I wish I was like you, easily amused

I’ve been at it for a couple hours, but all I have are three possible titles and a few paragraphs that I absolutely hate. A lot of writers claim that they have special place where they get their inspiration from. I haven’t found my own spot yet, but the dinner table clearly is not it. Maybe a breath of fresh air will give me a sudden epiphany. Doubtful, considering the absolute dearth of ideas I’ve happened upon in the last couple hours. But hey, I’m desperate and I’ll try just about anything.

As I walk out the sliding door into the backyard, notebook in hand, I see the old clubhouse. I stand and stare at it for a while. There’s a sandbox under it that hasn’t been used in years. There’s probably a massive ant colony or underground bees nest in it now. I don’t have the stomach to find out, so I slowly climb up the seven or eight ladder rungs and pull myself into the clubhouse. I haven’t been up here for a few years now. I’m surprised it’s still standing, but this monumental case of writer’s block has allowed me to overcome my fear of this old thing tumbling down. The green carpet is covered in pine needles and I slowly brush some aside to give myself a clear spot to sit. I lean back against the two railings that go all the way around the clubhouse. It’s not very comfortable, but it’ll have to do for now. I look up through the roof into the sky half expecting to see the blue tarp that used to cover it. But it’s gone and the shingles my dad promised to put up years ago are still not there. Maybe sitting up here will give me some sort of inspiration to write about something. Up here, it’s just me, my notebook, a pack of Camel Lights, and the wind whistling through the woods.

As I pull out a cigarette and light it, I glance over at the dining room window and catch my mom giving me one of those disapproving smiles while shaking her head. She doesn’t like that I smoke, but I’m 20 and she’s gonna let me make my own mistakes. I take a couple puffs and look around at what should be a decaying pile of wood. Instead, I’m met with small remnants of a childhood that seems so long ago. I see the faint chalked-on targets on the railings that my brother and I used to shoot our supersoakers at. After twelve or so years of rain, you’d think the chalk would have washed away. But they’ve become a part of the wood now from us redrawing them over and over again. My dad did a good job sealing the wood.

I take another puff from my cigarette and begin to write. Or try to anyway. I get through about two sentences when I hear a dog barking off in the distance. I stop writing and slowly drift off into a vivid daydream about Cane, the massive German Shepherd that the Lewises used to have. My brother and I were throwing a baseball in the backyard, lobbing pop flies to each other using the clubhouse railings as a homerun fence pretending to be Brady Anderson robbing a hated Yankee of a homerun. As I was going up for another, I heard the familiar bark of our neighbor’s dog followed by my brother’s scream. Cane had worked his way free of his chain again and we both bolted up the ladder into the clubhouse. For a few minutes, we stared down at the seemingly leviathan-sized dog fearing for our lives. He was barking and jumping up and down trying to get into the clubhouse. He probably just wanted us to play with him, but we were terrified. Luckily the clubhouse was high enough that he couldn’t reach us. Finally, my mom peaked out the door wondering what all the commotion was about. Seeing Cane free for the umpteenth time, she went back in the house and called Mrs. Lewis who promptly came over and dragged Cane into her house. For the time being, we were safe. But, we weren’t going to take any chances. My brother grabbed a basketball from the zoysia grass and we headed to the cul-de-sac to shoot some hoops.

We had one of those hoops that you could lower down to six feet with a broomstick. We would pretend we were NBA all-stars in a dunk competition and this time around was no different. As usual, my brother was Michael Jordan, tongue flying through the air, and I was Clyde Drexler, silky-smooth, slicing through the air like a razor blade. This went on for about a half hour, each of us rating the others dunk until we got into an argument over my brother lowballing my last dunk. I chucked the basketball off the backboard in anger and we started shoving each other. Somehow we made our way over to the lawn where it turned into a wrestling match. For a while we went at it like only pre-teen brothers can do, seriously trying to hurt the other, which slowly morphed into an all-out pro wrestling match, fake moves and all until we were too exhausted to go on. We ended up laying there and laughing at another stupid argument. The duet of laughter went on until we were interrupted by my mom calling us in for dinner…

“Dinner’s ready Wes. Wes! Wesley Gee! Wesley?” I slowly snap out of my daydream to my mom’s voice. She’s probably been calling my name for a few minutes now. I respond with something inaudible and slowly pick myself up off the pine-needle covered floor. I glance down at my notebook to see the same three titles I had before and only two more sentences than I started with. But, at this point I don’t really care. Instead, I find my self longing to be 10 years old again, playing around the yard without a care in the world. I can write some other time.