For a period of time – I think from around 6 years old until 9 maybe? I lived in eastern Washington State. I would tell you specifically what address and what city, but we moved a lot. Mostly, we were around Spokane and the surrounding area. I might tell you about some of those places. Anyway, we lived at 208 North 8th Street in Cheney, WA. I am convinced that house was haunted, and it was also where I developed my ridiculous hatred and fear of all things “bug.” Yuck and ouch! I hate bugs. If you go to the Google image/map, it looked nothing like it does in that picture. As I am writing this it is 2020, the image was taken in 2013, but I lived there around 1987. Brad told me that it was all overgrown and condemned when he went and saw the house in 2018. Across the street was just a playground and field/park area. I have lots of stories about living in WA and most of them are sad, funny, scary, or maybe boring, but this one was pure adventure! And stupid. Yeah, lots of stupid.
Anyway, if you cross the street in front of my house there is a small park. It used to be a playground on the left near the school, and on the right side of it (close to the swimming pool) were some stacked tractor tires to play in or hide from your parents. Beyond that park is Betz Elementary School. I think I went there for 2nd – 4th grade (this is a complete guess but it reminds me to tell you of 2nd grade). This was also the time I was learning to climb up buildings. I could climb trees from when we lived in Utah, but I don’t remember climbing buildings and jumping off roofs there. I do in WA! So, I practiced on buildings.
Every now and then when I was feeling super adventurous, I would climb onto the roof of Betz and run around. I had 2 main friends there, Daniel and Nathan, and your Uncle Brad (yes, that’s 3 people, but 2 friends). Since I am telling “young me” stories, I’ll just call Brad Brad since he was nowhere near being an uncle! I can’t remember if Brad would climb the school with me or if it was Daniel or Nathan, but I recall usually having another person with. We were able to climb up the drain pipes using the bricks as footholds. This way, our feet kept our weight from being entirely on the pipe, and our arms could do some pulling, but mostly just keep us from tipping away from the wall while we figured out our feet. I’m not sure if it would work at my size now, but back then it was pretty easy once you got the hang of it. I think there was only 1 time that I worried something might break and send me toppling to the cement. Of course, pulling yourself up at the end requires pull-up skills, so get to practicing if you are going to be an awesome free-climber of buildings!
There wasn’t a lot to see up there. The school wasn’t high and there was no great view to be had. It was, however, probably illegal. And no one else could or would do it. That made me feel like the world’s baddest badass! It was a rush knowing I was so exposed, yet even if someone saw me they couldn’t come after me. I knew no one would climb up, and I could run and jump off, so even if they did climb up I could escape because normal people would never jump from a roof. I was scared, but I spent years jumping from swings… jumping at the height of the up-swing for a far drop down, jumping in the low spots before you are high to go flying forward barely skimming the ground, and everywhere in between. My scar over my right eye is from swings, one swing in particular. There were few moments in life up to that time that were more intense, more frightening, or more exhilarating than climbing on the school roof. I loved it.
Eventually, the excitement began to wear off. Going on the roof was not normal, but it was also not new and crazy. I wondered what all the weird pipes were for that poking up all over the roof. Some of them were larger and some were just skinny pipes. To this day I still don’t know what those pipes were. I assume to vent attic air out… maybe? Some might have been an intake? No clue. Brad knows. He’s a building genius. I didn’t know, and I still don’t know, and I’m old now! To be fair, Brad told me once but I forgot. What I did know was that those vents went somewhere. How do you find out where they go? I’m not really sure either, but I figured that peeing in them was one way to see what happened! I was kind of scared because I had been told in Utah that swinging from power lines would kill me with electricity (it didn’t), but I wasn’t sure what was in those pipes and was worried I would be electrocuted. Simple fears like death did not stop me! I peed into a couple of different pipes on a couple of trips. Nothing happened. I didn’t die. There was no school announcement after the Pledge of Allegiance. The janitor didn’t find me and haul me away to murder me in the broom closet. Nothing happened. Not a thing. Zero.
What did that tell me? Nothing at all. What do you do when you are confused about the innermost workings of a commercial building and you have already peed into some of the tubes? You poo in them! So the next time I climbed up on that roof I wandered around to find one of those skinny tubes in a place that I couldn’t be easily seen. I was SUPER self-conscious. I don’t think that I had ever pooped in public before, and I didn’t even think to bring any toilet paper (but I didn’t remember that until after). I picked my pipe and wandered over to it. I think I had someone on lookout below, but I can’t remember. I know that no one wanted to come up with me for “the deed” but I think I recruited someone to watch for me. I dropped my pants and squatted over the pipe and dropped a turd right into it! Now, that may not seem like much, but I am still very proud of my accuracy to this day! When it went in, I didn’t hear anything different. I couldn’t see anything different. It didn’t smell funny. I went home. No complaints at school the next day. Nothing. I still have no idea what havoc I may have wrought or what machinery might have broken down because of me. Or perhaps what classroom might have smelled like poo… nothing. All I learned from this whole thing was that I could poo into pipes that could fit poo in the pipe. I also learned that climbing onto buildings and jumping off is RAD (yes, old people term) and that most people were scared to death to do it. So that part was cool. The pooping? No, the pooping wasn’t cool. I hope I went home and wiped my butt, but I don’t remember.
I love you,
Fazia