After I moved out for good, my parents took to vaporizing every memory of my childhood to create an oceanic-colored workout haven in what had once been my room. Gone are the closet doors that were emblazoned with sappy New Kids on the Block lyrics after elementary school love gone wrong, height markings from 6th grade when L, A, and I generously gave ourselves an extra inch or two (which I still have not achieved), and the date of my first real kiss. I’m proud to report that the pink duck-printed wallpaper I chose in kindergarten did not go down without a fight. After 18 years of tenancy, the ducks had absorbed themselves into the very fibers that make up the drywall and had to be sanded out. I like to imagine that the ducks screamed with agony and vowed revenge at that point, but it suffices me to know that my dad cut himself repeatedly in the duck removal process.
But do a few cans of paint and a sander erase memories or mask them? Are the ducks going to come quacking through the blue paint and scare my mom off the treadmill (again)? Will the next homeowner years down the road one day uncover that I kept track of important life events on a closet door before I got my first journal? I can only hope so.
How could one small girl have done so much damage to a room? There are battle wounds on the tan carpet from the time I dribbled red nail polish, the many times I splattered Diet Coke everywhere, and my mom’s personal favorite, the bleached-out spot where I missed my hand and shot alpha hydroxy-laced lotion on the carpet. That bleached spot represents a feverish night where my dad and I learned to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, leave well enough alone, and the meaning of every other cliché my angry mother spat at us during her spot-discovery hissy fit. Dad, always a trooper, thought that we should try to mask the spot rather than just cover it or let it exist in its full glory. Now, tan carpet shouldn’t be that difficult to match, but when you’re starting with a sickeningly tangerine-colored blemish the size of a dinner plate (I shouldn’t have tried to wipe it up first), the task becomes far more difficult. We started by pouring Diet Coke on the spot to neutralize (and quench the thirst of in a calorie-free manner) the color. That didn’t work, so we moved down a notch on the color wheel and tried Worcestershire sauce next. That wasn’t quite right either, and the spot was getting rather fragrant at that point. The last attempt was coffee. Well, coffee may stain teeth to the color of my bedroom carpet, but apparently it doesn’t do the same to other materials. As we were contemplating not only how to return color to the carpet but how to get the smell out, my bleary-eyed mom came in the room to see why we were still up. We jerked our heads up guiltily and her Momvision focused in on the spot. “Pat!!” she shrieked. He pointed at me. “Kelly!!” she corrected. She was livid and practically pushed us aside to get a better look. “What. Have you done,” she measured. I just looked at her pathetically. There’s nothing you can do in a situation like this. She won’t feel sorry for me no matter what I say, so the best course of action is to back away and let her attack the blotch herself. “For Pete’s sake…” she mumbled. “Who’s Pete?” I whispered, to which my mom glared a response and my dad stammered something about going downstairs and “makin’ himself up an Alka-Seltzer.” The next day, the spot was covered with a small blue rug that my mom threatened me not to mess up under penalty of death. Luckily the treadmill covers the spot nicely now in their new room.
I don’t know if I expected my parents to freeze time and keep my room in tact as an homage to their little princess’ youth. Okay, I do know. That’s exactly what I wanted. I’m an attention whore. Maybe light a scented candle each night under my framed senior portrait? Nothing big. My dad presented me one night with a bag of “cremains” from my room. Looking at the bag of pink dust that once was wallpaper made trite, melodramatic tears well-up in my eyes and an equally banal montage course through my mind. The projection TV in my head showed me at 3 watching Sesame Street, coloring peacefully at my table, and singing along to the educational anthems of our youth. I then saw myself at 5 pretending to be a Hallmark cashier ringing up all of my treasures for unseen customers. I was a strange child. That scene faded—no, this is a good place for a star wipe—into me sitting on my bed at 11 crying about having to get glasses and wiping my nearsighted peepers on Teddy’s absorbent, furry ears. Alright, now fade into me at 15 crying, again, about not getting asked to the Homecoming dance, and then segue into me packing my most-prized possessions to take away to college, not knowing at the time that my room would never again truly feel like it was mine.
Somewhere under all that paint and new pictures are the scarred walls of my childhood. I’ll admit that I was slightly bitter about the transformation for a while, but it’s hard to ignore how good the room looks without me there to muck it up. There are still relics of the 18 years spent there that will never go away. One can still hear that god-forsaken Woodson High School marching band clearly on a crisp fall day, enjoy the same view into the house behind us, and know that the bleached-out spot will one day be unearthed again to taunt my mom with its unnatural color and faint scent of everything brown in the kitchen.
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