
Childhood Epiphanies
by Dean Earlix

The classic utterances of childhood may be responsible for more split
guts than an enteric surgeon with the hiccups, but epiphany--the
lightning bolt realization that what you believed all your (short)
life is the teetering misconstruction of juvenile intellect--holds
the most wonder in my own memories. Not to mention trauma. 

                             *     *     *

"Teacher, Teacher!" I yelled "Someone wrote the F-word on a post!"

"Where?" She asked, horrified.

"Outside," I answered, with a six-year-old's notion of precision.

"You'd better show me."

I showed her, along with half the first grade class. It was 1967,
when curse words still had _umph_, and I was short of breath just
thinking about the scandal my discovery would cause. Instead, she
laughed.

"What's so funny?" I demanded.

"They actually wrote 'F word'," she replied, still chuckling.

Another in the class asked the question burning in my own mind: "You
mean that's not it?"

                          *     *     *

"Mommy, mommy!" I shouted at age eight in the allergist's waiting
room. "This lady is deformed!"

"Shhhhh. Which lady?" she quietly asked (people in the room where
already staring). I pointed to the magazine photograph of a huge
growth on the upper torso of a famous actress.  

"No, Hon. Those are breasts."

I looked at Mom's blouse, which held my definition of "breasts" and
back to the picture. "You sure?"  

I'm told everyone in the waiting room broke up. 

                              *     *     *

"Can I ask you somfin, man?" said my fellow nine-year-old at summer
camp. 

"Okay."

"The sun follows me around everywhere I go.  Like, does that mean I'm
the savior?"

Well, since he mentioned it, I realized it followed me around too. I
gave it some careful thought. "No," I told him. "I think it does that
to everyone."

"Oh," he replied. "That's a relief."

                              *     *     *

I once thought that when we departed childhood we left all those
childish misunderstandings behind.  That must've been asking for it.
An epiphany at age 21 proved it was a lifelong chore: For the
hundredth time, I read "SIGNAL AHEAD" painted on the road asphalt.

From the age of seven on, I had seen my parents signal a turn
whenever we came to such a sign, so I already knew what the request
meant.  As my own signal blinked and I waited for the light to  
change, I wondered absently how someone from another country might
misunderstand "SIGNAL AHEAD".  Hah hah hah, they might think it meant
there was a traffic signal ahead.  Hah, hah, hmmmmm.            {RAH}
--------------
Dean Earlix can be reached at dearlix@teleport.com. In real life, he
is a waterscaper and fish doctor in Southern Oregon.  Really.
