Does everyone have that defining story from childhood? That story that is told and retold at every family gathering? That story about that thing you can't possibly remember, but that you feel like you remember because you've heard the story so many times?
I have a few of them.
The one that I KNOW I don't actually remember, although my brain wants to argue that fact because of the echoes of the story being told over and over, happened while we lived in Southern California. It was well before my brother was born, way back when we lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere. My dad was stationed at March Air Force Base. (High five to anybody who recognizes that I just dated myself.) I was just one-year old.
When I was little, we had a cat named Melissa. I actually do remember Melissa, in great part because she was really very memorable. She was a Siamese and took the Siamese reputation of being . . . ummm . . . "challenging" very seriously. She was a mean-spirited cat who was quick to attack pretty much anything that moved.
Except me.
As the story goes, Melissa randomly decided that I was her best bud.
Melissa followed me everywhere, even going so far as to sleep with me every night. Go ahead and wrap your head around the fact that my parents let a mean cat sleep in the crib with a one-year old. Maybe it'll give you a few seconds of "At least I'm a better parent than THAT" like it does for me.
Done?
OK, then. So, Melissa used to sleep with me, a fact which is slightly disturbing, and yet turned out to be a very good thing. One night I was sound asleep in my crib with Melissa at my side when a man broke into the house. The details surrounding the man are fuzzy because that's not the part of the story that has been retold hundreds and hundreds of times. Instead, the focus on the story is always on what happened when that stranger set foot in the room where I was sleeping.
Melissa attacked him. She jumped right at his face, clawing wildly at every bit of skin she could find. She left him bloody and beaten. He landed at the emergency room before heading off to jail for breaking and entering.
You cannot go to a family gathering without hearing that story, even to this day. 34 years after it happened, it's still a story that people feel the need to echo.
Which leads me to wonder, which of Alexis' stories will end up being told for the rest of her life?
