False Highs True Lows
The book
FALSE HIGHS TRUE LOWS A Memoir By Matthew J. Goss, Jr.
My family was not my family. Truths were half-truths. Lies were definitely lies. And that is how it all began.
Chapter 1 — Springfield Boulevard (excerpt)
A green garden hose missing its spray nozzle fills a green plastic toy pail with icy cold water. Some liquid gushes out onto the dirt. I roll an orange Tonka dump truck into the created mud hole. Nearby, a cheap, shallow, blue plastic pool overfilled with water twists and lurches on an unstable portion of the lawn where it sits atop a patch of clumpy crabgrass. A cyclone fence helped by green shrubs provides privacy from the neighbors, though I am too young to understand what privacy means or why anyone would want it.
Look — a yellow school bus. It has just pulled up in front of my house, and the boisterous children inside are banging on the windows. The noise starts the family dog running in circles and tearing up what little healthy grass remains. Cindy, our black and white collie, careens. I hear a girl laughing as she leaps onto the sidewalk. I watch as she darts up the walkway to the house next door waving hello.
"Hi!" My little arm waves back.
My family was not my family. Truths were half-truths. Lies were definitely lies. And that is how it all began.