Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he was wrestling with his big sister Donna in the hallway of their home in Huntington Beach, California. They were not mad at each other, but were playing the way they often did because Donna, at five years of age, was already a tomboy, which is a little girl that is stronger than seven-year-old boys! And Dougie, at three years of age, was no competition for Donna, so she often was careful not to hurt him, at least not too much, at least not too often (in truth, she attempted to hurt him only about twice a day, for good measure, except on Sundays, then she might hurt him three or four times). But this day they were laughing and giggling and rolling around in the dark hallway, and they could hear their parents talking in the living room, possibly only twenty-five feet away from where the brother and sister played.
They stopped laughing. Dougie and Donna stopped wrestling. Lying on the carpet, tangled in each others' arms, they each looked down the hallway. They weren't sure, but they thought they heard a noise.They looked at each other. Then they looked back down the hallway.Suddenly, a dark red furry hand emerged from the spare bedroom, at about the height an adult might reach when sticking their hand out from a bedroom into a hall where two children can see it.Dougie and Donna stared at the big red hand. It almost looked like a cartoon hand. Or a hand in a big red furry glove.Dougie and Donna looked away from the big furry red hand and stared at each other. Each was expressionless. Each obviously didn't know what to think.As one, they turned their heads to look back down the hallway at the big furry red hand.It waved at them. Or perhaps not. Maybe it was making scary clawing gestures. But whatever its intent, the big furry red hand bent in the middle and all five fingers (or was it four fingers?) came together in a pulsating squeeze. Hello! the big furry red hand seemed to say.That was odd. The children had never seen a big furry red hand before, especially not inside of their own house. You were safe in your house, and it was only at night that the monsters rustled in the closets. This was the middle of the daytime, and Mama and Dada were talking, probably only twenty-five feet away from where the children sprawled on the carpet, suddenly frozen, staring with wide round eyes at the big furry red hand.The children erupted in screams and in less than a second were out of the tangle of their legs, on their feet, and running panicked into the living room, screaming and calling out to their parents. It only took a few seconds of near-tears shrieking to convince the parents that the children were not playing, and that perhaps they had really seen something down the dark hallway, emerging from the spare bedroom.But when Dada checked, he didn't find anything. Not even a trace of red hair or fuzz from the big furry red hand. Mama and Dada were sure the children were just being silly.However, to this day, Dougie and Donna, who are no longer little children, remember that day when the big furry red hand waved at them, even if they don't know what in the world it was, or what it meant.All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
important - FIGHT THE FLU WITH HERBS - important
