Joe Barney
Introduction to Fiction
Memory as Story, June 24, 2010


When I was about four years old my sister and I were playing a game on a swing set in our backyard. We called the game “circus,” she was the conductor and I was the performer, she liked this game because she got to tell me what to do. She came up with different tricks for me to carryout for our audience of none. One of the tricks that I would do was slide lightning fast down the slide, which we now referred to as the super slide.
Eventually we got tired of the easy tricks and my sister created a new trick for me, which was to climb from the top of the swing set down the chains of the swings onto the ground. I told her that I didn’t know how to do this and so she decided to show me how it was done. Not even halfway down she became stuck and was handing from the platform eight feet in the air. She cried out “I need help!” so I slid down the super slide as fast as I could and ran beneath her. I said “ok, let go I will catch you,” She cried out again, “no! Go get mom!” I reassured her that I was strong, but she insisted that mom be her rescuer, so I ran up to the house to fetch her.