“I wonder how mad Dad will be when he finds out,” Mo pondered as she paced the room. “I mean, technically he can’t force me to go to Stanford. Then again, my college fund is technically his money. What if he keeps it from me? What if I have to pay for a Columbia education with student loans? What if I never get paid to write after I graduate? How will I get out of debt? I’m going to have to sell my organs on the black market!”
Mo had suffered from OID (overactive imagination disorder) since childhood. The condition wasn’t officially recognized by the United States Department of Health (because Mo had made it up) but the disorder was just as taxing and consuming as any.
“Snap out of it, Mo!” she said, and slapped herself. “Your father is not going to let you sell your organs to pay for college. You’re his only child—he’ll need you to take care of him when he’s old. God, if I just had an older sibling I wouldn’t be dealing with this crap.”
Then again, if Mo had a brother or sister, she probably wouldn’t be an aspiring writer. Growing up an only child was what sparked her creativity and cursed her with a lifetime of OID. With no one to play with, Mo had to invent alternative ways of entertaining herself.
For example, when Mo was two years old she took the caps off absolutely everything in the house and kept them in a Tupperware container under her bed. Her only reason for doing this was to frustrate her father and giggle as she watched him search for them.
At three years old Mo developed an obsession with the mirror. The lonely toddler spent hours every day looking, talking, and making funny faces at herself. The mirror was much more than a sheet of glass that housed her reflection—it was a window into a world where her doppelg?nger lived. To this day, if Mo passed a mirror without making eye contact or saying “hey girl,” she felt she was neglecting an old friend.
When Mo was four years old she named every object in the house so she’d always have someone to talk to. Not only did she bestow identities upon the furniture and appliances, but she also gave the objects pastimes, preferences, and political views. She didn’t know what the terms Republican and Democrat meant, but she told her parents in great detail how the washer wasn’t speaking to the dryer because he voted for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
Mo’s mother thought her daughter was funny and inventive, so she encouraged the personification. Unfortunately, Mrs. Ishikawa’s supportive parenting backfired on her and her husband. Having names also meant every object in the house had a soul, so whenever the time came to replace or recycle something, Mo acted as if her parents were committing murder.
When the Ishikawas threw out Bruce, the wobbly bar stool, Mo cried for a week. She was never the same after she saw Anthony, the broken television, get kidnapped by two garbage men. Mo ran after the truck for six blocks, memorized the license plate number, and called 911 when she got home. The call resulted in a very awkward conversation between her father and the two police officers who showed up at their door.
Her mother had no choice but to tell her that Meredith, the dented lampshade, ran away to join the circus. Mo received postcards from Meredith until she was five years old, telling her all about her adventures on the road. Thankfully, Mo never noticed how similar Meredith’s handwriting was to her mother’s.
Mo’s personality assignments continued into the backyard as well. Every tree, plant, and rock had a complex backstory she was eager to create and share with her mother.
“I had no idea the maple tree lived in Switzerland before moving to our backyard,” Mrs. Ishikawa said. “What made him decide to move to the United States?”
“Because he was in love with the cedar tree and they wanted to get married and start a tree family,” Mo said.
“That’s the same reason Daddy moved here from Japan,” Mrs. Ishikawa said. “What about that boulder? Why does he or she live with us?”
“That only looks like a boulder, Mommy,” Mo explained. “It used to be a shooting star and flew through the galaxy for a million years before it crashed there!”
“That’s incredible, sweetheart,” Mrs. Ishikawa said. “I love your stories so much. Could you do Mommy a favor? I have to go to some meetings soon—just grown-up stuff, nothing exciting—and I would love it if you wrote your stories down so I could take them with me. They’d give me something to smile about.”
“I would love to, Mommy!”
Mo was beyond excited to have a project and took the task very seriously. Using the few words she knew, Mo wrote elaborate stories about the bugs in the garden, the birds that lived in the trees, and the stars in the night sky. Sometimes the plots became very complicated as she unraveled them, so Mo would make visuals with crayons and markers so her mother wouldn’t get confused.
“These stories are wonderful, Mo-Bear!” Mrs. Ishikawa said. “They’re exactly what I need. Listen, I’ve got even more meetings coming up soon. Do you think you could keep writing stories for me? They’re the highlight of my day.”