When I was nearly 9 we moved into our new Cinderella Home in Chula Vista. I had no idea then or now why that name was chosen, unless it was the slightly gingerbread trim on the ranch houses or the pastel shades of the offered exteriors.

The tract development into which our family moved was in a new part of town, slightly east of the established community. Our streets were named E. Whitney, E. Mankato, and E. Shasta, and I don’t think I knew while we lived there that all were called for mountains. That was an odd choice, for while there are a few slopes and hills in Chula Vista, they weren’t in our neighborhood.

The houses were all similar. I think there were three or four floorplans from which to choose, and our fivesome moved into one of the larger models. The three streets were straight and regular, so much so that when I was a little older I could ride my bike around the block with no hands (the circuit was about half a mile). The sidewalks had big squares. All the parkway plants were pepper trees, and they didn’t get very large in the seven years we lived there. Just about everyone’s back yard ended in a slope to the standard six-foot redwood fence, and the slopes were invariably covered with ice plant. A high school was under construction up the street; I’d attend it after another six grades.

But I’d experience all that after we moved in. First we came to California and tarried in Coronado while the house was completed. Steve and I even started school in Chula Vista before we moved into the new house; Mom had to deliver us there each morning and retrieve us when we were done, and with Steve in kindergarten and me in third grade that meant different end times and a lot of trouble for her. So we were in Chula Vista daily, and we visited the house while it received its finishing touches.

That must have been how I did the damage. One afternoon I got into the almost-completed house with a new friend. It was probably Candy Carson. Her block was done before mine and she already lived in the neighborhood.

The house looked done to me. It was without furniture or carpet or curtains but the walls and fixtures were all there and the utilities were connected. The kitchen was in the front of the house and the living room looked on the back yard. Between them, above the kitchen sink, there was an open pass-through space to the living room. And the kitchen sink had a sprayer for washing pots and stuff. I tried it. That’s how I managed to shoot water through the pass-through and onto the living room floor.

My father had a fit. I’ll never forget how he raged about me ruining the wood. That’s when I first heard the word “warp.”

We got past it of course. And the living room received wall-to-wall carpeting. Knowing my parents as I came to, full carpet was always going to be their choice for living and family rooms. Go figure.