Guest Post: Time Warp Writing Part 2:
Childhood Mythos
J. H. Bardwell
Things were simpler when I was a boy. Stories were black and white; heroes were good, villains were bad, and the first always trounced the second. Puberty brought shades of gray into my world and adulthood got downright colorful. Some of my long-time heroes turned out to be villainous, some of the villains were placed under a heroic spotlight, and who won depended on which person was telling the story to whom. I object to such editing—we must acknowledge both the horror and the happiness without bowdlerizing our history—but at the same time I revel in the rich, vibrant palette our kaleidoscope of perceptions injects into what could have been such a simple black and white narrative. I want to be clear that as a vision of red, white, and blue splendor, my memories of childhood Americana are unpure, undiluted fairytales. This is not a case of memories coloring perceptions or rewriting personal history, but of a man spreading tall tales, some of which were inspired by childhoo...