In a house on the ground there lives a Robert. That’s me. Robert Columbo Burnside. My family also lives in that same house. Their names are coming in a moment. Families are kind of weird. I mean, I like mine, but it’s sort of strange that we all have to get along and live together under one roof.
These days there are all kinds of families. I saw a show about a man with a parrot and a coatrack who kept talking about them all being family.
There’s a TV station that always features Today’s New Family. But then all they show are programs about people who live in swamps and movies about superheroes or witches.
Yep, families come in all shapes and sizes. I guess if I had to describe my family, I would say it’s medium-sized and kind of boring. My mom naps a lot on the couch, my dad thinks things like jigsaw puzzles are exciting, my older sister, Libby, spends a good part of her day looking in the mirror, and my little brother, Tuffin, is crazy about a terrible kid show called Toe Time.
My family is pretty bland. Normal things like family dinners are usually a snoozefest at my house. We don’t always eat together, but when we do, sometimes it puts me to sleep. If anyone ever made a movie or TV show out of one of our normal dinners, it would be pretty dull and the cast would be kind of lame.
It might be a stretch comparing my family to a movie, but I have movies on my mind. Sure, my closet has been pushing books on me, but this week my brain’s thinking about movies.
I like previews for movies, I like movie theaters, and I even like watching movies on TV. But what really has me pumped about movies is making them. Last week my best friend, Trevor, got a video camera from his dad. Since then we’ve been filming things with our other friends in our spare time. Then we upload the movies to YouTube. We’ve only finished one movie, but already it has thirty-seven views.
Everyone has been making suggestions about what our second movie should be. Some suggestions are way better than others.
We appreciate the ideas, but Trevor and I already know what our next big movie will be. It’s based on a script that I wrote. It’s called Mustache and the Mighty Cool Adventure. I’m going to play the star, Mustache, but we’re going to use our other friends to help.
So I’ve been thinking about Mustache and making movies. I’ve also been thinking about Janae. She lives right next to my house, and ever since she kissed me at the Fun-ger Games Funstival, we seem to be getting along great. Plus, Maggie, who is a girl that lives four houses down, told Teddy some good news:
Maggie said Janae was sure, which was pretty amazing. A while ago Janae was so mad at me I didn’t think she’d ever speak to me again. But that was then, and this is now. Besides, the reason she was mad at me had more to do with my closet than anything else. It’s not a normal place to hang clothes and store shoes. If you’re already aware of what my closet can do, then you’re welcome to close your eyes for the next few lines.
When I was a little kid, I had a walk-in closet with no closet door that I wanted to turn into a science lab. I collected things like salad dressing and nail polish and glue and whatever I could find that was a sticky liquid. I took all those things and mixed them together in my closet in an attempt to make stuff. I never really created anything great.
At some point, I stopped trying to create things and just used my closet to store all the books that my mom forced on me. She used to have a job at a bookstore and brought books home all the time. It really wasn’t fair. It’s one thing for parents to talk about books, but it’s another thing when parents have access to so many. Sometimes I felt buried in the books she brought home.
My mom would also bring books home for my brother, Tuffin, but his were all picture books and super easy to read.
Too many books! That’s why I threw all of mine into the closet, along with goop and the mess from my fake lab. When my closet really began to change, however, was when my dad brought home an odd closet door he found at a garage sale. The door was heavy and old. It also had an embarrassing sticker on it that we couldn’t peel off and a really weird doorknob. The doorknob was made of brass, and it had a little bearded man on the front. I named him Beardy.
A few months back, my room got so messy I couldn’t move around in it.
My mom made me clean everything up. I shoved most of it into my closet. Then I shut the door and figured that was that. But that wasn’t that, that was this, and this is my life where I now have a closet that mixes the books and supplies together. It also brings strange creatures to life, mash-ups that I have to deal with and figure out why they are here. The first creature that came out of my closet was Wonkenstein. He was more than a handful. He was sort of a foot-full.
Then there was the Potterwookiee, also known as Hairy, who made me hang out in cemeteries and fly in vans and cook things I didn’t know how to cook.
The third creature was Pinocula, and he filled my life with confusion and lies.
And the last thing to emerge from my closet was Katfish. She was also the best thing. Not only was she kind, but she helped fix things at Softrock Middle School, where I had messed stuff up.
I like that my life is calm now. It’s nice to catch my breath and not worry about any messes for a while. My closet’s locked, my friends are behaving, and my mom isn’t mad at me. I’d say that’s something to celebrate. And in my house when we celebrate, it usually involves Tuffin throwing food.
