i also used to think girls with brothers named peter must be named wendy

2/21/2006

i am about to set out on a journey through several dozen countries. my mom is making me a fake ID for each one. they come in many different bright, glittering colors and some have iPod cases or tricycles to go with them.
we visit our former neighbor mr. mccreary to ask his help in forging a particular nation's ID card. i considered mr. mccreary like a fourth grandfather when i was small. he and mrs. mccreary had watermelon parties and grew spearmint plants and he wore black kneesocks with shorts. i later found out my dad couldn't stand him because he was always giving Dad advice on how to do outdoor chores more efficiently.
when we arrive he is confined to a bed, is wearing oxygen, and the nurse Phil Parma from Magnolia is taking care of him.
"i can't help you with that one," he explains, "norway changed the pattern in 1996."
Mom and i thank him and return home, stopping at an open-highway painted-steel burger joint that would have been connotative of sock hops and epic road trips if not for the fact that all its employees and the other two guests were barely-functioning robots and clearly no one else had gone near the place in years and years, God knows why.
we returned home to find that home was ancient Egypt and had been all along. Dad was building our house, which was a giant wet-sand ziggurat crowned with two wet-sand statues of Anubis.
"move that servant, would you?" Dad asked me. he was referring to one of the statues but it offended his catholic religious sensibilities to call it a "god".