Adam was an odd child.  It’s hard to say exactly what made him odd.  In our day and age we could probably contrive at least twenty seven different things that might have caused his particular brand of oddity.  It wasn’t that he looked somehow different.  With large bright eyes peering out from under a dark mop of hair and an inquisitive nature, he was a pretty decent looking kid.

Now, I was a bit of an explorer as a kid.  I loved the deep dark places where I could imagine monsters hid ready to pounce upon us.  Inside, I knew it was all imagination.  But to play out these fantasies and rescue the damsel in distress was a highlight of my childhood.  I collected baseball cards.  Adam collected old keys.

There was an old abandoned house on our street back then, and when we were about 11 years old, we finally became just rebellious enough of our parents that we made this house a hideout.  Nothing was ever really said, but we knew it was off limits.  Unfortunately, an old house covered in vines and reeking of untold history holds a special place in the heart of a young boy.  Oh the wonders we could imagine.  Pirate ships, dungeons, war ravaged apocalypses where we were the only survivors… our imaginations would often run away with us till it was almost dark.

There was a new spot that we found one summer day.  Outside the house, buried under a fallen log, and half hidden in vines was a cellar door.  Locked.  It became a bit of an obsession. What lay beneath those doors?  Some beast locked away?  A buried treasure?  The zombified remains of the house’s previous occupants?

Our first and most immediate response to this dilemma was to break in the door and explore the till now secret passage.  You see, beyond imagination there is a place where every boy loves one thing.  It is undeniable.  It is almost a form of worship.  Destruction.  We fell to with reckless abandon trying to get into that door.  We cleared away the tangle of vines and moss, and beat it with sticks and rocks, making quite a ruckus I assure you.  Well, obviously… because mom found out about it and grounded me for a week and told me not to go back to the house.

Adam was grounded too.  Unfortunately and unlike me, he also acquired a large amount of poison ivy.  So with my week up, and a mystery yet unsolved, I ran to Adam’s house where we could talk over our options.  He pulled out his key collection.

Over the last year of playing in the house he had found a treasure trove of keys to add to his collection.  Each time he would find a new key, he added it to his ever growing collection.  There were hundreds of keys now.  Old keys, skeleton keys, oddly shaped keys that used to go to vending machines.  The only option was to take them all to the door.  I said “the door” with an ominous sounding tone.  Adam couldn’t go with me.  His poison ivy rash would probably get worse if he even dared to go near the door.  Apparently he was more allergic than he first thought.

So holding the tin of keys and running as fast as I could, I made my way to the house.  To the door waiting there like some fairy tale.  Like the mines in the fantastical stories I read.  I became the hero.  The one who would brave the fierce consequences and rescue the princess, or set the foul beast upon myself unwittingly.  The martyr.

Most keys didn’t fit.  I went through them all one by one.  Nope.  No.  That one fits, but doesn’t turn.  Not that one either.  Finally, with seven keys left, I found one.  It slid into the rusty lock.  I knew this must be it.  Clicking into place, I gently turned the key.  It moved just a little then stuck.  My heart dropped.  Then I forced the key a little.  It broke free of the rust and turned the rest of the way.

Jubilantly, reverently, I removed the key and stuck it into my pocket.  I gathered up the other keys and put them back into the tin and set them down.  The excitement of this moment was intense.  I felt like a warrior about to go into battle.  I grabbed the largest stick I could carry to use as a weapon and began opening the old cellar door.

With creaks and groans that set my mind ablaze with creatures great and fierce, the door opened.  I let it crash into the poison ivy as it fell off it’s rusted hinges.  The light streamed down into that dark hole.  There was water.  Maybe about six inches deep, but it became the dungeon.  I would brave it all.  Step by step, I lowered myself into the secret place.  Water dripping in the distance.  A musty odor that would almost knock you over.  I imagined it was dragon’s breath.  I lifted my sword that my stick had suddenly become and trudged into the depths.

There were shelves going off into little alcoves on either side of a main walkway.  Broken jars, old metal cans, an old tire and a broken wheelbarrow.  I looked into each little area before I moved on.  Suddenly, something moved.  The water splashed around me.  Squeals of an angry beast pierced my ears.  A foul odor erupted and I couldn’t see.  I lept back toward the entrance crying, scared.  I fell up the stairs, grasping clawing for a breath of fresh air, scraping my knees on the steps, covered in muddy water and dirt.  I made my way to the top and ran to the old wrought iron fence that bordered the property.

I caught sight of my dark hair and fearfully large eyes in an old broken window as I stopped and gathered my thoughts.  My arms suddenly burning with irritation, I scratched them raw with my fingernails. I had forgotten the keys by the door.  “I’ll go back and get them later.”

Suddenly it was clear what had happened to me.  A frightened skunk had let loose with the horrible odor.  The splashing was an attempt to get away.  I had scared it as much as it had scared me.

The events of that day would haunt me the rest of my life.  I never went back for my collection of keys.  I am sure they rusted away or were swept up in the debris when the house was eventually torn down.  My poison ivy got worse till mom took me to the doctor, which was several days after the smell of the skunk lessened. Mom was faced with the awful paradox of grounding a boy who smelled like skunk after she heard the whole story.  I was grounded to the yard and couldn’t leave it for two weeks.  Those two weeks in the heat of summer was horrible punishment for a boy who had poison ivy as bad as I had it after the incident.

I am not as odd as I once was.