Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness

by Paul Scheer

As an only child, I was used to keeping myself occupied for hours on end. Making a snack became a cooking show for no one. I never did chores; instead I became a character hired to do my chores and would boss myself around. I talked a lot to people who weren’t there and also to myself—anything to break up the silence of being all alone in my house. When I did just play, I’d improvise movies of my own creation and act out all the characters. Since I was a kid who grew up on action movies—the ones with troubled cops whose personal lives were a complete mess and who had multiple vices but were damn good at their jobs—I created my own, Lance Hanson, a disgraced cop in his mid-forties: every kid’s dream. Lance was always being called back to the force for one more case. Whenever I was alone, the movie would start right from where it had ended the last time I played.