I Was Six
- We zoom in from the Detroit skyline to David's neighborhood, then his street, then his house, where we see him lying on the floor drawing pictures.
- He introduces us to his family: his mom, who coughs and slams cupboards instead of talking, his radiologist dad, who punches a punching bag instead of talking, and his brother Ted, who plays the drums instead of talking.
- (Are you beginning to sense that this family has communication problems?)
- David's way of expressing himself without speaking is getting sick. We see his grudging mom come into his room, give him medicine, and hand him his teddy bear.
- We see David in the hospital where his dad works. His dad is giving him X-ray treatments for his sinus problems, which was apparently a thing 1950s people thought would help. David's mom takes David and Ted to the hospital one night to wait for his dad to get off work.
- David goes exploring the hospital by himself. He rides the elevator, slams wheel chairs together, and goes sock-skating in a hallway with a series of dead fetuses displayed in jars.
- As he stares at the fetuses, he imagines that one of them opens its eyes, looks at him, climbs out of its jar, and chases him down the hallway.
- In trying to escape the imaginary fetus monster, David leaves his shoes behind; when he gets home, his mom slaps him for forgetting them.
- The next day, the hospital calls to say his shoes have been found, but his mom's still angry. She's angry a lot.
- One day she goes out to play golf and leaves Ted in charge. David and Ted go into their dad's den to look at medical books.
- Among the things they see: human genitalia and a neck with a giant tumor growing out of it.
- David's not so into tumor pictures, so he decides to play Alice in Wonderland. He ties a yellow towel around his head, pretending it's Alice's blonde hair, and goes outside to play on the playground.
- A gang of kids bullies him for pretending to be a girl, so he goes home and draws. He imagines that he's being sucked into his drawing to live with cartoon characters.
- That spring, he and his mother go to Indiana to visit her parents.
- In the car, Mrs. Small tells David stories about her life. It's a sad tale, with lots of accidental death, suicide attempts, mental illness, and shoplifting.
- We learn that David's mom was born in a cabin behind her paternal grandparents' house, because she was an illegitimate child (what people used to call babies born to unmarried people) and her grandparents wouldn't let David's grandmother live in their house.
- Speaking of David's grandmother—if you thought his mom was bad, Grandma makes her look like happy fun times.
- One day, when David's mom is out golfing again, David's grandmother asks him to help her change the sheets. She says the word ain't, he corrects her, and it's all downhill from there.
- That night, when he scowls at the gross dinner she made him, she tries to punish him by sending him to bed hungry.
- David says it's still light outside and he wants to say goodbye to Papa John, his step-grandfather.
- Grandma drags him upstairs, where she punishes him for talking back by "washing" his hands—in other words, scalding them with hot water.
- When his mom comes home that night, David asks her not to leave him with his grandma the next day. He tells her he's afraid of his grandma because she's crazy, and his mom tells him never to say that word again.
- That night, David dreams that he goes to his own funeral, where his grandma stands over his coffin calling him a "durn little fool" who "needed to learn."