Article: 261536 of talk.bizarre
From: zonker@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (PyroKleptoManiac)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: hiding in a fiberglass hippo
Date: 2 Dec 1995 01:20:40 -0500
Organization: Offhand Technologies
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <49or7o$g5k@bronze.lcs.mit.edu>
Status: O
X-Status: 

[i haven't read t.b in a couple of years; kelly j cooper told me i
should post something for FTSD.  but i'm late.  at least in this time
zone.  i should go log into a machine in california, where it is still
FTSD.  or perhaps i will simply fail to FTS.]

I remember when i was a kid, we'd spend our summers on Cape Cod.  In
West Dennis, where we had a house (my parents live there now, except
my Dad still comes up to boston for a couple of days each week because
he still has some clients in the boston area).  

But I didn't go to the beach very much.  Back when i was younger and
we rented a house for several weeks each summer (it started out for
two weeks and eventually was 6 weeks each summer of my mom and i and a
friend of the family down on the cape and my father would come down on
weekends), i would go to the beach.  but in the years after we bought
the house, i stopped going to the beach quite so much because i had
discovered THEATRE.  i spent my time hanging out at a children's
theatre and building sets.  by the time i was 16, i spent my summers
with that fishbelly-white look of the non-tourist.

but when i was about 14, i used to spend alot of time at the local
arcade.  it was a big white barn full of pinball machines (later,
video games, too).  i remember the first video game i ever saw.  it
was some sort of space battle thing where you had the option of
gravity or not.  then there was pong and space invaders.  and next to
the air hockey table, the jukebox that played freebird all the time.
the live version that starts out "what song is it that you wanna
hear?" 

and behind the barn there was a small golf course and a bit of water
with paddle boats.  but in front there was a miniature golf course,
with a windmill and a bridge and all the usual accoutrements of
miniature golf.

one hole had a big fiberglass hippo as the obstacle.

there was a hole on the hippopotamus' underbelly.  a big hole.  big
enough for a 14 year old girl like me to crawl into.

so, of course, i did.

and sometimes, i would hang out inside the hippo, very quietly,
listening to people as they'd come through playing miniature golf.
unaware that they were being listened to (except for the hole on the
bottom, there were no other holes through which i could observe).

i never actually gave in to my temptation to wait for some small child
to come near the hippo and start talking to the kid...  if nothing
else, my voice was much to high to be a hippo's.

one time the owner found me inside the hippo.  she got mad, but that
didn't really keep me from going back inside some other time when she
wasn't looking...

i guess it's things like this that made me the woman i am today.



--regis