My Father's First Experience

Though my father has experienced a lot of activity in his life, this is the first one he ever told me about. This one is fairly short (I have mentioned it briefly on here before) and I tend to forget it in contrast to his other experiences.

In the small town he lives in, there are only so many jobs teenagers could get. Fast food, serving, factory (which have since almost all closed) or the theater in town. The theater (I will leave the name out for privacy's sake) was built in 1906 as an opera house. It's quite old and elaborate, as well as being fairly large. It is four stories tall, many rooms and even still has the balconies in the side walls of the theater where people used to watch the opera performances. He did a little bit of everything there, from tickets to maintenance. In a building that old, maintenance is a daily chore.

There was always a feeling of being watched while in the building. Not menacing, mind you, but the feeling of curiosity, as though someone was trying to figure out where you fit in. It was not necessarily friendly, but not mean either, if that makes any sense.

One day, one of his chores was to repaint the banisters all the way up to the upper floors. Not a terribly difficult job and my father set to it. As he worked his way up the stairs, he began to get a feeling that he was being observed, though no one was around him.

He never saw anything, but he began to hear whispers coming from the landing above him, which he could clearly see was vacant. He remembers them saying, "What is he doing?" and "Why is he doing that?" The voices sounded annoyed with him painting the banisters and also a bit curious, as though they cannot figure out why someone would do that. A lot of the whispers were too low to be understood, but they got louder the farther up he went.

He finished his job quickly and left for the night. He still felt watched after that experience. I don't think he has ever gone to the theater to watch a movie in quite a long time.