“Wait in the car while I shop for groceries.”

The seats were fake leather.

Your feet didn’t reach the pedals, in the driver’s seat. Your legs were too short, back then.

While you’re waiting in the car for your mother to get back from shopping for the groceries, you have a couple of options.

Stare out the window and look at the brands of the cars, the names of the stores around the plaza. Parking lot observations – report back on what you see.

Read a book – from the children’s section of your local library, from a bookstore.

Listen to music on the MP3 player, the collection of music that matches the collection of CD’s.

Write in a diary – a diary that has a combination lock, so that nobody else can read it. Ever. Years later you’ll still remember that combination because it was yours. Not for anyone else.

You’ll start writing in journals without locks, eventually.

Your acquaintances will become characters in a story – a mostly true story.

Make believe.

Sometimes small details change, for the sake of anonymity.

Reading though the pages, years later, you’re not sure if you should believe your own memories or the things you saw fit to write down at the time.

You can’t listen to the radio while you’re waiting in the car because mom took the car keys with her “so you couldn’t drive away and leave her there.”

This also means that there is no air conditioning, even in the summer.

Sometimes she drove home with the windows down.

Never on the expressway.

Wouldn’t want to lose those receipts, my guy. Proof of integrity, or some such thing.

We didn’t have a TV at home.

There was a radio.

You knew all of the the FM radio stations where you could tune in without static.

Amd then – when they took y’alls measurements, for the dresses you wore at her wedding.

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“Don’t write that number down!”

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