For Want Of A Nail....(1)

There are certain cans of beans that should definitely not be opened.
Because you will inevitably find the worms that lurk within.
Just last time out, I described a single mother of two, the two being an eleven year old daughter and a nine year old son, who was considering leasing out my Malibu condo.
And without any qualms, she announced that the sleeping arrangements for the two siblings would be that they'd share a Queen-sized bed in one of the bedrooms.
Thankfully, this did not pan out, at least on my watch.
But it did get me to thinking, actually more obsessing, about my own childhood, and the sleeping arrangements my mother provided for my six -years-younger sister and myself.
These arrangements lasted from the time I was ten and she was four, until I was fifteen and she was nine.
We shared a bedroom.
Nothing as ugly as what my prospective tenant had in mind.
Two twin beds.
One against each wall of the room.
There were book-cases built precariously on the walls hanging over each bed.
Loaded with books.
The book-cases were built by my mother, who, to my knowledge, had never built anything else in her life.
She also never had any artistic bent until she bought a paint-by numbers kit.
And proceeded to paint by each number she was instructed to.
Her renderings were then immediately put on display on the various walls of our apartment.
"The Champs Elysee", "The Roman Colosseum", "The Taj Mahal".....
Not only unrecognizable, but virtually indistinguishable from each other.
She also got it into her head to plaster the dining area with extremely fake-looking plastic white bricks.
Which looked exactly like extremely fake-looking plastic white bricks.
The embarrassment self-contained by just about anyone who saw it was miraculous.
And, of course, who could forget the bowl of walnuts that she decided to spray with gold spray-paint?
Not the bowl.
The walnuts.
Any time I watched "The Sopranos" and saw the character Paulie Walnuts, to me, he was always "Paulie Gold-Spray-Painted Walnuts".
And she always got compliments from all the neighbors about all her artistic endeavors.
This only encouraged her.
Not content to rest on her laurels in her career as an artisan, she, totally out of the blue, decided to take up carpentry and build those damned book-cases.
I'm sure that there were things she could have learned on the subject from Jesus.
But to her credit, the book-cases stayed in place all those years, and books never fell on either of our respective heads.
But that doesn't mean that any time I sleep on a bed next to a wall, I don't have the imaginary and recurring fear that a book is going to fall on my head.
In pondering our childhood bedroom and sleeping arrangements, a question entered my head that I couldn't shake.
I'll discuss what that question was, and how I dealt with it, next time.

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My books ,"Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not
e-books. But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one. If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@aol.com.
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube, and my 4-hour interview at the Television Academy's Emmy TV Legends Website.
Here's the link:  www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/mark-rothman

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