History

A few years back, my Mom, Dad, sister, and brother traveled down to Georgia to visit some family on my mother’s side. We were staying with my aunt Joanne in her new house just outside of Atlanta in a small development called Newnan. This was quite a different setting from her old house in Peachtree City, where we’d stayed almost every summer when we lived in Germany. I’d grown so familiar with that house, its size, the winding, wooded driveway from the road, the in-ground pool with blistering hot concrete all around it, and my favorite, the old rectangular trampoline.

Peachtree City was my only experience with the United States growing up, the only time I saw commercials on TV, caught lightning bugs, watched Major League Baseball, and got sunburned. I remember my overwhelming feeling being one of Moreness. Not in some anti-materialist nonsense that I would’ve preached a few years ago, I just remember the States having more of everything. More channels, more streets, more cereals with cartoon characters, more people that spoke English, and so on. I was enthralled with American television as a kid. The idea of 44 channels blew my mind, which I’m sure was becoming more and more jelly-like every summer we returned.

Aunt Joanne’s house in Peachtree was probably very “modern” when it was built in the early 70’s. Lots of angles and weirdly sloping rooflines dominated the all brown exterior. The master bathroom had a bidet (which I allegedly took for a fancy, Matt-sized water fountain at some point), and a huge marble bathtub which matched the floors and walls, surrounded by mirrors, and equipped with jets. The main living room, which I only remember as a place to run through between the Marble Wonderland and the kitchen, had vaulted ceilings and a huge fireplace that I never saw lit. These were the days when Uncle Bob and Aunt Joanne were still together.

Here in Newnan, the new house is, well, a new house. Lots of white, new furniture, the carpet looks like one should never tread upon it, and the sod in the lawn still looks a bit suspicious, like it might pick up and scamper down the street at any time. Everything felt exposed, without the tall pines I remembered from the old house. This was after we’d been living in Wisconsin for a few years, so Georgia was no longer my only vision of America, but Peachtree City was still my only image of Georgia. Bob was gone, and this was all different.

As I was growing more and more used to American things being normal, something still struck me as both American and foreign: Alarm systems in homes. Aunt Joanne showed us all how to disarm the thing within thirty seconds of coming into the house with a secret code. That part made sense to me. What was confusing was that during the day, any window or door that was opened produced an authoritative bleep from the alarm box. Even while the system was shut down; it seemed like an over zealous mall security guard, informing us that, yes I had noticed that window being opened in sector 17-G at 3:17pm, even though I’m on my break. This was pretty noticeable since Georgia in the summer demands lots of heading outside to cook in the sun and back inside for more iced tea. If I ever move to the south, God help me, I’ll end up just sitting on my porch drinking tea all day long. And when my metabolism decides to be reasonable, I’ll become a blob.

One night found me in my temporary bedroom, the sunroom of the house. There were two sets of French doors leading into it, split by the ever useful Southern fireplace in the living room. The couch I was sleeping on that week faced the doors and a television, which was on the other side of the fireplace, facing the windows. It was late, and my fascination with cable TV still hadn’t worn off so I was flipping through the trash at about one in the morning. Everyone else had gone to sleep hours ago, and I needed to soon. Everything I could see of the house through the glass doors was black and still.

Then I heard it. The unmistakeable bleep from the kitchen. Something had just opened, and the blackness suggested it wasn’t a sibling rooting about for a snack.

*BLEEP*

The second one came before I had even properly formed an argument in my head against hearing the first. There was no doubt as to what I’d heard.

I thought about flicking off the television and inching my body down to a prone position on the couch, so as to render myself invisible to any intruder.

But oh how the bladder betrays. I was suddenly painfully aware of the immense, uncompromising pressure that bellowed “Try to go to sleep now and you’ll be sorry.” I was stuck. There was a murderer in the house and my own body was betraying me. The fear of a bloodthirsty marauder battled with the possibility of social destruction. With no options left save colossal humiliation the next morning, I sat up, bolted through the doors closest to my goal and sprinted through the house into the bathroom without looking over my shoulder into the kitchen. After locking the door and taking care of business, I was struck with a new problem: Now what? Surely the bandit heard or saw me streak in here, and he’s waiting to pounce as soon as I come out. I looked around my tiny prison for inspiration, and settled on the towel rack. There were four full sized towels for the drying pleasure of all the guests this week. My gaze drifted from them to the bathtub, and back.

Towels + Bathtub + Locked Door = Safe Bed for The Night.

I fashioned a little nest for myself in the tub and settled in, using the last towel as a blanket.

A few hours later I found myself squinting in harsh white light at a quizzical face poking around the door. A relative (whose name I don’t think I knew even then) was peering at me with a look of complete bewilderment.

“Matt? What are you doing in here?”

The fantastic embarrassment of the situation had jolted me wide awake in the millisecond it took to recall the night. However I still thought it best to put on quite a show of confusion and mumbled words, acting as if I were still somewhat asleep as I pulled myself out of the tub and stumbled past her to my couch, any fear of an intruder long gone.

The next morning I had to give an account for my actions, and these words came out of my mouth:

“Yeah, I don’t know how I ended up in there, I must have sleepwalked or something.”