The Family That Wasn't
By Gene Twaronite
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Chapter 1 - The Boggle Curse
People lose families all the time. Sometimes it's a freak thing like a traffic accident or plane crash. And sometimes people just give up on each other through outright rejection or lack of interest. But you can never really lose your family completely. Even when they're gone they're still inside you, for better or worse. And even if your old man is a complete jerk who beat you and your mother up every day and you haven't seen or talked to him for fifty years, there's still that memory you can't erase. He will go with you all the way to the grave.
But now I'm not so sure. You see, I didn't just lose my family. I wiped them out. I didn't mean to do it - things just got out of hand. One minute they were here - Dad and Mom, Bruno, Venus, Grandma Geronimo, Sister Mary and all the rest of my crazy family - and the next they were gone, every last one of them, gone as if they had never existed.
I am writing this down so I won't forget. I must never forget them. Did it really happen? Maybe I just made this all up in a dream. Have to admit, I do get carried away with my writing sometimes. But then, how do I explain what happened to Uncle Vinnie?
It all started with my name, John Boggle. Actually, it isn't really Boggle. That's just an acronym I invented to make life easier. My full name is John Bazukas-O'Reilly-Geronimo-Giovanni-Li Choy-Echeverria, or B.O.G.G.L.E. for short.
I remeber crying a lot in first grade. While the other kids quickly learned how to write their names on their papers, I would begin to write John Bazukas, and sometimes make it to O'Reilly, but then get hopelessly lost. Finally, my principal, old Miss Vanderfield, wrote out the whole stupid thing for me on three long pieces of construction paper taped together, which I had to keep carrying around with me till I could remember how to write it. I felt like some creature in a zoo, stuck in a cage for everyone to look at, with a long Latin name printed over me.
Any one of these hyphenated names would have been all right with me. But no, my family had to go and have them all. How they ever managed to do this, and get together in the first place, is a tale far stranger than any I could ever imagine.
People lose families all the time. Sometimes it's a freak thing like a traffic accident or plane crash. And sometimes people just give up on each other through outright rejection or lack of interest. But you can never really lose your family completely. Even when they're gone they're still inside you, for better or worse. And even if your old man is a complete jerk who beat you and your mother up every day and you haven't seen or talked to him for fifty years, there's still that memory you can't erase. He will go with you all the way to the grave.
But now I'm not so sure. You see, I didn't just lose my family. I wiped them out. I didn't mean to do it - things just got out of hand. One minute they were here - Dad and Mom, Bruno, Venus, Grandma Geronimo, Sister Mary and all the rest of my crazy family - and the next they were gone, every last one of them, gone as if they had never existed.
I am writing this down so I won't forget. I must never forget them. Did it really happen? Maybe I just made this all up in a dream. Have to admit, I do get carried away with my writing sometimes. But then, how do I explain what happened to Uncle Vinnie?
It all started with my name, John Boggle. Actually, it isn't really Boggle. That's just an acronym I invented to make life easier. My full name is John Bazukas-O'Reilly-Geronimo-Giovanni-Li Choy-Echeverria, or B.O.G.G.L.E. for short.
I remeber crying a lot in first grade. While the other kids quickly learned how to write their names on their papers, I would begin to write John Bazukas, and sometimes make it to O'Reilly, but then get hopelessly lost. Finally, my principal, old Miss Vanderfield, wrote out the whole stupid thing for me on three long pieces of construction paper taped together, which I had to keep carrying around with me till I could remember how to write it. I felt like some creature in a zoo, stuck in a cage for everyone to look at, with a long Latin name printed over me.
Any one of these hyphenated names would have been all right with me. But no, my family had to go and have them all. How they ever managed to do this, and get together in the first place, is a tale far stranger than any I could ever imagine.