Revision One
“Born Too Late” Model Essay, Mrs. Beam
Shadows
I used to love throwing the big feather tick blanket over the coffee table in the living room when I was little. The big feather tick blanket was huge, heavy and very awkward to carry, but I would drag it through the house. It felt like it weighed twice as much as I did so getting it to the living room always felt like a major accomplishment. Once in place over the coffee table it became a fort where David, my little brother, and I would crawl into snuggling close and peeking out one end to watch Saturday morning cartoons. That’s when “color” TV only had two colors, black and white. The TV was small, by today’s standards, and poised on the top of the set was a pair of rabbit ears with two pieces of aluminum foil designed to improve the reception. I was never quite sure how of if the aluminum foil ever really improved reception because the picture on the television screen was often filled with snow, not the kind of wintery precipitation that falls from the sky, but the screen often resembled a white out blizzard.
We pretended that our fort was the only sanctuary in the huge living room. Sometimes it existed in a dark jungle, deep in the trees with wild animals surrounding it. Sometimes it was in the American West and hostile Indians were attacking. It was always safe and warm shielding us from the outside world.
The year was 1963, David was three years old and I was six. I think he still wore footie PJ’s, yellow ones, had terrible bed head and had sleep in the inside corners of his eyes. It was a time that we two were alone in the world with only each other as playmates and friends.
It was a time when I felt that we were each other’s shadows. Today, the shadows no longer exist as each one of us has gone on to independent lives. The old feather tick blanket is no more and the safety of the fort has vanished with our childhood, but something else too has vanished that closeness we shared. Today we share our lives through text messages and facebook. There is a sadness in that. I long for the days of the coffee tables, feather ticks and Saturday morning cartoons.