"A Girl Named Zippy"

As childhood memoir go, Haven Kimmel's account is more idiosyncratic than "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" but just as winsome, and less existential than "Stand Before Your God" but just as poetic.

• My first word, of course, was Magazine.
• The really short haircut was my favorite, and coincidentally, the most hideous. Many large, predatory birds believed I was asking for a date.
• My parents were patient with it for a few months, and then both began saying, in a rather clipped and hysterical way, don't sigh, immediately after making some small request.
• Kai's lineage was embarrassingly good. .. His father was black and silver and his mother was snow white, and Kai turned out to be the color of coins falling from a winter sky.
• (Kai) didn't allow fighting or tickling among family members, but took great pleasure in watching my mom and sister and me color in our coloring books, and could eat an enormous amount of popcorn, one piece at a time, which he caught in the air.
• All the while Debbie lay spread-eagled and stuck like an artifact.
• Julie in a dress was like the rest of us in quicksand.
• Regardless of the fact that he was beautiful, .. the world was not right for my brother. There was some standard by which he measured everyone, all human activity, without articulating it or giving us any clue where we were going wrong.
• Petey walked with the longest stride a short boy can afford.
• Homer had a high-pitched, breathy mountain voice, as gentle as a time that will never come again,

Beside pets:

• The arc of that piglet through the air into the dog pen contained more comedy than I will ever see again in my life, but my heart still ached. She didn't laugh, and I didn't cry.
• The doctor had put a maggot inside the (finger) stump to eat the dead parts. Dad was a little crabby because he could feel it moving around.
• Headless bodies (of bunnies) really do hop around for a couple seconds; this was one of the indisputable lessons of Mooreland, Indiana.
• Sometimes when I went fishing with my dad we'd have so many worms left over I'd just toss them out to the fish, like dessert.