I am a liar. Plain
and simple, to be honest, I am a liar. Let's
put that right out on the table.
If I tell
you my first creative moment, I have to admit that moment leaned heavily on a
blatant fabrication. The only kids my
age in my neighborhood were boys, and that gets really old after a while. There are only so many times a girl can play
Army men and cars and kickball and go bug collecting before suffering sequin-withdrawal. I needed to branch out. I needed to find some pre-pubescent estrogen.
We lived in
one of those grid-neighborhoods, the 1950's and '60s version of planned
suburbia, where ranch houses spread out like plaid on a picnic blanket. One day when I was five, I ditched my mother
at a neighbor's house and started canvassing the vast streets for
children. I knocked on doors; I ran
through back yards; I wandered to the park at the far end of the safety zone,
asking the same question over and over:
"Do you have any children here I can play with?" The answer was always no, followed by nervous
glances around, followed by the inevitable, "Where's your mother,
dear?"
I simply
smiled and fibbed, "She's next door at the neighbor's house." Sensing I'd been bagged, I would usually slip
off into the nearby bushes while the unsuspecting homeowner craned his or her
neck to search for a nonexistent garden party.
Amazing I didn't get myself kidnapped or worse.
My mother was not horrified by my wanderings because
she didn't know, though I did catch a smack for admitting I was at the
park. I mean, didn't I know how
dangerous it was to cross that busy street alone? If she only knew I had been exploring boundaries
far greater and far more heinous than the big slide and cat-litter sandbox, she
might well have had a stroke.
