Read Online Blind Sight by Meg Howrey - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Meg Howrey
Tags: General Fiction
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cameras, game systems. I might set up the Wii for us later on, if I have time.
Okay. Essay. This will be more fun, now that I know Mark will be reading it.
There was actually an example of a grandmother story in
50 Successful College Application Essays
. But that girl’s grandmother had been a Holocaust survivor.
My grandmother was the first adult woman I saw fully naked.
That sounds really bad. It wasn’t a sexual thing. I was four and we had only just moved in with her.
All right, so I have an extremely clear memory of my Nana’s breasts and pubic hair. Her breasts were oblong. I mean the skin went down a little ways before it made the round part. And her pubic hair was mostly grey, and it spread—or seemed to—across to the tops of her legs.
It was probably about two seconds (maybe less) of actual viewing time and I don’t remember feeling alarmed or ashamed or anything like that. But the event must have been sufficiently impressive to the cells of my body, and I guess some sort of learning moment occurred, and I remember it. Not only that, but I assumed, for a long time, that breasts came in an oblong structure and that pubic hair was mostly grey and there was a lot of it. “Assumed” is the wrong word. It’s sort of like my early feelings about the dome over our planet. I KNOW that women have different-shaped breasts. I’ve seen the Kama Sutra, and R-rated movies, stuff on the Internet, and come on, I have SISTERS. It’s just that the initial sort of mental picture that often comes up when someone says “nude” or “naked” is this image of my nakedNana. It’s weirdly hard to unknow what you know even when what you know is wrong. Even weirder is: it’s MY brain that’s making these images of Nana appear even when it’s also MY brain that knows better. People write books or make movies about people losing control over computers, and the machines going rogue or becoming evil, but our own brains are computers, and we don’t seem to be able to control those very well. Our entire lives are operating, if you really think about it, on a rogue program.
So anyway, there I was, age four, gazing up at her, and Nana calmly whipped out a towel and her eyes sort of swiveled and locked on mine, and there it was for the first time, the special look of Nana’s that has since been dubbed the Sword of Silence.
It’s like a superpower she has.
Sword of Silence Meanings
NO
I did not hear that
I did not see that
YOU did not hear or see that
To ask further questions would be insanity on your part
Interpreting the Sword of Silence has always been my special knack. Even though I was only four, I knew what it meant. The towel Nana took up was unnecessary—a gesture to convention, or maybe Nana was chilly. Because Nana was not really naked, I was not really looking at her, and even my own existence and hers was in doubt. It simply was not happening. The sword can only cut so deep, though, I guess, since I still remember it vividly, and she surely meant to swipe my brain clean of it entirely.
“The Sword of Silence” as a term came into use a couple of years later between us three kids, once Aurora and Pearl and I had all received the as-yet-unnamed sword and had discussed it amongst ourselves. Pronouncing the “w” in “sword” when we say it is anotherthing we do, along with using the word “sworded” as a verb. As in, “Nana sworded me.” Nana often smiles when she swords you. It’s this very helpful sort of smile. As if to say, Here, let me aid you in your confused ways by evaporating them. It’s not necessarily violent, but it’s powerful. Aurora wore an “Evolution Rocks” T-shirt to the breakfast table once and she swears Nana sworded it so hard she actually faded the material. Aurora went up to her room and put a sweater over the T-shirt before coming back to breakfast.
That’s the thing with the sword. Mostly you obey it because you don’t want to push Nana. Pushing Nana would be like
Okay. Essay. This will be more fun, now that I know Mark will be reading it.
There was actually an example of a grandmother story in
50 Successful College Application Essays
. But that girl’s grandmother had been a Holocaust survivor.
My grandmother was the first adult woman I saw fully naked.
That sounds really bad. It wasn’t a sexual thing. I was four and we had only just moved in with her.
All right, so I have an extremely clear memory of my Nana’s breasts and pubic hair. Her breasts were oblong. I mean the skin went down a little ways before it made the round part. And her pubic hair was mostly grey, and it spread—or seemed to—across to the tops of her legs.
It was probably about two seconds (maybe less) of actual viewing time and I don’t remember feeling alarmed or ashamed or anything like that. But the event must have been sufficiently impressive to the cells of my body, and I guess some sort of learning moment occurred, and I remember it. Not only that, but I assumed, for a long time, that breasts came in an oblong structure and that pubic hair was mostly grey and there was a lot of it. “Assumed” is the wrong word. It’s sort of like my early feelings about the dome over our planet. I KNOW that women have different-shaped breasts. I’ve seen the Kama Sutra, and R-rated movies, stuff on the Internet, and come on, I have SISTERS. It’s just that the initial sort of mental picture that often comes up when someone says “nude” or “naked” is this image of my nakedNana. It’s weirdly hard to unknow what you know even when what you know is wrong. Even weirder is: it’s MY brain that’s making these images of Nana appear even when it’s also MY brain that knows better. People write books or make movies about people losing control over computers, and the machines going rogue or becoming evil, but our own brains are computers, and we don’t seem to be able to control those very well. Our entire lives are operating, if you really think about it, on a rogue program.
So anyway, there I was, age four, gazing up at her, and Nana calmly whipped out a towel and her eyes sort of swiveled and locked on mine, and there it was for the first time, the special look of Nana’s that has since been dubbed the Sword of Silence.
It’s like a superpower she has.
Sword of Silence Meanings
NO
I did not hear that
I did not see that
YOU did not hear or see that
To ask further questions would be insanity on your part
Interpreting the Sword of Silence has always been my special knack. Even though I was only four, I knew what it meant. The towel Nana took up was unnecessary—a gesture to convention, or maybe Nana was chilly. Because Nana was not really naked, I was not really looking at her, and even my own existence and hers was in doubt. It simply was not happening. The sword can only cut so deep, though, I guess, since I still remember it vividly, and she surely meant to swipe my brain clean of it entirely.
“The Sword of Silence” as a term came into use a couple of years later between us three kids, once Aurora and Pearl and I had all received the as-yet-unnamed sword and had discussed it amongst ourselves. Pronouncing the “w” in “sword” when we say it is anotherthing we do, along with using the word “sworded” as a verb. As in, “Nana sworded me.” Nana often smiles when she swords you. It’s this very helpful sort of smile. As if to say, Here, let me aid you in your confused ways by evaporating them. It’s not necessarily violent, but it’s powerful. Aurora wore an “Evolution Rocks” T-shirt to the breakfast table once and she swears Nana sworded it so hard she actually faded the material. Aurora went up to her room and put a sweater over the T-shirt before coming back to breakfast.
That’s the thing with the sword. Mostly you obey it because you don’t want to push Nana. Pushing Nana would be like
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