Checkers

This piece of personal historical fiction was written while my mother was dying, partly as a confession but also to remind myself of seminal moments in my childhood in and around Worthington, Ohio. The story takes place in 1964, the year I was 10. My mother was driving me crazy. She spouted old wive's tales, superstitions and bad advice at every turn. She insisted you had to wish friends and family "Happy New Year" or you wouldn't have a happy year yourself. I decided to test her old wive's tale by keeping track of good and bad events that year using red and black checkers. This novella takes me through all manner of "kid" events, such as family Christmases with disappointing gifts, my first fishing trip, my inclusion in a program for "gifted" students ... and my relationship with my (then-annoying) younger sister. My experiment goes bust when a relative decides to tidy my closet and puts my glass full of "good" and "bad" checkers together in a bag. I am reminded that it is within my power to create my own happy year. My takeaway from the slings, arrows, bumps and bruises of this particular year in the early 1960s is this: we're all hunks of rock that need to be whacked at to reveal our true selves. And that the process can be painful.