Confession. The title of this scene isn’t much about what the scenes about — but the rhyme is pretty sweet, isn’t it?

That’s the problem with writing stuff. I’ve got a story to tell you, and I know I should just tell it to you in a first this-then that-oops forgot this part kind of organization that gets to the point, sticks to the point, makes great points and is in no way absolutely not pointless.

And there I’m doing it again.

Because words are awesome. And packing those awesome words together into sentences and paragraphs and scenes and chapters is like piling bricks of uranium up in a reactor core. You’re shooting for a pyramid shape, or a cube shape, or whatever shape bricks are packed in reactor cores. Assuming they use bricks. I could Google it I guess — but I’m busy writing.

So writing is like packing those bricks together, only the bricks are words, but they’ve got a kind of magic to them that’s isn’t not like radioactivity. That’s the metaphor I’m going for here — you pile up words and each one has this little glimmer of awesome and as you stack one on top of another on top of another, all that radioactive awesomeness starts to do funky things, and even if it doesn’t reach critical mass and blow a hole in your city the size of a little bit smaller city, it’s going to start throwing sparks all over the place as electrons smash into atoms and knock out other electrons and atoms change and as the atoms change the stuff the atoms make changes and at the quantum, sub-atomic level little particles start digging tunnels through the stuff of the universe itself and in the end what you’ve got might still look kind of like a pyramid or a cube but it’s all filled with quantum tunnels in and out of our universe and in and out of an infinite number of other universes.

How can anyone know when they start stacking those bricks where all that is going to end up?

That’s words and sentences and paragraphs and scenes to me. That’s writing.

But I digress.

We had two more days in the Dells before we had to head back home. Mom and Dad are back to being Mom and Dad, lab-rat and proctologist, Midwestern girl and Hyderabadi guy, fan of 19th century English novels and collector of classic monster movie memorabilia — like a complete set of models of famous movie monsters with glow in the dark bits that he himself put together when he was a wee little kid whose uncle worked in Chicago and was willing to smuggle model kits across international border just to make young Tanwir dance with joy.

Tanwir, if you hadn’t guessed, is my Dad’s name. My Mom’s you heard already — Sarah.

So Mom and Dad — normal. Louis, Ben and me, not so much — but we were trying. Louis was trying so hard I was almost positive he was going to have a stroke. And his sister picked up on it — Annabelle of the golden locks started paying particularly close attention to us, and on three separate occasions we caught her sneaking up on us when we were in a huddle whispering.

Luckily, the first time we were debating whether or not the Infinity Gauntlet could have made Thanos himself disappear, and if not, why not. The second time we were trying to figure out if a weird lump on Louis’s back was a pimple, a tic or cancer, and the third time we were working on a spoken word epic about the trials and travails of three youth of the Midwest confronted with the challenge of finding their way in a world that was alternatingly confusing and terrifying.

OK. I don’t actually remember what we were talking about the third time, but it wasn’t the dogmen, missing ATVs or Dad battling freaky weather on Lake Delton.

We went back to the spot where the dogman and the ATV went off the cliff twice more before our families packed up and headed home.

Cliff, lake, sky. Tourists being hauled behind boats on skiis and ducks — those amphibious death traps local entrepreneurs bought from military surplus and used to lug tourists around — splashing in and crawling out of the water, every time the same joke drifting over the lake from their PA systems: “OK folks, as we enter the lake, please turn your attention to the rear of the vehicle.” Dramatic pause. “No, there’s nothing to see out there — but now you can tell your friends you’ve looked out the backside of a duck!”

Hardily hardy har har.

Then it was the night before we were going to head home, and I was about to konk out.

When my toddler bear started flashing like crazy.

Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits!