by Roshan Richards

Created on: October 31, 2008

It's All Over But the Writin'

I was about eight when my parents finished stripping the upstairs hall walls of our Victorian home. They were very excited to add their personal touch to this section of the house, as the new wallpaper was already purchased, rolled and propped up in the landing corner with the wallpaper paste waiting patiently in buckets beside it. Their excitement faded, however, and weeks turned into years, as other commitments pushed the papering further down the list of priorities. The wallpaper rolls moved from the corner only to become swords for my brother, and the paste did open, but only to be gathered up in handfulls and run like an Olympic event by my little brother and sister down the long, gauntlet hall and dumped as quickly as possible into the vintage bathroom sink. What had started off as an exciting project of self-expression and home improvement had turned into a heavy, nagging item on a list of things to do -and, with an expensive plumbing bill to boot.

I watched all of this with perplexed amusement. Why didn't they just do it -just paper the walls? No answer was satisfactory so I turned my attention to the far reaching expanse of blank, hard plaster. Something needed to be on them... so I took a pencil and began to write. Mom didn't care since it all was going to be covered up eventually anyway so quickly the walls began to fill with poems, and thoughts, and quotes I heard and liked, and important dates of friends' birthdays and of school getting out. Occasional visitors, who were getting a tour of the house, would express their surprise at the graffitied walls then would sheepishly add their names and dates to prove that they had been there, like on some huge registration book normally placed by an entrance door. My friends and extended family thought it was the coolest thing ever -their moms never let them write on their walls- and they began to add their wisdom to mine, like "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose," courtesy of my cousin, Tiger, and a personal favorite of mine because it always resulted in disgusted looks and groans.

I began to dread the day when it would all be covered up. The walls had become a journal of where we had been, how we had grown, what we had thought -almost scripture to me as I would drink in their words daily and, in which, I could find peace. So I daydreamed of some family a hundred years from then stripping the walls to find the writings of

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