Audio Apology #1: Dear Burning Bush

I am addicted to listening to people tell their secrets. I love listening to people read letters. Post Secret. Found Magazine. 25 Things About My Sexuality. These regularly fill my time when surfing the web. Add my time spent listening to Public Radio, and you could call my a voyeur.

This is me jumping into the game. I recorded an audio letter. It's an admission of something I did as a kid that hardly anyone knows about. It was hard to decide to post this, but I feel it's probably relevant to someone. I hope you enjoy it--or at least can recognize aspects of it in your own childhood.

Dear Burning Bush by Asvariouslyaspossible

I also wrote it out. You can read it below.


Dear the Dead-Looking Bush Outside my Former Babysitter’s House,
I’m sorry. And I’m not. I lit you aflame, and you extinguished some small horrible thing inside of me.

When I was younger my parents dropped me at someone wonderful’s house before school. She’d feed me sweet breakfast treats, care for me, and then drive me to school. Afterwards, she’d pick me up and I’d romp around her house, nosing from room to room, playing videogames and watching television. I have cigar boxes worth of beautiful, enlightening memories from this house. If you lit the house on fire, my childhood would billow up into the sky.

I enjoyed this house for many reasons, but mostly because it was full of cool, older boys. She had three sons—sons with lots of awesome, foul-mouthed friends. One son would rent me horror movies when I was sick; he’d style my hair and take me to the mall “to pick up chicks” even before I knew that that’s what every boy wanted. They’d yell, they’d argue; they taught me all about angst before my middle school years. And even though parts of my middle school years were awful shades of horrible, looking back, I feel as if they prepared me well for that time in my life.

This house was full of love. It was also full of children and as I got older, I needed to be watched less and less. While I’ve never been one to need attention, kids can sense change and have strange ways of trying to fend off the feelings associated with it. I was no different.

My babysitter’s husband was a smoker. She did everything she could to keep the matches and lighters out of kids’ reach, and she probably succeeded 99% of the time. But as we get older, we get more precocious. And as we get more precocious we get more industrious, or sneaky (you pick the word).

I don’t remember where I found the matches, but I’m pretty sure that it required some reconnaissance work on my part. Days and days of intensive scouting, planning, surveying. Maybe I should have joined the CIA.

It was a normal day, after school. My babysitter was in the other room tending to the younger kids. Her daughter assisting in the toddling duties of diapers and baby snot. The sons weren’t home from school, or they were busy listening to Guns n’ Roses and Metallica in their rooms. I was alone.

The backyard wasn’t huge. It had a fenced-in pool, a grassy yard, and a little side lot that connected the back to the front. Around the yard was a wooden fence guarded on the inside by huge oleanders. Where the oleanders met the pool fence there was a large bushy dead-looking bush that hung over; it provided a perfect little nook for me to hide and play with fire.

Lighting matches just to watch them burn gets old really fast. So, I decided to make it a little more fun. I lit a match, tossed it into the dead-looking plant and ran back inside. At that moment—in my kid brain—I knew that nothing was going to happen. With my rudimentary misunderstanding of physics, I knew that the match would burn out during the throw.

Back inside, no one had noticed me reenter. I grabbed my backpack and found a little corner of the house to hole up with a book. I’ve read that kids my age (at the time) live moment to moment in fear of embarrassment. I was just entering this phase—the one where you don’t want to speak in class because everyone probably, for sure, will definitely laugh at you solely because you are you. As I sat attempting to read my book (was it Goosebumps? Or Hardy Boys?), I could feel my bones chattering under my skin. I just did something that couldn’t be undone. If the bush had caught on fire, I couldn’t very well go put it out. It was one of several moments of childhood that made me feel completely powerless, and pathetic. I couldn’t move.

How long I was sitting there, I can’t remember. But it felt the way you feel trying to fall asleep after waking up from a nightmare. And then my babysitter screamed. A hideous, terrifying cry.

I contemplated running away. Literally, running out the front door, down the street, and into oncoming traffic. Death would be easier than what was to come. But, then, I thought, they’d know it was me. And I probably wouldn’t have the guts to actually run into traffic, so really I’d just run away until I got really hungry, or thirsty, and then slink back and face a horrible punishment. In tears.

So, like so many kids like to do, I lied. But not to anyone’s face. I lied in silence. As the dead-looking bush burned, and Carol screamed into the phone about how there’s a fire and hurry up and, oh please, hurry up because there’s kids in this house, I merged with the group of innocent looking kids and feigned shock and horror. Or rather, I was shocked and horrified that I did this, but, you know, in a different way.

I don’t remember the sequence of events after this. I think my mind was floating in the ether somewhere above my body. We were ushered out to the front driveway. The fire truck came—sirens ablazing. The fire was put out. My babysitter was crying. Kids were crying. Panic. Terror.

Never once did I have to face any questioning. Behind the house was an alleyway, a block away from a school, three blocks from a huge public park. All kinds of people walk through that alley discarding beer bottles, matches, cigarettes. It was some nameless, irresponsible, reckless youth. It wasn’t an inside job.

When my mind returned to my body, it was heavier than anything I had ever felt. A jumbled mess of soot, embarrassment, and an intense searing fear. Fear of action. Fear of consequence. A guilty fear of reprisal. Fear of my role in the world.

As the flame swirled up over the bush, I realized how close I was to tragedy. The bush, next to a wooden fence, next to huge oleanders, next to a house. Full of kids. As the smoke billowed up, I felt my heart deflate momentarily, I felt the little piece that helps you take risks completely collapse only to have fear re-inflate it.

I’ve only told a couple people this story. I often leave out how much it truly affected me. They say that firestarting is one of the signs of a sociopath, but instead of emboldening me to take advantage of people’s trust, this experience tempered my sense of and desire for potency in the world. I wanted out of the consequentiality of life.

I’m much older now and with a higher degree of self-reflection I can appreciate the import of this event in my life.

Dear the Best Babysitter in the World, I’m sorry that I caused such a severe sense of shock and fear in you. I’m sorry that I repaid your care and trust with such a selfish act of stupidity.

Dear all the Children that were in the House, It never crossed my mind for a moment that I was putting you in danger. I’m sorry for such poor, childish foresight.

Dear The Dead-Looking Bush in the Backyard of my Babysitter’s House, I’m sorry for lighting you on fire, for burning you up. But, also, Thank You for teaching me a lesson on the potency of our actions. At such a critical, developmental time in my life, you showed me that my perceived small actions can potentially have horrendous, tragic consequences. Thank you for helping me think twice, three times, infinite times about my intentions.

At times my introvertedness, the way I’m prone to inaction, and how I think too much have caused me to lose out on opportunities. But for all the beautiful things I’ve experienced in life, I’ve had to risk setting my world ablaze. And in doing so, I can appreciate having to walk through a forest of charred remains, to get to Chicago. To South America. To Cinque Terre. Back to Phoenix. And to all the places that lie in my future.