The neighbor kid comes over every day to play with Chris, or actually, Chris’ PlayStation and Lego’s. He happens to be the kind of adult that children adore, simply because he’s got all the coolest toys. As I write this in my studio, he is propped up against my closet playing Tactics Ogre on his Game Boy, change spilling out of his pockets as he periodically adjusts his weight.

And so the children flock to the door, pressing their faces up against our front window, tapping the glass when Portly stares at them, all eight pounds of her stretched out on the chaise lounge.

I answer the door, and he looks right past me. At eight years old, he comes up to my ribcage, but he still doesn’t look at me, but rather past me, to see if Chris is lurking.

“Is Chris here?”

“It’s nice to see you too,” I say. “He’s in the gar…” I trail off because he has already shot past me, dirt ground into his knees, sidewalk chalk in puffs on his face, dusting the sticky spots where chocolate Laffy Taffy has been drooled and stuck.

Children have never been drawn to me, even though I often have the coolest stickers, the newest markers. I always have Rice Krispie bars. These things are all for me, though, not for sharing. Perhaps kids can sense that I’m not willing to part with, or even share, the smallest portion of my loot. I have my younger sister to thank for that, who staged raids on my Halloween candy and my lip gloss drawer for years before I got hip to her scene and bought a keyed lock for my bedroom door. My mom never learned, and continued to stock the kitchen drawer with Trident and Chapstick every week, asking aloud “Where does all this stuff go?”

My quest for equal division of property went so far as to involve a ritual for dividing a candy bar. One of us got to cut it in half, the other got to choose. It could take almost an hour.

I am, it is safe to say, not good at sharing my toys.