I grew up in a cul-de-sac, a phrase that I learned in 5th grade meant " a sack of coal". The cul-de-sac was inhabited by elderly people: Mr. Lewis with his garden of cactus, Mr. Gordon who ran his finger across bird crap on his car, tasted it, and then said "yep, it's shit", the Voskamps with the brick wall where the neighborhood kids played hide-go-seek behind, and the Skandrups who had the best lawn to play "smear the queer" on.
The house I grew up in was a modest Ranch House, blue and white, with a juniper bush hedge and a palm tree on the easement just above the house to the East. It was a 3 bedroom house, 1.5 baths. My parents had a waterbed, queen size, where I watched The Monkees, The Last Unicorn and The Ewok movie while riding the ebb tide out in a laundry basket. Their bathroom had a tiled floor and a shower where my mother kept open buckets to catch excess water to hydrate her gardens.
My brother's room had an overhead fan that he broke the lights out of when he tossed a softball up into it. He also had mirror closet doors that, when he was away at school, I would practice En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It" with his electric guitar. When I sleep walked I would wake up underneath his desk.
My bedroom faced out onto the street with a large shrub directly outside the window. The screen of the window was screwed in, something I learned when I tried to run away to live with the wolves. My closet doors were mirrors also; my parents installed them after showing us Poltergeist II (where the ghosts come out of mirrors to steal the children), this after showing us the Poseidon Adventure just before we went on a three week cruise.
More later, if I'm not too messed up by traumatic childhood memories to continue
The house I grew up in was a modest Ranch House, blue and white, with a juniper bush hedge and a palm tree on the easement just above the house to the East. It was a 3 bedroom house, 1.5 baths. My parents had a waterbed, queen size, where I watched The Monkees, The Last Unicorn and The Ewok movie while riding the ebb tide out in a laundry basket. Their bathroom had a tiled floor and a shower where my mother kept open buckets to catch excess water to hydrate her gardens.
My brother's room had an overhead fan that he broke the lights out of when he tossed a softball up into it. He also had mirror closet doors that, when he was away at school, I would practice En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It" with his electric guitar. When I sleep walked I would wake up underneath his desk.
My bedroom faced out onto the street with a large shrub directly outside the window. The screen of the window was screwed in, something I learned when I tried to run away to live with the wolves. My closet doors were mirrors also; my parents installed them after showing us Poltergeist II (where the ghosts come out of mirrors to steal the children), this after showing us the Poseidon Adventure just before we went on a three week cruise.
More later, if I'm not too messed up by traumatic childhood memories to continue
