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Write About Your Life
I can pull my foot up to my nose and smell it. I can do it with the other foot,
too. My feet smell like the inside of my Keds.
Mommy frowned. “Young ladies don’t do that.”
Aunt Ollie said, “How do they smell, Mollie? May I please smell?” I lifted my foot. She took a big sniff.” Oooh, very sweet feet. They smell like lilacs.
“Or gardenias?”
We laughed and did our special wink with the right eye, then the left eye. She
likes peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches too. Also our names rhyme: Mollie
and Aunt Ollie.
P.J. and Cricket and I played Sea Hunt in Mommy and Daddy’s room. You dive under the covers until you get to the end of the bed, then you
fall into the Deep Blue Sea, where the covers are tucked in. The other Sea
Divers are not allowed to kick you.
Daddy said, “Can’t you play outside? I’m sleeping.”
Mommy uses perfume, powder, hairspray, and lipstick. We can borrow her brush
with the silver mirror if we put it back where it belongs.
My job is to set the table. The fork goes on top of the napkin. You can fold
napkins two ways: rectangles or triangles. You’re not allowed to eat with your fingers except fried chicken and watermelon.
You’re not supposed to cook dinner when everyone else is sleeping but sometimes Aunt
Ollie does. In the morning, there’s dinner on the table. Aunt Ollie tells Mommy she was just trying to help. She
wasn’t being bad.
We set up blocks in P.J.’s room. The first hamster to get to the Velveeta wins. I wanted Cleopatra to
win, because she’s mine, but Confucius won. He’s P.J.’s.
P.J. wins everything. He says, “I am a born winner.”
We have eight hamsters because Cleopatra had babies. She escaped but we found
her in the laundry chute. The babies looked like squirming pink jelly beans.
Aunt Ollie comes to bed after I’m asleep. In the morning she says, “Look who’s here! My favorite great-great niece in the whole world!” She’s not supposed to say that because of hurting Cricket’s feelings but it’s our secret.
Bunny Brown said, “Let’s touch tongues.” We were on the bus. I said okay. We touched tongues. Bunny said, “That means we’re best friends.” I didn’t know that rule.
My real best friend is John L. Hartwell. He lives next door. His name rhymes,
like Mollie and Aunt Ollie.
I walked into the Hartwells’ house. I sat in the living room waiting for John L. and his brothers to wake
up. There were chocolate Santa Clauses hanging on their tree, wrapped in red
and green tinfoil. We never have candy at our house, except vitamins, which
taste sort of like candy.
I unwrapped a Santa and ate it.
Our tree has a green ball that says “Krista” and a red ball that says “Philip James,” written in gold sparkles. Some sparkles have fallen off. There isn’t one saying “Mollie” because I wasn’t born yet.
I sat down on the sofa. The chocolate melted in my mouth. No one woke up, so I
ate another one. Then I ate eight more, which equals ten. Then I ate all the
rest of the Santas.
I didn’t want to get in trouble so I left. I hope they didn’t yell at John L. He’s the oldest so they probably yelled at Sammy.
My favorite story is,
Oh how I love to go up in the swing!
Up in the sky so blue!
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do.
P.J. likes Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus. Mommy tries to be fair but if I hear the
Brer Rabbit story my tummy hurts. I curl up on the floor. Daddy carries me to
bed.
I wake up a little bit but keep my eyes closed. I love being carried up the
seven steps, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, then down the
hall, then Daddy turns sideways so my legs don’t smack into the door, but they do, then he says “Whoopsie daisy, sorry Mollie” but it doesn’t hurt, then “kerplunk!” into the bed, which wakes me up more but I pretend it doesn’t. Daddy breathes loudly because he’s tired of carrying me.
He whispers, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
He says that because Aunt Ollie used to say that to him, when he was
little. Bed bugs are extinguished now, like dinosaurs. A woman author came to our assembly! She was a poet, but that’s sort of like an author. She said, “Write about your life.”
Mommy said, “Did you tell her you want to be an author?”
You can’t talk to the guest speaker. Some kids did, but they were big kids.
The Hartwells have a pool. There’s a deep end and a shallow end. I can swim anywhere I want. There’s a funny sign. It shows a man wearing a bathing suit and standing in a toilet.
It says, “We don’t swim in your toilet. Please don’t pee in our pool.”
I still pee in the pool. One time I peed when I was on the diving board.
I thought it would just slide down my leg but when I checked, the pee was making a yellow curtain all the way down to my knees. I dove in fast, and almost landed on John L. |
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