through stacks of papers and pencils, folders and a small stapler. Boring. Very boring. Not at all what I had imagined finding when I had walked in.

I looked to the desktop where my father’s computer would usually sit, but the space was empty. He must have taken it to work, I reasoned. My eyes drifted around a bit before I moved onto the second drawer, where the first thing that I glanced over was a pack of gum. I had never seen this before, so my curiosity got the better of me when I pulled it from the contents of the drawer and it held up to my face. “Bazooka,” I read aloud, sounding all the letters individually as I inspected the package. My tiny fingers pried at the red, white, and blue packaging. The cover tore, revealing even tinier packages, which confused me. I didn’t quite understand the purpose of having packages within a package.

My fingers plucked one rectangle from the bunch and popped the wrapper open. I stuck the pink block in my mouth and chewed. This was delicious, I decided. The sweet taste was like nothing I had ever experienced before, save for the taste of my toothpaste, which Father had told me was not to be eaten. I loved every moment of it, but just mere chews later, it seemed to be absent of flavor, so I chewed another… and another… and another…

There was a wad of bubblegum in my mouth, nearly to the point that I couldn’t chew it any longer, and I tried to remove it, but it seemed that I couldn’t fit both my hand and the wad of gum in my mouth, so I pushed the wad of gum forward with my tongue, taking a chunk off with my teeth. I took the gum in my hand, but I hadn’t expected it to be nearly as sticky as it was. The gum was balled up in my fist, and as I tried to spread my hand apart, the gum spread with it. In a panic, I began smacking my hand against the top of my father’s desk, tracking bits of bubblegum all over the surface. While my hand eventually cleared, the desk was suddenly spotted with sticky spots of pink bubblegum, and I still had a good chunk of bubblegum in my mouth.

I was suddenly struck with an idea: was it possible to whistle with this wad of bubblegum in my mouth? I pursed my lips, sucked in air, and proceeded to blow, expecting sound to come out. A pink bubble emerged instead. At first, I was startled, but I grew intrigued by the bubble. What would happen if I kept blowing? To my delight, the bubble grew larger. The more I blew into it, the larger it became, and this excited me, at least until I heard the front door slam, which gave me quite a fright.

I squealed a little, and that bubble popped. It didn’t just pop; it may as well have exploded because it got everywhere. There was sticky pink gum in my hair, on the desk, on my rabbit, all over my dress, and all over my father’s office. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and my father’s face flushed ghost white when he entered the doorway and saw the mess in his office.

He wasn’t happy. Nevertheless, he cleaned up the mess.

My dress ended up in the freezer. Wiggles ended up in the wash, and I ended up sitting in the bathtub as my father scraped the gum out of my hair with peanut butter and a toothbrush.

I was never allowed to have chewing gum ever again.