June 30th was a Tuesday
My Raindeer Self
When I was nine, my parents took me to a holiday fair at the mall, where I had my face painted as a raindeer’s. Very late that night, I refused to wash off the makeup and insisted that my dad take my picture and have the film developed at the one-hour photo in town. If I couldn’t be a raindeer for the rest of my life, I wanted to fall asleep with a picture of my raindeer self and look at it forever, but it was too late for my dad to take the film anywhere, and I remember crying myself to sleep that night. That picture’s in a brown leather satchel in my parents’ living room; I am very happy in it.
