Back at home we sat out in the yard and ate while the sun was going down. Next door they were having a party. They were always having parties, with loud music and lots of smoking. The man had an earring in his nose and the woman was always changing the color of her hair.  My mother said they had no class, but some nights after she put me to bed I’d peek out the shades and see her go next door to sit with them.

We lived in Lexington, Kentucky, which everyone called “Bluegrass Country.” But that was a big lie. Everybody’s grass was the same. Our grass was longer than everyone else’s because no one mowed it, but every last piece of it was green. Mom used to tease me and say if I was good we would go to where the grass was actually blue. I knew she was lying. But I didn’t call her a liar because she didn’t mean to hurt me with it. Mom took classes at Transylvania University. She said she was studying to become a vampire, but really she studied something called Marketing. At first I thought this meant she was going to work in a Food Lion or a Kroger. She said it was more like making commercials. So whenever a good commercial came on, I would try to remember as much of it as I could and tell her about it.

The next day was Friday, June 15th. I had been out of first grade for seven days. There were 68 more days until second grade started. Mom slept in, but Sergeant Defenbargh was up early. I was up early too, because Phineas and Ferb started at 6:01AM. He tried to make pancakes. They were burnt but I didn’t say anything. We watched cartoons together. I sat on the floor in front of the TV, and I figured he would sit on the couch like Mom did, but he sat next to me on the floor.