The door to “Neverland”.

My children are obsessed with Peter Pan these days.

Obsessed.

Not the cartoon version produced by that “crafty” (wicked/evil crafty, not cutesy ribbon and hot glue gun “crafty”)  “get your child addicted to our flicks so as to make them desire to watch them repeatedly on a daily basis”machine, otherwise known as Disney. 

Nope, my kids are hooked on the live action version produced by someone (or some bodies) equally as crafty, being that my children would probably not argue if I suggested they watch it repeatedly, all the live-long day.

And I wouldn’t because they would whole-heartedly accept.

So, some background for this story of mine..

Many homes here have crawl spaces.  My old house did, and I miss the heck out of my crawl space!  It was the perfect area for storing all of those seasonal decorations that I did not desire to see on a daily basis and did not want to take up valuable room with.  (It is also the perfect place for all the spiders on earth to live, especially during the winter months, and create dozens of webs just for sport.)  It was pimped-out too.  The moron who lived there before we did, framed in a good section of the floor, padded and carpeted it, put in a light switch, insulated the heat ducts and pipes that ran through there..  he did many other things moronically though.  Kind of canceled-out his “pimping-out” of the crawl space.

(Sorry about the vivid images of spider families that were planted in your head mom.)

This house, sadly, does not have a crawl space.  I do dream that one day, the guts of my garage floor will self-excavate themselves, and then allow me to have a bigger, much taller version of a crawlspace.  (I can dream about it.)

My parents’ home (the home where I grew up) has a crawl space.  When I was little, it contained the Christmas decorations, food storage items (like wheat, salt, and old two-liter pop bottles that had been washed and refilled with water), and other things my parents basically didn’t want to see. 

The summer after I graduated, mice decided to take-up residence there.  Many thanks go to the neighbors who moved in next door, kept their dogs, and their dog food outside, and helped in bringing these mice to our neck of the neighborhood.  (It has been suggested the dog food attracts mice.)

We removed all items of value from the space and left what was left of the wheat that the mice had gotten to, and the water, which we later learned, needed to be treated with bleach to make it usable in the future.  It was basically emptied and left to the mice and the spiders.

So now, the contents of my parents crawl space include the above items, mouse traps that probably have little mouse skeletons stuck in them, Decon, and lots and lots of spider webs.  And probably HUGE spiders.  (And moths that are breeding at record-setting levels.)

(Will that keep you up tonight mom?)

(I know, I had to throw moths into that mix, didn’t I?)

(Sorry.)

Oh, and some old glass milk jugs that I should go snatch…

When we were teenagers, we would wait patiently, for our turn to have the “storage room” as our bedroom.  That is where access to the crawl space is.

It (the idea of the crawl space) never really creeped me out.  The only thing I didn’t like about it was when you needed to go in it.  You had to step out a little ways into the darkness to pull on the little chain that would turn the light on.  It was a little unnerving.  I could imagine the giant spiders with their multiple eyes checking me out, waiting to pounce on me.

(Is this bothering you mom?)

On to the story!

Present day, the grandchildren find that mysterious door so exciting.  There have been stories circulating about that door, and who resides behind it, for years.

(Some of them are true..)

(I kid, I kid.)

(Kind of.)

So it’s no surprise when they want to go play down in the storage room.  With the lights out.  Yielding flashlights.

Adventurous kids we have in this family.  Eh?

The other day, while we were there for our “Grammie day”, there were just a couple of us and our kids still there, clean-up was in full swing, when mom alerted me that “my girls” took the door to the crawl space off and I “needed to put it back on”.

Pfftt.

I responded very wise__ like: “How do you know it was my girls and not these Mayes boys?  Huh?”

(Really, I love and respect my mom.  We just tease a little..  I only talked back to her one time.  ONE TIME.)

To which she came back with: “Because they told me they thought it was the door to “Neverland”.”

Yup.  That confirmed it.  It was “my girls”.

Do you think they are obsessed much?

I went downstairs to put the door back on, and I will tell you the truth…  the first thing I noticed was all of the spider webs and little spider cocoons attached to the backside of that door, hanging from the frame of the door...

(Shudder.)

And spiders don’t really bother me.

(But they bother my mom.)

:D

Then I noticed the old glass milk jugs, and at the time, my life really wasn’t more important than reaching in and snagging those.

I am now thinking that it wasn’t “that bad”.

Or maybe I am just saying that for my mom.

(I love you mom!)