Summer Posting — Aunt Jean's

Filed by JW. PHASE 2, WEEK 3.

Some assignments you request. The summers at Aunt Jean and Uncle Claude’s were the posting I’d have requested every year if a kid got requests.

The household ran at a different setting than anywhere else I stayed. Aunt Jean was fun the way some adults just are—natively, without effort. And she had two teenage daughters who, against every law of teenage-girl physics, actually liked me. I wasn’t the little kid they got stuck with. I was the little kid they took places. We’d go get barbecue sandwiches from Dairy Queen—yes, Dairy Queen sold barbecue then, and no, I will not be taking questions from anyone too young to remember it—and a barbecue sandwich tastes different when the big kids brought you along on purpose.

And then there was the library. The Dr. Seuss collection at that house was extensive—shelves of it—and as I’ve reported previously, I didn’t read those books for the rhymes. I read them for the machinery. That house is where I learned that a big collection of ridiculous ideas, kept somewhere you’re welcome, is one of the finest things a kid can have access to.

Lesson logged: People do their best work where somebody’s glad they showed up. Find those rooms. Be that room, when it’s your turn.

More field reports declassified soon. —JW