PLAN: Spend all day slamming the front door.

DESIRED RESULT: A great big hole in the ground swallowing the house, like
Mom said.

RESULT: No hole. Mom angry. No additional discipline for harnessing self
to handrail of front stairs, though.
-----
PLAN: Eat entire bag of Doritos.

DESIRED RESULT: Distract Mom from Seth's model rocket launch. Vomiting per-
mitted if escalation is necessary, but not considered a sub-goal.

RESULT: Apparent success, followed by notification from Seth of launch fail-
ure. Threw up anyway.
-----
PLAN: Watch TV until my eyes dry out.

DESIRED RESULT: Empirical eye-drying evidence; increased knowledge of sit-
uation comedies.

RESULT: Lee notified Mom, stopping investigations at 4-hour mark. Eyes
felt drier than usual. Still don't always understand Seinfeld.
-----
PLAN: Boycott weird fancy cereal.

DESIRED RESULT: Complete moratorium.

RESULT: Threat of time-out. Continued stubbornness led to compromise on
Wheat Chex with one pinch of sugar. Secret appreciation for even plain Wheat
Chex remains secret.
-----
PLAN: Steal all of Seth's underwear.

DESIRED RESULT: Unsure. Seth'll sure be mad.

RESULT: Most audacious larceny yet; however, underwear cannot be usefully
worn OR RETURNED. Value of advance planning clarified.
-----
PLAN: Never leave room.

DESIRED RESULT: Avoidance of Taylor. Increased time for reading. Discover
if daylight really has vitamins.

RESULT: Threat of anti-depressive pills. Two days off from school. No data
gathered on daylight due to broken window-shade.
-----
PLAN: Become rock star.

DESIRED RESULT: Buy own home, get rid of Mom and Lee, be famous, write
songs about junk food, go on TV, impress Forest from school, get married,
raise rock star children, open bookstore.

RESULT: Mom says to call Forest.

written for my father at my kitchen table 10/9/01

This was one of those stories where I looked at the words and resolved that I had to do something other than the obvious with a combination like "slammer, grand larceny, light of day". Okay, so nobody's getting locked up in the big house... what now?

Writing with lists is easy -- probably too easy, considering how much time I spent drifting in a relatively short piece. The big problem here is massive inconsistency in the voice. At first it's endearing, but then you start wondering: is this kid meant to be particularly precocious, or not? Is the kid actually writing, or is this all sort of a series of thought balloons distilled into words for narrative purposes? I also deeply regret the Seinfeld line. Other than that, come on, you know it's cute.

Oh, right: I didn't do any of this as a kid (nor were my parents divorced when I was little), but the railing of our front steps was embedded in concrete, not attached to the house... so the safety measure mentioned in the first bit would in fact have been effective against sudden house-plummetation. I realized after writing it that this might not be typical. On the upside, my father could be visualizing the same house when reading this as I was when writing it.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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