Maybe my Hair is Naturally Stiff

And Other Truths of Childhood

Or, how to find inspiration in the mundane.

I don’t know how long it had been since he’d used shampoo. Each morning I heard the shower running. I saw, as he flew out the door for school, that he had on a different shirt than the one he wore yesterday. That should have been good enough, shouldn’t it?

But one morning I surfaced from my latest attempt at literary brilliance and really looked at my son.

“Stop!” I ordered and corralled him between the open doors of our side-by-side fridge – yes they were both open to better peruse the meager contents. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

Up close I realized it was spiky. Not spiky-cool, but spiky-hedgehog. And it was then that I heard the words that changed my life:

“Mom, maybe my hair is naturally stiff.”

Why not? Who says a kid’s hair couldn’t have grown into quills during the night? To kids, the world is fluid, and one explanation might as well be as good as another. I realized then, that I was in the presence of inspirational genius. And every kid I’ve really listened to since has been a genius, too.

To prove my point, here are some recent exchanges at our house:

Question: Where did all the socks go?

Answer: It’s getting cold.

And then the kids rolled their eyes and explained things to their poor, dimwitted mother. Obviously the dust bunnies under the bed had collected all the socks to use for sleeping bags during the winter. Duh.

Question: Who moved my (you name it, I can’t find it)?

Answer: Usually a shrug, or a loud ‘It wasn’t me!’ But one day someone announced that there must a randomly appearing (very small) black hole in our house that picks stuff up and spits it out elsewhere. Well, that explains it all, really, doesn’t it?

In the conversations of kids I’ve found a fountain of creative youth, a never ending supply of oddities and quirks for inspiration in my writing. And though the neighbors might not quite understand us when they come to visit, I hope my kids never grow out of it. And I hope I can, just a little, grow back into it.

Maybe, just maybe, someday in my writing I’ll reach the heights of yesterday’s dinner exchange:

“Do birds burp?”

There was general agreement that they must.

“What does it sound like?”

And the answer to that must be left up to your imagination, because, I dare say, it’s fairly impossible to put into words the noises that accompanied our dinner.

Where do you find inspiration for your writing?

~ Susan

writer of MG, YA, and frequent gibberish

Current Novel: MOTHER OF PEARL

-- Deception- It's what Dyln does best, and the only weapon he has left.