My Family Story

Birthdays were never that great for me as a kid. The only thing that I really liked was that school got out around my birthday. I considered the whole summer as the world’s gift to me for drudging through another year. The problem with birthdays was that I had to share them. I was unfortunate enough to be born on the same day as my Grandmother and my Aunt Ruth. I come from a big family and everyone adored my grandmother, and my aunt demanded a lot of attention. So quite frankly, I got forgotten in all of the birthday bustle surrounding them. My birthdays were always spent at my Grandma’s party, or even worse, at big parties for both my Grandma and Aunt. Usually I would get one or two presents, but some years I considered myself lucky just to hear my name squeezed into the birthday song before my Grandma blew out the candles.

One year they even forgot about me completely. I could tell because everyone was waiting for my uncle to bring out the cake when my mom stopped him and whispered something in his ear. He looked embarrassed and I thought I could hear him say “oops” as he hurried back into the kitchen. When the cake finally came back out, they had added my name on top of it in a different color of icing and the letters looked like they had been written pretty quickly, in my uncle’s shaky handwriting. It wasn’t pretty, and everyone tried to tell me that my name was in a different color because I was extra special, but I knew better.

That isn’t what this story is about though. It does take place during one of my birthdays. My 8th birthday to be exact, but that’s just the setting for this tragic tale. My story starts on a hot day, on the outskirts of a birthday party that I was definitely not the guest of honor at. It was May 28^th. The most disappointing day of the year and summer had just begun. I hadn’t received any birthday wishes yet so rather than watch Grandma and Aunt Ruth get hugged for the 50th time, I decided to walk to the canyon and get away from it all. I was sitting by a large scrub oak on the giant sandstone rim of the canyon. I was sticky with sweat from the hot sun and my walk through the woods. The canyon was like the veins in a giant leaf, lots and lots of little canyons all feeding into the main one. My Aunt’s cabin was near one of the smaller branches. I was sitting right at the spot where it joined the main canyon. The view was spectacular and as nice as it was just sitting there in the shade of the scrub oak staring out across the canyon, I was contemplating moving to a different spot.

 Last year while I was playing hide and seek, my older sister Raylinn and I had tried hiding in a scrub oak very similar to the one I was now sitting by and we almost stepped on a rattlesnake. The memory of how I stood there petrified and speechless pointing at the snake coiled up on the ground as I desperately tried to get Raylinn’s attention was a little to fresh in my mind and it was starting to make me squirm. My sister did finally follow my shaking, pointed finger, grabbed my hand and ran before it could bite either of us, but I still didn’t trust the scrub oak I was sitting by. My mind raced through all the possibilities of where and how I could get bitten and eaten alive by a killer rattlesnake and finally, I decided to make my move before I got scarred stiff and turned into rattlesnake lunch!

I got up and started walking back to the cabins when I remembered a big blue cooler of soda that I had seen earlier. I thought about the cans of tasty juicy cold soda and how good and refreshing it would be. That cooler was shaping up to be the highlight of my birthday. I had peeked in it earlier and saw that it was filled with Squirt! Squirt soft drinks were the best! And to my surprise, it was filled to the brim with those green and yellow cans of delicious summer magic! I could almost taste the sweet citrus flavor on my tongue and lips. I was smiling as I thought about that big blue beautiful tasty cooler. Maybe this year was starting to look better than most birthdays. No rattlesnakes in the bushes so far and a chest full of my favorite soda waiting back at the cabin. My mom was in charge of the cake this year too, so I was relatively certain my name would be on it. Yep, things were looking good for me. Finally I would have a birthday that I could look back on and smile about!

And that is when it happened, the moment that would make this very promising birthday the most terrifying night of my entire life. Worse than the terror of two birthdays ago when I fell out of the raft and almost drowned before my dad scooped me up out of the river. Worse than the birthday when it rained and we spent the whole afternoon getting my Aunt’s car out of the mud, worse than the birthday when ……...well you get the idea here……… As I was saying, everything was looking up for me and then it happened. My brother Victor walked through the trees with a BB gun and a plastic bag full of empty Squirt cans! My heart stopped, was all the Squirt gone? Had they forgot about me again and had the party without me? Did my mom remember to put my name on the cake? Was this birthday doomed just like all the others? All these questions flew through my head and then Victor spoke. “Do you want to go shooting? Mom said we have an hour until they are ready for cake.” I pondered this proposition carefully. Victor never asked me to do anything unless it benefited him somehow. He sounded sincere though, and I couldn’t detect any mischief in his voice. I briefly considered what kind of sneaky trick he might be playing on me but decided that I did want to go shooting and that I would take my chances. After all, I didn’t want to sit around for an hour waiting to see if my name made it onto the cake. And just maybe if I volunteered to carry all the cans, Victor might protect me from the killer rattlesnake that I was sure was on the prowl for me.

Dad forbade us to shoot anywhere but in the canyon. He didn’t want any stray BBs flying around up top where the family was. I didn’t blame him for his concern. After all, Victor really couldn’t be trusted with his BB gun. He had shot me in the stomach with it last year, but swore it was an accident so all he had to do was tell me he was sorry and promise to be more careful. But he got what he deserved a few weeks later when he shot himself in the finger because he wanted to see how it felt. I remember that trip to the emergency room vividly! They had to cut the BB out of his knuckle while he cried. Mom and Dad were so mad at him that he was grounded for a month and he got his BB gun taken away. But that was last year and right now he was handing me the bag of cans to carry while he swung the gun across his back. So with all thoughts of an ice cold Squirt out of my mind, and a bodyguard in tow, we started to make our way down the rocks into the canyon maze below to blast some holes in our cans. Climbing down the cliff to the canyon was tough and I lost one can on the way down. I saw it slipping out of the bag, but decided it was better to let one Squirt can go than to jeopardize my life. Victor didn’t see it that way though and he let me know about it the whole rest of the way down to the canyon floor.

After reaching the bottom and exploring several of the canyon’s branches and hiking further and further down the canyon, we finally found a branch that had a perfect mound of dirt to lay on at one side and a nice flat slab of sandstone to set the cans on at the other side. We were having a good time shooting at the cans and watching them jump up in the air every time one of us hit one. It was my job to reset the cans after we shot them, and I did this with more than a little trepidation. Memories of the “accidental” shooting were coming back to me and I had no desire to have another “accident”. Especially not on my birthday!

We were having a great time popping those cans and setting them up again when Victor looked at his watch and cursed. We had been gone for almost 2 hours. I was going to be late for my own birthday party! For a second I thought that maybe this was Victor’s plan all along. Another birthday down the drain, but then I realized that we were both late, and more importantly we were both going to be in big trouble. Victor wouldn’t do that to himself just to ruin my birthday………..or would he?  Suddenly my heart dropped into my stomach as the realization of our predicament sunk in. Big trouble meant angry parents and angry parents meant no presents, no cake and maybe no Squirt. Once again, my birthday was going to be a disaster. I looked at Victor’s face and I could tell that he was worried too. “Let’s pick up and hurry back.” Victor said as he stood up and swung the gun over his shoulder. I ran over to get the cans and tried to push my anxiety and disappointment out of my heart.

 The sun was getting low on the canyon rim as we grabbed our stuff and started the hike back up the canyon. The hike was harder heading up the canyon. Neither of us realized how far down we had gone and we were both getting tired. I was concentrating on trying to come up with a great story that I could tell to salvage my birthday. Maybe we got attacked by that killer rattlesnake and barely survived, maybe there was a landslide and we spent the last two hours crawling out from a pile of boulders, maybe we took a nap and lost track of time, or maybe………

Whack! I fell face down into the dirt and skinned my hands and chin on the sandstone. In my quest to avoid parental wrath and escape with a slice of cake and a Squirt I had tripped over a rock. The stinging on my palms was sharp and tears starting to form at the corners of my eyes. This sudden pain cleared my head and brought newfound clarity. I looked around and realized that it was starting to get dark. I didn’t have a flashlight and I was pretty sure Victor didn’t either. This birthday was the worst one ever! I was late to my own party, I was bleeding and I was starting to get scared.

We continued hiking back up the canyon, as it got darker and darker. The moon was just a sliver in the sky and I realized that I had no idea were we were. I was having trouble seeing very far in front of us or behind. I tugged on the back of Victor’s shirt and asked a question that I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answer to. “Are we lost?”  “I don’t think so.” Victor responded. It wasn’t all that comforting of an answer, but better than what I was expecting.

I remembered dad telling me that if I ever got lost I should just stop where I was and wait for him to find me. I asked Victor if maybe this would be a good idea. Even if Victor didn’t think we were lost, I knew that I was and I wasn’t sure if I was willing to trust the judgment of someone who shot his own finger just to see what it would feel like. We were discussing our options when a strange scream filled the air. It sent chills up my spine and my heart started racing. It sounded like an old woman screaming but at the same time, it wasn’t human.

Victor looked at me and whispered in a scared, shaky voice “That’s a mountain lion. We have to get out of here right now.”  All thoughts of cake, Squirt and angry parents evaporated. In their place was a fear worse than anything I had felt before that consumed my entire body. I was 8. Victor was 12 and we were lost in the canyon maze. We had no lights, no food and we were being hunted by a mountain lion.

Victor decided that we should walk back to back so that nothing could sneak up on us. Even though I knew that the BB gun wouldn’t be much use against a mountain lion, I was a little upset that he wouldn’t let me hold it. We started moving, our backs together and feet trying not to trip each other or fall on the rocks. We moved as fast as we could, but it was painfully slow. We could barely see our surroundings and every shadow and noise caused us to pause and tense up, preparing for the attack that would finish us both off. We heard the scream a second time and I started to cry. I had never been so afraid in my whole life. I knew that I was never going to see my mom or dad again, and that they might never even find our bodies. This was going to be my last birthday, and a very unhappy one too.

“Look.” Victor shouted. He suddenly stopped and I pushed up against his back. I was afraid to take my eyes off the canyon, but I turned around to see what had caused him to stop walking. At first I couldn’t see anything, but then he pointed it out to me. A flicker of yellow and green caught my eye. I stared at it trying to make out what it was, praying that it wasn’t the reflection of a mountain lion’s eye. We walked closer to the shimmer of light and saw a can of soda lying in the dirt catching the faintest glimmer of the moon’s light. My mind was still frozen with fear, but eventually it dawned on me. That was the Squirt can that I had dropped on the way down the cliff! I looked up at Victor and smiled as I wiped the tears out of my eyes, “We aren’t lost anymore,” I said as hope started to flood back into me. We hurried to the canyon wall and started climbing. I was still scared that the mountain lion would somehow get us, but I was starting to think that just maybe we had a chance to escape.  

We climbed to the top of the rim and took off running back towards the cabins. We didn’t hear the mountain lion again but the fear was still tingling through my body. I was afraid to look back as we ran, afraid that I would see big paws tearing up the earth behind us, teeth dripping with gleaming saliva, and claws ready to tear us apart.

As we ran into camp I saw the glow of a campfire, and a few people sitting around it. “Mom! Dad!” I screamed as I ran to our cabin. I saw my Mom first and ran to her. She grabbed us both and hugged us as she started asking us questions “what’s wrong? What happened? We have been looking for you for over an hour! Where have you been?” The whole tale came out in seconds. I don’t know how much of it Mom understood through my sobs and Victor’s assertions that none of it was his fault, but she got the idea.

Dad and some of my uncles were out looking for us so Mom let us roast hot dogs at the campfire while we waited for them to return. Grandma told me how much I had scared her and Aunt Ruth told me how much trouble I was going to be in when my Dad got back. The party was most certainly over and all the cake was gone. Dad got back while I was eating my hotdog and after yelling at us both, he made us apologize for running off and scaring everyone. Needless to say, I didn’t get to open my presents that night. On my way to the cabin to go to sleep I was replaying the whole nightmare of a birthday over in my mind. How had it turned into such a disaster? I was wondering if my name had made it onto the cake that I didn’t get to eat when I bumped into a blue cooler, the same cooler that had been calling to me while I sat on the sandstone above the canyon earlier.

I paused for a second and stared at it debating whether or not to look inside. I didn’t know if I could take any more disappointment, but the thought that there still might be a Squirt in there was once again erasing all the bad memories of this birthday. I lifted the lid and reached in. The water was cold, but the ice had all melted. It stung just a little where my hands were scraped, but I felt around some more.  I was about to give up and pull my hand out when I touched something. I pulled out the can just as I heard my dad yell from the campfire “Freddy, you better be on your way to bed!”