My latest memoir, KID STUFF, progresses slowly in between drawing for my TONALAMATL project, writing on other stuff, and seasonal gardening. (In that arena, besides the swaths of golden aspens on the mountains, we’re now well into autumn colors down here in town.)

For the memoir, I’m now posting the second mini chapter called BIG BRO which covers my few relatively idyllic years between five and eight. They were years of minor traumas, dramas, and challenges, the most serious but least impactful being a concerted but unsuccessful effort by the Catholic church to indoctrinate my heathen little head.

The most traumatic but least important experience of that period was in the first grade when, like a naughty kitten, I lost my mitten and feared I’d have no pie. In fact, I got more pie than I needed and by eight had gotten downright plump. The most painful but least meaningful drama was my first time away from the family at Cub Scout camp when I was too shy to use the latrine.

The funniest adventure in those few years of empty-headed childhood was a snowy sleighride that went terribly wrong. On the other hand, the most serious and meaningful episode in those few years was being rescued from drowning by my heroic father. That was essentially our closest relationship moment in all the too few years of his life.

Check out BIG BRO for a few minutes of old snapshots and fond, if vague, memories of a childhood well before the age of reason, if such a theoretical age indeed exists.

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