MamaKat has a new list of writing prompts out for this week’s writer’s workshop, and for some reason this prompt stood out to me:
3.) Describe a ‘sound’ from your childhood. What was it? When did you hear it? What does it bring to mind?
Maybe this one stood out to me because I have such vivid memories of sounds from my childhood.
I didn’t sleep very well as a child. I’ve always been a light sleeper, but as a young girl, I had problems with insomnia. Maybe it was the house that I grew up in. I didn’t have problems once I moved to a new house at the end of elementary school.
At night, while I was laying in bed, I would listen to the sounds of the wind brushing the branches of the tree against my bedroom window, and I would wait for the Hell’s Angels to come in to kidnap me and carry me away on their motorcycles. Some kids are afraid of monsters. I was afraid of the Hell’s Angels.
From Wikipedia:
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide “one-percenter” motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation.
Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada classify the Angels as one of the “big four” outlaw motorcycle clubs, contending that members carry out widespread violence, drug dealing, trafficking in stolen goods, and extortion. Members of the organization itself assert that this is a mischaracterization, and state that they are a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who organize social events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies.
I guess I had heard about the Hell’s Angels on the news, and since our house was on a busy highway, I often heard motorcycles zooming past. I suppose the sounds of the motorcycles were another reason that I had that fear.
On the other side of the highway was the railroad track, and in the morning I would wake up to the sounds of the morning train zooming past, blowing it’s load whistle, shaking my bunk bed as it passed.
I didn’t have a very quiet bedroom. Maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep very well.
I sleep with a white-noise sound machine or a fan now. :) And I sleep fine. I just don’t get enough of it.
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