Worlds

As children my brother and I would alternate heading the periodical, adrenalin-laden mission of 'Stealing the Key to the Attic from Grandma'. One had to be highly skilled and quite devious to manage it without getting caught, there was the waiting for the proper moment involved - which sucked of course, as any waiting sucks for any child who wants things to happen NOW and best of all: RIGHT NOW, the moment when grandma wasn't near the hallway where the big key hung high on a hook - this meant she couldn't be in the kitchen, that the

hallway led to, which was nearly impossible as one would most likely find her exactly in the kitchen at any given moment during the day, also she had to be gone for more than just 3 seconds as we had to get a chair under that hook first to be able to grab the key - as a child it sucks being short too, and then we had to either run like the dickens to not get caught with the key in hand or hide it somewhere in a pocket or under the clothes and stroll self-assured down the long pathway towards the attic door AND then wait together out of sight

for another right moment to open the door to the attic as it, of course, was in direct view from the big kitchen window, from where my grandmother could basically see everything that moved in her yard and far into the garden too. But it was all worth it - every single time, like any escape into different worlds can be during childhood, and adulthood too. Every single time we mounted those steps it always felt like jumping into adventure - a silent and slow-moving adventure, and I think exactly that was half its charm anyway. Because it was

strictly forbidden to get up into the attic, once we were up there we had to first be quiet, secondly thread very carefully because either the old lady tenant that lived in a couple of rented rooms or my grandmother would hear us or see fine dust falling from the ceiling and quickly put an end to the adventure, and then we really should've stayed away from anything dusty and covered in cobwebs so as not to give ourselves away the minute we returned to real life - and all that's of course almost an impossible thing to ask of a child.

Many times we would hear my grandma coming up the stairs and see her head emerging from the stairwell, yelling for us to come down NOW, RIGHT NOW, and we would hide and irrationally hope she would actually believe she was mistaken and we weren't there and our adventure could continue, or we would go down and try to be nonchalant about returning the key on its hook and  going about normal business and just when we thought we had pulled it off, we'd get busted, our dirty clothes speaking loudly of our illicit activities.