As the youngest in my family, I heard many stories about the time before I was born. There was the story about how my parents had my brother, Scott, at Purdue and lived in married student housing on campus. There was also the story about my sister, Kate, and how her face was all pushed in when she was born. Of course, the story about my other sister, Liz eating a bag of sugar behind the couch. But one of the most memorable stories of all was the one which involved Scott and Kate before either Liz or I was born.Mom and dad had just bought the farm- literally, they had purchased an 80 acre farm from the Buffenbarger family in 1973. On the property were several out buildings including a large barn, an outhouse, and a chicken coop, cherry, apple, plum, pear and peach trees, and of course, the house that I grew up in. The Buffenbarger family built the original house in the 1850s and they were cheap. The upstairs had never seen a coat of paint, wooden floors had been varnished around the rugs (the logic was: visitors would never see the upstairs and why varnish the whole floor when you only see the bit around the edge of the rug?), and to top it all off, when Mr. Buffenbarger moved out, he took with him a drawer straight from the kitchen cabinets.
Mom and dad began to do some renovations to the house while trying to raise their 3 year-old son and 1 year-old daughter. First things first, the bare plaster in the bedrooms upstairs needed a nice coat of paint. They decided on a neutral cream shade and got to work. While dad was working, mom was working outside, and the kids were supposed to be napping, one of my all-time favorite stories occurred- one which I recently found evidence to support its validity.
A few weeks ago, mom and I were talking about the old carpet upstairs and how it "must be allergen-ridden." After getting the okay from dad, I ripped the carpet out with my own two hands and got rid of it for good, after all, it had served the Fergusson family for 35 years.
Underneath the carpet the story of my brother Scott asking my sister Kate if she wanted to be a ghost came back to life. After she said "yes," Scott proceeded to dump a gallon of that aforementioned cream colored paint on her head. When the paint reached her eyes, she screamed and mom came in from outside and grabbed Kate- immediately throwing her in the kitchen sink and calling the doctor.
The image I posted above was proof for me, who had never witnessed this long-heard about event. Underneath the carpet I saw small white foot prints. I initially thought they were Kate's since she was the one who was painted "like a ghost," but when I recounted the story, they couldn't be because my mom grabbed her and took her down the stairs. The footsteps were Scott's! Upon closer examination, I also saw my mom's sneaker prints in the paint, and not to mention, varnish around a rug that was once there.
When I had heard the story, I imagined the details much differently than the evidence showed. Mom and dad always said that Scott followed mom and left a trail of little white footprints going down the stairs. For some reason, I had always imagined those footprints as one print in the middle of each step. But I didn't think to account for the fact that my brother was only three! In actuality, the prints were against the right side (where he could hang on to the wall) and there were two prints to each step! Scott, with paint-covered feet slowly walked down the hallway, hesitated at the top of the stairs and right foot first, stepped down and repeated the same with the left foot. He did this all the way down the stairs, with the prints and my memory of an event I don't remember, getting lighter and lighter.
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