even in a crowd one can still find solitude—silence is overrated

My children got me a subscription to a service called Storyworth. It sends me a weekly prompt, usually something about my childhood, to help get those creative juices flowing. Of course, the end result will hopefully be to produce a kind of diary that might leave some small insight into who I was back in the day.

One of those prompts read, “when you were a child, did you have to share a bedroom and possibly a bed with your siblings?”

Wait a doggone second guys. Do you mean to tell me that sleeping alone when you were a child is a real thing? Man, when I was growing up back in Wakenda, I recall the biggest house we ever lived in had four bedrooms. I know that a four-bedroom house might sound like a mansion but when you throw in the fact that there were more kids than you could count without using your toes, plus mom and dad, that sure didn’t leave much space.

Heck, even after I joined the Army, depending on where I was stationed, I had to share a bedroom with 4 to 12 other people. Then I got married and spent each night of my life sharing a bed.

After all those years, I’m not sure I could sleep a whole night without the sound of snoring and an occasional fart drifting out from under the covers.