The President and the Helper Boy

The four of us gather in the "secret" attic room behind the wall of my bedroom in our old California house. I am ten or eleven, my sister Becca is nine, sister Rachel is seven, and poor little brother Jordan is five or six. We are in this room because when you have a secret attic chamber behind your bedroom wall in an old California house, why would you have club meetings anywhere else?

This is the opening meeting, as most of them are. (I had lots of ideas and no follow-through). This club was of course, my idea. Also I am the oldest, so I am the President. I am always the President.

Rachel is vice-president. It bothers me just a teensy bit that she's the vice-president because she's not the next in line age-wise, but Becca likes taking notes, so she's the secretary. I always make her the secretary. 

"And you're the Helper Boy," I say to Jordan.

"But I'm always the Helper Boy."

"We need a Helper Boy," I say. I made the title up just for him, because he wanted to be included and my knowledge of actual professional titles had been exhausted. "Go get chairs."

That is the Helper Boys main duty. Going downstairs and hauling four of the plastic white picnic chairs up to our meeting room. Apparently it's a good idea to give that task to the five year old.

My sisters and I wait patiently while the Helper Boy lugs the chairs from the front porch through the kitchen up the stairs and into our secret attic room. When all the chairs have been brought up we sit in a circle and Becca takes out our club notebook. There are a few torn out pages in the front of the notebook from previous false starts, but today I'm confident--as I always am--that this idea will stick. My clubs are always a strange mix of things. Like selling lemonade and our old beanie babies on the street and making a website about endangered species. We spend most the time talking about club names.

"I'm hungry," says Rachel.

I look at the Helper Boy. "Go get us some snacks," I say.

For his sake, it's a good thing my clubs never lasted more than a day.