Childhood part I

I was born to an eccentric genius and the perfect woman. I was the 7th of my mother's 8 children, 10th of my dad's 11, and the only living girl. My parents decided mere days before my mother discovered her pregnancy with me that they were going to have no more children. They had tried for a girl repeatedly and it hadn't happened. When I came along, they were surprised and overjoyed.

I don't think any girl can live up to that kind of pressure.

Some of my earliest memories are of playing with firecrackers with my brothers in the sandbox, blowing up army men, and of a secret club they allowed me to peek into. They referred to it as "fire secrets". They made bombs. I wanted to be just like them. I was seven years younger than my youngest older brother, however, and my glimpse into my brothers' world was stunted by my age, gender, and propensity to tattle tale. More than anything I wanted a sister. Then Blake came along, and I made him into one. We were best friends and enemies, and had a childhood not easily replicated, I'd wager.

Immediately behind my childhood home is a gigantic field, behind which stands a hill referred to by the locals as the 'R' hill. That field became a vast wilderness in which we hunted for treasure, collected old bottles of various shapes and colors, and had all manners of adventures. Also behind my home is my dad's own personal junkyard, referred to lovingly and exasperatedly as "the mess" by my mother, who does not believe in messes. My dad had a collection of hundreds of cars, tanks, gravel, wood, mattresses, old appliances, mysterious sheds with mysterious belongings, stacks of tires, various pieces of equipment, flanges, strange bolts and parts, and even an old school bus and all manners of treasures all strewn about and divided by winding dirt roads on two acres of childhood heaven. The stack of wood was our ship, the mattresses, our trampoline, the "H tanks", a secret meeting place. The tire stacks became space capsules we huddled in and communicated to each other through old stretches of hose we ran from one to the other like those string and cup telephones your teacher helps you make in kindergarten.

I never went to Disneyland. Disneyland was my back yard.