Running With Scissors: a memoir by Augusten Burroughs
Well, that was an odd childhood.
My favorite scene in this book is when teenagers Augusten and his “sister” (it’s complicated) decide the ceiling in the kitchen is too low, so they rip it out. Then they decide it’s too dark, so they cut out a skylight in the roof, and use one of the side house windows to fill it, only it’s 12 inches too short. When the “father” comes into the kitchen in the morning, he steps over the rubble, makes coffee and says, “that’s quite a project you’ve got going.” They hit him up for a couple hundred dollars to finish the project, which they spend on beer. Nice.
I’d heard that this story was disturbing, but I wasn’t particularly disturbed. It was an odd childhood, though.
he steps over the rubble, makes coffee and says, “that’s quite a project you’ve got going.”
Ha ha. There is no chance my father would take something like this so calmly. Oh, I can just hear it now.
Mine either. Only he was allowed to make holes in the walls and leave them for years on end. Now I have my own house, I can make holes wherever allows me to.
How permissive is about holes?
Isn’t that a rather personal question?
It is, indeed. Withdrawn.
One of the reasons I liked this section is that there is a chance my father would take it calmly. He probably wouldn’t have supported it, but he would have taken it calmly.
There’s also the possibility he wouldn’t have noticed it, if he had a particularly difficult engineering problem he was ruminating on at the time.
Your dad wouldn’t have noticed it.
Unless he decided to take a nap on the kitchen floor. Then he would have noticed it.
Is he prone to taking a nap wherever he feels the urge?
I’m asking, is he prone to be prone (or supine)?
One of the stories about my father is the time we teens were having a party in our living room (probably about 15 people), and he wandered in, lost in thought, and lay down on the floor for a nap (as was his custom).
I had to tap him on the shoulder and say “um, dad. There’s a party going on here.”
He looked startled, jumped up, and wandered off upstairs, still lost in thought.
That is so your dad!
Not only did they spend the money on beer, but the hole remained for years after it was made.
I wasn’t all that disturbed either.
I can’t decide if I want to read the follow up books though.
I didn’t know there was a follow-up book until you and mentioned it. Is there more than one?
I’d Guess Dry is a follow up, and the others are novels or shorts.
His follow-up book, Dry, is a good read, too. It deals with his quick rise to success in the advertising world and his fight with alcoholism.
Does it have the same undercurrent of humor/absurdity?
I found the spatula turd-scooping divination memorable myself.
Me too, but I’m trying to block it out.
That was the most disturbing part, actually. I mean, ewww.