When I was a young child, I always had a fascination with the idea of an attic. In many western tales that I read, a person often lived in a small attic, and I thought that it would be so cozy to stay in the tiny spot under the roof. So, when I was six and my family moved from our old tiny half-dilapidated apartment into a two-story house in the suburb, I wanted it to be a house with an attic. But when I walked around the new house, I didn’t find any attic space nor a staircase leading up to it.
“There isn’t any attic in this house?”
I said to my parents, disappointed. They looked puzzled, but replied
“Yes, there is.”
“There is?” My eyes quickly got bigger with excitement.
“Yes, but why do you care?” asked my parents.
Though my parents didn’t understand why I was so excited about the “attic”, after I asked them to show it to me, they took me upstairs and opened the door of the closet.
“There it is!”
On the ceiling of the tiny closet, a little door was carved out in a square shape.
“Is that the entrance to the attic?” I asked eagerly. “Can I go in there?”
“Of course not!” My mother looked at me with surprise. “There is nothing in there. It’s just a dark space where the electrician will go up when there is an issue with the house electricity!”
I was speechless. I just couldn’t believe that our house had an attic and yet it was a place only the electrician could go. What a difference from the cozy picture of an attic that I had had from my books!
In any case, the magnitude of shock I felt in that moment made this an unforgettable episode. The picture of the square-shaped door on the ceiling was eternally engraved in my memory with the huge disappointment I experienced that day.