Childhood, Plan A

It was an interesting time. I have distinct memories of ground beef and onions sizzling in the kitchen while me and my brothers watched Mr. Rogers Neighborhood as the sky got darker outside. My sister was always busily working on one project or another. Sometimes she was mixing chemicals in a lab coat and goggles. Other times she was making movies using one bunny slipper and a duckie slipper as characters; on her feet mind you. My mom would be making tacos or chile rellenos or a casserole or steak or stew. She'd let us eat little pieces of this or that while we waited. My little brothers played with Heman action figures, Hotwheels, or chess or checkers. My brother Danny and I used to play checkers all the time. In fact, we used to be in the habit of making secret appointments to play a game in the middle of the night. We'd set our alarm clocks for a ghastly hour like 3am and meet up in the living room to play. Crazy little kids we were. I was in another habit; I sang involuntarily all the time unless I was eating or watching something engaging on TV. Even then I was often humming. If I wasn't doing any of those things I was "drawing stories". I would take a stack, about a half a centimeter thick, of regular notebook paper and draw out the most amazing, soap opera-ish stories while doing all the voices, including narration, aloud. There were lots of ladies in gorgeous, huge, and impressive dresses. Sometimes everyone was English in the story so I had to tell the whole thing in an accent. Everyone just had to deal with it. I couldn't do it silently. It had to be out loud. I didn't know this until much later but my mother had been filing those drawings away for years and years in binders. I've been telling stories all my life I guess. That's always been plan A. I like plan A.