Clown Cemetery

I'm a liar. Anyone who knows me will tell you it's true. Like Blanche Devereux on Golden Girls, I like to tell a good story. If that entails a certain amount of embellishment, so be it. This talent, developed and nurtured from an early age, has proved handy in a number of situations: late for curfew (sorry Mom!), missed a midterm (sorry Mr. Kayliss!), blogging (sorry, er, Reader!). ;)

So it shouldn't surprise you when I say, that I lied recently when I said that prior to starting my first novel in 2007 I had never done any writing. A lie. Unintentional, but a lie. My mom reminded me this week, that I have one other creative composition to my name.

When I was a kid, my grandparents babysat for me quite frequently so my single parent could get some much needed time off from her precocious offspring. There wasn't much outdoor space where they lived, but it just so happened that they lived in the cemetery capital of California (Colma, where the dead outnumber the living 1000:1. Good times.) It was like having 17 separate parks to play in, complete with lots of stone thingies to climb all over. Like I said, good times.

My favorite of these monuments was at the Olivet Cemetery - a special section near the back was the resting place for generations of circus performers.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa! I had such a lovely childhood.

In junior high, we had to do a creative writing assignment entitled "My Favorite Place." Did I pick my lovely home that my mother had struggled so long to hang on to? Nope. How about the soccer field where I'd played since I was five? Didn't even cross my mind. Church? *snort* Disneyland? Rejected. Grandma's house? Getting warmer...

Yep, that's right. I went with the circus cemetery. I can only imagine the horror on Mrs. Hanson's face when she picked up my four pages, neatly handwritten in my upright script, unmarred by White-Out or droplets of strawberry jam from that morning's breakfast, to read a touching memoir of the seven year-old Gretchen frolicking with abandon through a cemetery.

We're all lucky I didn't end up in child protective services.

She liked it, I think. Deep down. You know, after the horror wore off. It was definitely, heh, original. But just so the record is clear - cuz I wouldn't want to be accused of lying - that was my official initiation into writing.