sǝuoſ ǝuıɥsunS

Legend has it, according to my mother, that right around the time my older brother grasped the difference between “tee-taw” and “big truck” — the former being the previous expression meant to suggest the latter — we were sitting in our black 1969 Volkswagon Beetle watching some road construction go down.

It was all eyes on my brother, and we were on the edge of our beige seats as he pointed at the machinery, waiting for him to say it. The machines were much larger then, and not just because we were smaller. A tarmac spreader, roller, and heating truck was a massive affair as the 1970’s began. I sat beside my brother in the back seat, looking out the window at the source of the commotion.

“What’s that?” my mother asked my brother.

“Tee-taw”

“What is it?”

“Tee-taw”

Fingers pointing, everyone’s eyes fixed on my brother. We were looking for “big truck.” I am sure my brother loved the attention, and knew precisely what was going on outside the little black car. He held my mother’s attention and just didn’t feel like saying “big truck” because tee-taw was obviously a lot more fun to say.

Abstractly, in my little red shorts, my gaze fixed on the ruckus outside and feigning detachment I said “asphalt heating machine.” And then I might have scanned the vehicle for some gauge of the response. My mother was still pointing out the window, mouth open, but now looking at me.

My brother, sensing the shift of the spotlight abruptly pointed to the truck and said “Big Truck.” Applause was issued, and my brother had maintained the mantle of brilliance and approval he would forever be the benevolent keeper of.

First of all I want to revel here in how awesome that my first sentence was “asphalt heating machine.” It more or less says it all doesn’t it? And then I want to posit that if I’d known at 3 what I know now… things might have turned out quite a bit differently for me. That’s kind of a stupid thing to say really… but it certainly vindicates Robert Fulghum’s ideas ever so slightly doesn’t it?

Secondly, these stories shift and change in my family. Was I born with spiky black hair with a shock of white in it (which all fell out and grew back brown?) Or was that my brother? Is my name Allison? Are we Navajo or are we Chicksaw? Was it strawbebbies, or stwah-beddies? It changes slightly every time, and then has to survive somewhere in my nonlinear mind as a photograph long enough for me to describe it again in writing so that I can remember how poorly I’ve remembered what I was told about someone else’s recollection of what happened more than three decades ago.

However it works out is irrelevant. I love the stories. I love the image in my mind of a 3 year old me — with the mind of a 42 year old man — sitting casually, stuck to the blazing hot, beige vinyl seat of a black VW saying “asphalt heating machine” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Nothing much changes does it? Wouldn’t have it any other way.