When I was… seven, I think… I told my sister that alligator shoes were made from alligators. She didn’t believe me, and went and asked Mommy, and was told that alligator shoes were in fact made from alligator skin.
I told her then that alligator luggage and handbags were also made from alligator skin. She was all of maybe three at the time, and quite reasonably asked how they removed the skin without hurting the alligators.
I opened my mouth… and closed it again. My sister was a dear, sweet, innocent child. It had never occurred to her that one would kill one of God’s creatures for its skin to make shoes out of.
I, on the other hand, was a corrupt, poisonous little bastard. I promptly began leading her cheerfully down the primrose path…
I told her they didn’t remove the skins at ALL. They freeze-dried the alligators, and formed them into the appropriate shape. Baby alligators made one shoe each. Middle-sized ones became handbags, and the BIG ones… the MAN EATERS… became luggage.
She sat with her eyes huge, following me like the Word of God.
I continued in this vein by explaining that you didn’t EVER want to get ANYTHING made of alligator skin WET, though.
“Why?”
“Because if you do… well… those alligators will rehydrate, hon.”
“Rehydrate?”
"That’s right. Those alligators will absorb that water like a sponge… and swell up… and… Come…Back… to… LIFE!!!"
She looked at me, horrified. She’d noticed the great care Dad took with his alligator shoes… and asked, “But what if it rains?”
“That’s something you have to be very, very careful about,” I replied, with a suitably evil leer.
She looked at me, horror and wonder mixed in her baby features. I was Big Brother, after all, second only to Mommy, Daddy, and God. Plainly, I knew what I was talking about…
And that was the end of it for six months. I forgot all about it. We went on vacation… and it happened at a little motel in New Mexico. We’d gotten two adjoining rooms and we were all sitting around watching TV. Dad was taking a shower.
Dad liked his showers hot, by the way. When he came out, wrapped in a towel, a great cloud of steam came out with him… fogged the mirror… and in the frosty air conditioning, meant to counteract the hot New Mexico climate, it condensed like crazy… and began to run in rivulets down the mirror… and drip onto Dad’s suitcase.
Dad’s suitcase was one of those old fabric jobbies, by the way – vintage 1960s red and black plaid pattern… but my sister had gotten the idea that ALL luggage was made of alligators, not just “alligator luggage”. And no, I didn’t tell her that. She’d gotten THAT weird idea all by herself.
She promptly shrieked as if someone had fed her leg into a meat grinder.
We all (yes, me included) leaped to her aid, asking what was wrong. Mom promptly grabbed her and began searching her for injuries. She was waaay too hysterical to answer reasonably, and continued to shriek and wail about water, steam, Daddy, luggage, showers, water, Daddy, and how IT WAS GONNA EAT US UP!!!
We all looked at each other, quite confused. Mom finished the search, and found no gaping wounds, cancerous lesions or giant hairy desert scorpions. We spent the next ten minutes getting her calmed down enough to tell us … that she had screamed because the luggage had gotten wet.
This confused us all even worse. You screamed because the luggage got wet?
“BECAUSE IT’S ALL GONNA TURN INTO ALLIGATORS!!!” she screamed again, spraying tears everywhere.
At this point, dawn broke over marble head, and I realized that I would be considerably safer if I were out of the room. I got fairly close to the door before Mom nailed me to the floor with a glance and two words.
…and over the next twenty minutes of comforting and questioning, my parents learned precisely why my sister was so hysterical.
You know what? Moms don’t honor statutes of limitations… sigh …and the only thing that saved me from having the crap beat out of me was the fact that, once the whole story was out, it struck Dad funny… and he never could stand to hit me if he couldn’t keep a straight face… and Mom was so irritated at Dad for having the giggles that she hit him instead of me…
