This month, it's Jon. Yes, Jon Arntson, a good friend of mine, a great Words with Friends player, and my favorite Michigan writer. He gifted us with the dopest prompt:
Imagine the home(s) where you grew up, and start drawing a floor plan. As you draw, memories will surface. Grab onto one of those memories and tell us a story.
It's a little hard for me to talk about how much this brings up for me, because my childhood, and my childhood home ... let's just say I have all the ghosts in my pasts we all have. But Jon's presentation intrigued me especially, because while I'm not architect, I've always been fascinated by blueprints, and when I pretended to write comic books as a kid, I drew way more scenes from a birds-eye view than any comic book publisher would have accepted, I assume.
I don't have one specific memory that could be stretched into a whole post, at least not one I'm comfortable sharing, but I love what Abby did, when she shared a bunch of snippets, as her mind flitted from room to room.
This is my maddened version of her (and Jon's) genius.
- The swingset in our front yard, which more often than not became the setting for one of my games of fantasy. Like the Sail Barge from the beginning of Return of the Jedi.
- Our front porch. Where one of my favorite childhood photos ended up being taken - my sister and I, our faces stained with purple juice after collecting bucketfuls of blackberries from the backyard.
- Our living room, where the fireplace was, and where my dad would blast his Steppenwolf records at full volume.
- Our kitchen, where my mom and dad allowed a family friend to remodel in the 80s. It's still the same kind of ugly.
- Our family room. Where my dad and I would watch Seahawk games. He recorded every one on Betamax in the beginning, and we had a remote contol - one that had a cord.
- Our deck, where we did our barbecueing, and could see all the way to the Olympic Mountains, on a clear day.
- The basement. Where the furnace was, and where I got so jealous when we furnished a room and mom let my big sister move her bedroom down there.
- The upstairs bathroom. Where I would perform in front of the mirror - when I was supposed to be taking a bath - pretending I was the host of a variety show, for sometimes as long as 15 minutes.
- My room, where Legos, and GI Joes, and Star Wars men dominated the floor space, and where the closet had a window out through which I could climb onto the roof, and escape from everything.
