Simple.
But now that I am on to my second book I thought this one could be a little more thought out. You know, require a bit more brain power. I know, I know. How could it get better than that? you're wondering. Well, it just might.
As we were all walking, stories about my brother Joseph, I call him Joe, came up. For all of my readers, or lack there of, my brother is autistic. This only means one thing, he is very stubborn. So as we were laughing about all the little things he does to piss us off, Teresa mentioned I should write my next book about Joe. I laughed and said in my head, 'There's plenty of things he does that would fill a book.' But it dawned on me, what a great idea! So I'm going to start writing about memories I have of my brother and what it was like growing up...
It starts with Chapter One: Background
This is by no means a literal book. But a journal so to say. It won't be edited to look fancy or sound proficient... it's about my autistic brother for crying out loud, who doesn't care about grammar. So as long as these ground rules are accepted, I shall divulge.
It is my intention to reveal the life lessons I have learned through Joe. There have been many. I also have learned quite a bit about God through my brother because he views the world differently than I do.
Some of my earliest memories of growing up sort of mend together into one large scene. I can picture the apartments we lived in, the pool, the neighbors, the old lady, the asphalt I fell on, the store across the street, the new house, the new neighbors, the treehouse, the 3-inch thorn (I'll get to that later) and the green felt for carpet. But to sit here and try to remember specific things will definitely be a challenge. Especially the ones that just include Joe.
I guess the best place to start is to mention that I have two brothers, in fact, Joe and Josh. Josh is the oldest, Joe in the middle and then there's me. Oh, and I wasn't supposed to be born either. When my parents had Joe they knew he was different. They knew that there was something a little off about him and they weren't sure how much attention he was going to require. So they decided to have my mom's tubes tied so they wouldn't be unfair to more children if Joe required serious attention. Well... I came along and the doctor went 'oops, my bad' and so the story exists.
Josh and I were born in Nampa, Idaho and Joe was born in Sacramento, California due to a short move for my dad's job. We moved to Redlands, California when I was three and its where we've been ever since. We moved into a condo which looked and felt more like an apartment, with only two bedrooms. This meant that the three kids shared one room. But it was awesome because we had this huge bunk with a trundle underneath so we all had our own beds. It was massive and we'd use it as a hideout, stakeout, gym or any other thing that was needed for our imaginations.
It was a two story condo with the family room and kitchen downstairs and the bedrooms upstairs. The stairs served both as racing turf and sleeping bag slides. I still remember sliding down and slamming into the wall at the end of the stairs. Every kid must have stairs. Our dinner table was glass and you could see through it. The kitchen was tiny and we had this awful pink patterned couch. The carpet was something left over from the 70's and the decor never left the 80's. But considering we grew up in the 90's, we weren't that far behind.
Now back to Joe. I'm not sure if I can put these memories from the earliest to most recent but I will just start with the ones I can remember as far back as I can.
Chapter Two to come...
