Introduction: When Cabbages Were Kings

First things first: when you're trying to get away from your family and your lack of school chums and trying to get your big sister to notice you again, what do you do? Some kids might have been hanging out under the slide smoking cigarettes or drinking a can a Pilsner stolen from the basement fridge - but I was burying myself inside a make-shift tent.
At first I thought I was quite the architect, and that that alone would draw my sister's attention. I had rigged up a nifty pup-tent from bright orange blankets and plant stakes. The stakes were wedged in the dresser pulls and the rest of the blanket was draped over the far edge of the bed and tucked securely into the wall. This made a covered cubby-hole of the space between twin-bed and desk, about 3 feet wide and 6 feet long. I'd crawl in there with Archie comics and cookies, actively imagining myself into a scenario involving Antarctica and emergency amputations or Saskatchewan sod-huts in the dead of winter. For some reason I devised that she would be curious about me as she shuffled, sulking into her adjacent bedroom. Or better yet, that her friends might be equally curious and demand that the little sister get to hang out too.
Who was I kidding? A fourteen year-old girl with skateboarders hanging around the driveway, Le Chateau bat-wing sweaters and paint thick eyeshadow is not interested in my passive-aggressive antics. I buried in a little deeper, only to provoke the attention of mom, poking her head in at the entrance with unrequired sweets and beverages.