Writing With Abandon

“I still need to paaaaack,” I say.

We’re sitting at a table at Books & Books. The waiter has finally taken our order and I’m hangry. V is coloring a blue bed on the paper we brought from home.

“You still have tomorrow though,” P says.

“Yeah, but I work, and I don’t want to be scrambling on my last night.”

“Right.”

“I at least want my clothes and toiletries packed by tonight,” I say.

“Toilet trees?” V interrupts. “What are toilet trees?”

P and I laugh. One of us starts to explain what toiletries are, while the other asks what kinds of toilet trees the others are envisioning.

Toilets growing on trees? (Me)

Trees growing out of toilets? (V)

A toilet made from a tree trunk? (P)

I grab a piece of paper and fold it in half, then use brown, green, and black to draw the first two types of toilet trees. My illustrations get a lot of giggles.

“You could write a story about the toilet trees!” V encourages. “You can fill these other pages.” She taps once, twice on the inside of the folded paper.

“A story? Hmmm…

“Once upon a time there was a little girl named V. She was walking along in the Land of Toiletries when she had the urge to go #1. But in the Land of Toiletries, there are no bathrooms!

“So she looked off into the distance and saw a tree with fresh toilets glistening in its branches. She ran to the tree, climbed up its trunk, and shimmied down a branch to a perfectly 6-year-old-sized toilet.

“‘Ahh,’ she said with relief as she relieved herself.

“Then she climbed back down and went on her merry way!”

“Write it here!” V exclaims, delighted, tapping the inside of the page with her blue pencil.

So I write it down.

“That’s a lot of words,” V observes. “Don’t forget to put ‘The End.’ You need to add a picture too.”

I draw a picture of a little girl in a pink dress climbing up into a toilet tree. This gets more giggles.

Alysia arrives at that moment and joins us at the table.

“What’s this?” She asks.

“Do you want to read her your story?” P asks V.

And so V reads us the story of the toilet trees.

“That should be your slice,” Alysia says to me. “With no other context.”

I had to give some context though.

Now back to that packing I need to do…