Quicksand House by Carlton Mellick III
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Check out this part of the intro to this book:
Quicksand House is one of the most personal stories I’ve written. Most people look back on their childhood as being safe, fun, and carefree, but I remember it as terrifying and confusing. My world always felt as if it were about to be pulled out from under my feet and I would be left with an uncertain and lonely future.
Boy, that one hits home.
I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, and I gather this is a coping mechanism so common as to be cliche. And I think it’s regarded with suspicion too, that people who don’t remember things are just saying that because they don’t want to talk about the past.
My sister recently shared a memory with me, that we were at our dad’s house, and there was no food around, but we somehow scrounged up some change and walked no small distance to the Mini Mart to find food for ourselves. She would have been like…4 or 5 at this time?
And my mom told me something I didn’t remember as well. She said that she asked about how things were going at my dad’s house, and as a young child, I said, “I just try to keep my head down.”
Growing up in my house was pretty unusual at the best times, pretty unstable at the worst times. And I think that’s why I feel the way I feel about this year’s election.
HA! Fooled you! Betcha didn’t think I was looping around there, didja?
Really, though, I think my reaction hasn’t been joyful in the least. But I also just don’t have the surprise that seems to have slapped so many across the face. And I think it’s because I don’t see people, in general, as looking out for the best interests of others. As a little kid, that’s how the world looked to me. Sometimes what I wanted crossed over with what someone else wanted, and that was convenient. Sometimes your dad was hungry and wanted to eat lunch, and that meant there was a lunch of some sort to be eaten. Sometimes he was 5 beers deep by 11 AM and then you and your sister had to figure out how to make it work on your own.
And I don’t think that a semi-chaotic lifestyle is a complete stranger to me. This adult coming into a situation and making things pretty damn chaotic…that’s probably more familiar to me than I care to admit.
I’m a white male, so my plan, which I’m ONLY revealing here, so don’t blow it, is to quietly amass power and riches over the next two years, which I understand I now have coming to me, and THEN use this new level of power to affect real change. I think it’s a solid plan. Although so far, all of my plans that involve a stage of being rich have not worked out. Not one bit.
Anyway, I have some advice. Take it or leave it. And don’t consider it post-election advice so much as the way in which one little kid dealt with a pretty nutty childhood.
There is a plus side to having a chaotic house. If you’ve got a certain perspective.
My dad almost burned our house down one time. While leading a Cub Scout meeting. He also put on a dish glove, a winter glove, and stuck a screwdriver into an electrical socket. Also during a Cub Scout meeting. Like I said, it was fairly chaotic.
And the thing about chaos is, as bad and difficult as it can be, it frees you to be the person you choose to be.
I’ll tell you another story. Another story I don’t remember. That my sister told me.
It was like before. We didn’t have anything to eat. Parental guidance was absent for whatever reason. And she was upset. And I suggested that we make a game out of the situation. We weren’t kids who were stuck in this bad, powerless situation. We were detectives. Looking for a way to get fed. Solving the mystery of the lost parents. Looking for clues, doing detective shit. And that’s how we got through it.
When shit gets chaotic, I’m not gonna lie, it’s tough. You don’t need me to tell you that. And when shit gets chaotic, people go hungry, things get dangerous. It can be a rough scene.
But when shit gets chaotic, shit gets busy. And when shit gets busy, people have a lot less time to tell you what to do and how to do it. They have a lot less time to tell you what kind of person to be.
Which means you get to choose for yourself.
It’s not perfect. It’s not ideal. It’s not like you get to choose who you want to be without parameters. You’re going to be hungry no matter what. That’s not the choice. The choice is being a hungry kid or a hungry badass detective. The choice is to tell your sister “shut up, I’m hungry too” or to say, “We’re in this together. Let’s play a game.”