From the day
Perspective: The Teenager · Tactile
I’m hunched over the victrola, the scratchy needle tracing the grooves of "The Sheik of Araby" while I absentmindedly twist the rough yarn hair of my brother’s Raggedy Andy doll. The coarse wool of my knickers itches against my shins, a nagging reminder of the stiff, starched collar my mother insists is the bee’s knees for a Thursday afternoon. Everything feels tense with the newsboys shouting about British tanks and strike perils, but I’m more focused on the oily smell of my father's new polygraph machine in the study. I just want to slip into my softest cotton flannel and vanish into the velvet shadows of the nickelodeon before the world actually stops turning.