the hunchback of fisherprice village

I feel really hunched.

When I was a kid, my method of playing was to hunch over something and play with it for hours. There I'd be, in the dark basement, hunched over my Fisher Price people or my Barbies or whatever. I still remember exactly how absorbed I would get, and how that felt. I was no longer a human girl in a damp basement, but the powerful architect of those little Fisher Price peoples' lives, with their little hospital and village center, their school and gas station. I wasn't aware of having a body, really. Hours, literally, would go by, until suddenly something would make me look up, and I'd be brought back to reality - that I was in the basement, and it was really quiet, and I was alone, and had been for a long time. The basement had suddenly become a terrifying place. I'd abandon my game and run up the stairs, a little rusty from having sat all hunched for so long. I imagine how I might have looked when I reached the top of the steps and burst into the kitchen: teeth all fangified and eyes all swirly, not quite returned to my full human form, a weird little badly groomed hunchback Me.

My back would be sore from the hunching.

My mom would ask if I'd cleaned up my mess.

Of course I hadn't. The basement was too scary a place to linger for such a purpose.

So here I am, decades later, with my back sore from hunching over about eight million hours worth of work (I literally did spend at least five or six hours today), the majority of which I did on the floor. I'm not exactly freaked out, a la the basements of my youth, but I have left a mess of discarded papers and stuff. I would clean it up now, but I should make my lunch and get to bed, right? It's already late. The mess will have to wait until tomorrow.

Just have to stretch out my back before going to sleep.

(P.S. You know that's not my couch in the picture, right?)