Childhood Romanticized

   It is so easy to romanticize the past, I guess. But clearly, the life of my childhood was easy. I really did love staying at my Uncle Paul's and Aunt Edith's farm for one week every summer. Milking the cows by hand and collecting the eggs from the henhouse. Playing the broken piano that sat on the back porch. Rusting piano wires.

(Sotto): Piano wires again. What's with the piano wires?

(Vatchi): Clearly, he's getting off track here. Christ, he needs a fact-checker. What does this have to do with anything? Sotto, I don't know if this is some diversionary tactic of his or what. He doesn't know about us, so this must be some kind of delusion or flashback.

   Just have some patience. He'll come back around. He's not totally derailed.

   Yet.

   Son of a bitch! Maybe my childhood seemed so great, not because I was a child, but because it preceded the onset of my alcoholic catastrophes.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 56)