Two Truths and a Tale_part 1

So this is my first blog. Where do I start? Do I need to attract your attention and entice you or can I just get right down to business? Hmmm, I think a little warming up is in order. I know! Let’s play “Two Truths and a Tale.” Good idea, Monty! (I call myself “Monty” when I come up with a grand idea or when I do something really stupid. I call myself “Monty” a lot.)

Okay, here is how this is going to work:

I am going to tell you 3 stories: VAMPIRE BAT, TOE STORY and STUPID GIRL. Then you have to guess which one is the tale / fictional / a lie. It’s very simple. Then post your guess on the feedback section of my blog. Got it? I’ll give you the secret answer in one of my upcoming blogs.

Vampire Bat
When I was 18 years old I went to Costa Rica on this faith-based / Peace Core kind of mission right after the country had a massive 7.5 earthquake. I spent my nights with a local family who just happened to have an extremely hot daughter about my age. I said to myself, “Monty, this is the one. You have got to impress this girl.” Well I did just that but not in the way that I had imagined. In the middle of the night the creepiest thing ever happened. I was sleeping in a room all by myself in my whitie-tighties (because that’s what Canadian kids do) when something landed in my hair. I panicked and quickly threw it away. It came back. I frantically threw it away a second time but it came right back. Ahhh! It felt like a mouse with wings and it was crawling around in my hair. I jolted out of my sleeping bag and started screaming like a little girl at the top of my lungs. The entire family, including the caliente Latina, came rushing into the room, turned on the light and found me standing in my whitie-tighties completely freaked out. With wild hand gestures and grunts in broken Spanish I explained to them what had happened. They looked around the room and saw nothing. I feared they wouldn’t believe me. Then they explained to me that sometimes vampire bats found their way into the local homes through ventilation gaps common in buildings in that region of Costa Rica.

I don’t know about you but the words, “vampire bat” evoked tremendous dread in me and conjured up images etched in my psyche from late night horror flicks. I checked my neck…no teeth marks, no blood. Whew, that was a close one. The two boys in the family joined me in the room that night and I demanded that the light be left on to deter that bat from coming back. The girl and I never got married.


Toe Story
I grew up in a gorgeous rural town in British Columbia, Canada. Flowing down from the nearby scenic mountains are two rivers that provide plenty of playtime for locals and give the town of Grand Forks, B.C., its name. Fifteen minutes down the winding road, past the orchards and fertile farmlands and just beyond a treacherous waterfall is the private yet stunning; Christina Lake (the warmest tree-lined lake in all of Canada.) The summers there are a lot of fun and are hotter than you think. It’s not uncommon for the temperature to rise above 100 ºF / 38 ºC. So if you don’t water your lawn it will turn brown and die. The grass was still wet from the sprinkler that morning.

I had been enthralled with the joyride on the back of the riding lawn mower until my eldest brother told me to go inside because he was going to start the blade. I was maybe 5 or 6 at the time and I didn’t really care what he was going to do. Start the blade, shmart the shmade. I went inside for a short while pretending to obey. Then I went to the back door and began to slip on my rain boots only to be reprimanded by my mother for not wearing sneakers on a sunny day. I grumpily said, “I hate tying shoes,” then I ran outside with my boots on which unfortunately were very slick on the bottom.

I saw my brother making his way toward the blue spruce trees at the end of our property. My plan was to make a run for it and surprise him by jumping on his back as he circled a tree. I made my move with cheetah-like instincts. He then made a sharp turn I wasn’t expecting. I tried to put on the brakes but I had no traction with the rain boots on the wet grass. I slid feet first towards the lawn mower. He saw me at the last second and tried to stop but it was too late. The lawn mower had consumed one of my legs up to the knee. Thankfully, the rubber boot, along with my foot stalled the lawnmower.

My brother, with legendary muscle and adrenaline, lifted the heavy mower off of me and literally tossed it aside. He carried me inside to my horrified siblings and mother. My calf muscle was almost entirely removed, my three middle toes were hanging only by the skin on the bottom of my foot and my two outside toes were missing. My mum told my siblings to go look for them. They found them in the neighbors’ yard.

On the way to the hospital I remember asking my mum if I was going to die. Then in the hospital I remember inhaling some strange air through a tube and watching the room start to spin. I woke up in a different hospital about an hour away in the city of Trail, B.C. The doctors there were much better evidenced by the sewing job they did on my foot. My baby toe was reattached upside-down.

Stupid Girl
There was this family down the road from where I grew up that had more than it’s share of ill-fated happenings. “Fat Frankie,” as they used to call him, set the bar pretty high for the bullies in our area who looked up to him as the model low-life. He used to terrorize his sisters and the rest of us younger kids in the neighborhood. And there always seemed to be a ripple effect from Frankie’s actions. The impish things he did were often mimicked and repeated, sometimes even in accidental or mysterious ways.

My parents went bowling with their parents every Thursday night and beforehand we would sometimes eat dinner together. On one occasion, in front of us all, Fat Frankie stabbed his sister Elizabeth in the forearm with a fork because she took the last pork chop. The fork must have dug into her muscle tissue at least half an inch because it stood there sticking straight up out of her arm. Obviously, Liz screamed and then her mom screamed and then her dad started chasing Frankie around the house. I will never forget that nauseating feeling I had after watching that meathead stab his sister. That incident turned out to be an omen that I should have heeded.

Now the girls in that family weren’t all that bad looking. The youngest one, Emma, was actually kind of cute but still a little scary. She was a year older than me but had failed a grade so she was in my class. We were both on the school track and field team and had qualified to compete in Vancouver for the Provincial Championships. I think she ran hurdles and the 200 meter and I threw javelin. Right before our biggest competition I was throwing very well on the practice field, with enough distance to possibly beat the provincial record for my age group. Emma decided to pick up one of the javelins and take playful aim at my feet. She was just trying to mess with me by making me jump and dance a little. Her forward thrusts into the ground with the javelin were getting harder and harder and closer and closer. I kept telling her to stop but she was one of those people without the normal shut-off valve the rest of us have. My feet were already mangled from the lawnmower, I didn’t need another accident. Sure enough, she got me.

Not only did she get me she started jumping up and down chanting this happy little mantra, “I got him, I got him, I got him.” Then she suddenly clued into reality and said in a lower, deeply concerned voice, “I got him.”

Unlike the fork in her sister’s arm the javelin didn’t stick and stand straight up. It was probably too heavy to do that so it just fell over. Instantaneously the top of my shoe turned red and by the time I got my shoe off my sock was covered in blood. She stabbed me on the top-front part of my foot. Thankfully there was no permanent damage but it hurt like hell and took a while to heal.

I never did get a chance to go for the javelin record that year… thanks to that stupid girl.


Lamont
www.lamontsongs.com