My family was trained to indulge and we were utterly unashamed of our abilities. Every day was a manic and relentless parade through deep-junk Americana; harrowing, psychedelic, wonderful. I had a Batman bedspread and Aquaman pajamas; I opened my dream-distracted eyes to a poster of a mounted cowboy in a rubbly valley, mesas in the distance. He wore spurs and chaps and a red shirt with a black vest and a white hat and he brandished a pistol as he rode.
I wanted that gun more than anything.
My room was strewn with toys: G.I. Joe, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and a Rubik's Cube. An Etch-A-Sketch, a skateboard. A real football and a fake one made of foam. A lime-green water pistol, Beretta-style. A Millenium Falcon, tilted like a pot lid, gradually shedding brittle fragments into the deep hairs of my purple shag. Belts of orange Hot Wheels track drooping from the windowsill, winding under chair and desk, some connected by dark green plastic tabs and others solitary, double dead ends in the wasteland.
On Saturday mornings I'd awake of my own volition, stumble through the debris, walk down the hall to the bathroom and brush my teeth with Aim. Because I was supposed to take aim against cavities.