To Pokimane, pt 15

My mum is watching The Book Thief (2013). At the start, the main character's baby brother dies on the train, and then they bury him, surrounded by snow and with only a couple other people in attendance.

It made me think of something that I remember. When I was 16 and she was 13, I met Oriana Filiaci online. She lived half a world away, i.e. across the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after (probably a day or two after I met her), her youngest brother died from sticking his finger in an electric socket.

The last time I talked to her, she suggested that we stop talking to each other, and before I agreed to this, I mentioned her younger brother dying. It was, by then, something that had happened seven years earlier. She denied that it had happened.

I hadn't thought of it for a long time before this scene in the movie, but I think it still might affect me, sort of like the suicide of your friend in high school still affects you.

But it also reminded me of when I did something similar to what Oriana's little brother did. I destroyed a key by putting it in an electrical socket. I was probably 3~6 years old. Afterwards, for a long time, I carried the key in my backpack, I think, when I went to school, as a sort of reminder. I remember that, even then, a few years after it had happened, I couldn't remember putting the key in the socket; I only knew that I had done so. I might have also put a metal fork in the electrical socket.

It was always a little bit of a mystery to me, because the key was metal, but the majority of it was gone, and the stub ended in a sort of black or melted bit. Later, like with my dad, I might have had a little bit of experience with aluminum foil being melted or burned in a hot flame, but keys are made of a different type of metal.

There were only a limited number of electrical outlets, I was pretty sure that I knew which one the key had been destroyed in, and yet there was no evidence of it (maybe). Like, if a metal melted, there would be evidence. (The bow of the key had yellow decorations, and it was one of many extra keys that did not fit any locks.) Anyway, the point was that I could have died, although having no memory of it I had no idea how dangerous it might have been, and I kept the key probably because I knew (later on) that I could have died, and so it might have been the first time when I knew that the world was 'broken' ­— that it was not safe, even for a 4-year-old whom people wanted to keep safe. I don't think my family ever knew that I had stuck a metal key in an electrical socket.