I am young, maybe five or six. I’m waiting in the car while my mommy picks my sister up from preschool. I am looking out the window, up to the heavens, and I see thick gray clouds moving across the white expanse of sky. A thought comes to me, and I watch the clouds fly overhead with a new wonder. Mommy comes back to the car, my little sister in tow, and opens the car door. Mommy! I say. Guess what? She asks me what. I can see the earth moving! I tell her about the clouds and my new discovery, but she gently suggests that maybe it’s not the earth turning it’s just the wind blowing them. Oh. I look back up at the clouds. I still think it’s probably the earth.

My dad has a giant wooden boat that’s turned upside down in our backyard, and covered with a tarp. He says someday he’s going to fix it up. My sister and I use it for a playhouse. This afternoon it is warm, but raining hard. We grab the old Scrabble box, and ducking under the tarp we climb into the boat. We spread the game out on the boat’s ceiling, which is our floor, and we play. The rain pounds over our heads, and after awhile it sneaks in through gaps and cracks and starts to drip drip drip down onto our game. Every time a drop splashes on one of the square letters the ink runs and spreads, and after awhile it looks like we’ve been painting them with watercolor purple. We stay out as long as we can, but it finally gets cold and we pack everything up and go inside. We don’t tell Mom that we ruined the Scrabble pieces.

I wake up in the dark. My bed is wet. I cry for Mommy and Daddy, but they don’t come. After awhile a girl comes in my room and I remember she is my babysitter. She’s mad that I wet the bed but she lets me get up and go out into the living room. She can’t find the clean sheets after she’s stripped off the soiled bedding, so she doesn’t make me go back to bed. I sit with her in the dark, watching grown-up TV and eating powdered doughnuts until Mommy and Daddy come home.

It’s corn dog day at school. I sit hunched at the table with my embarrassing sack lunch while all around me my classmates pick and poke at their hot lunch plates. I see that no one is eating the corn part, only the dog. I sneak behind the lunch monitor and grab an empty tray from the cart by the kitchen. Back at my table I pass it down and back up the long line of students, each one donating their unwanted corn dog bread. When it reaches me again it’s piled high, and I stuff myself. It’s crunchy on the outside, sweet and squishy on the inside, and it’s warm. Lunch ends with a bell and I go outside for recess, tossing my untouched sack lunch into the garbage on my way out the door.

It’s summer, and we’re on vacation visiting family across the state. I am unaccustomed to the dry heat. My bare shoulders are burned an angry red and I can feel how my hair has absorbed the sun’s heat when I place my palms against the top of my baking head. I tag along after my cousins. I come from the city and they think my ignorance about rural living is hilarious. They push me on a rickety old swing, and I look up and see how the bark from the tree has bulged and spilled over the chains. I slide my hands along the board, trying to adjust my weight, and an inch long sliver lodges itself firmly under the soft skin by my wrist. I am crying. My cousins lead me up to the porch where all the grown-ups sit drinking iced tea. My grandma’s brother reaches into his overalls and pulls out a frighteningly sharp pocket knife. Terrified, I plead with my eyes for my parents to save me, but they don’t get up from their aluminum chairs. He grabs my arm and holds me tightly, and I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for the pain. He tells me it’s out, and I don’t believe him. It’s out, he says again, and I open my eyes and look down at my hand. He’s right. I hadn’t felt a thing.