Newspaper man

"Why don't you read a newspaper?" My father sounded exasperated but looked calm, stood in the doorway sipping intermittantly from his coffee cup. I hurled another cushion at my brother, who ducked, and replied,
"I don't want to be the kind of person who reads newspapers. I want to be the kind of person that newspapers write about!"
"You remind me of your mother," he said, sighing just a little, and turned away. Only after he'd left did I think to wonder if he meant because I was wearing her navy blouse and skirt or because of my attitude to life.

*
I was playing with my lego when my father walked in. He looked at the Millenium Falcon I was half-way through and snorted. At first I thought I knew why -- one of the wings had been trodden on in one of my sibling-fights and did not look capable of supporting a craft in flight -- but then he walked off. I put the craft down, wondering if I'd done something very wrong, but then he reappeared with a heavy coffee-table book and threw it at me.
I caught it easily -- in my sibling fights we were now throwing cast-iron pots and pan at each other -- and looked at it. It was an architecture book, featuring the works of Frank Gehry.
"You want to be in the newspapers," said my father, "you'll need a worthwhile talent. And while your drag is good, it'll only get into the locals. For the nationals you'll need something better."
I opened the book and stared at the pictures inside, and something inside me reached out, wanting to build. When my father returned twenty-five minutes later to ask if I'd seen the weed-killer, I had changed out of my mother's clothes and into a crisp white shirt, smart trousers and polished shoes. I hadn't seen the weed-killer.

*
Three years later and the coffee-table book had been dismantled, the pictures pinned up on the walls of my room. More technical and complicated books were stacked on the desk and the drawing board next to it. I had annexed all of the lego in the house and used it to build models; then I'd constructed paper models based on what the lego suggested would work. Diagrams and blueprints occupied the drawing board, and my fingers had near-permanent blue stains from the fine-nibbed graphing pens I used.
My brother ran past the door, screaming. A few seconds later a blast from a flame-thrower roared down the corridor, and a few seconds after that my father bellowed,
"Not in the house!" There was an oily, greasy smell that drifted into the room, followed by my father. He looked around him at everything I had and walked out again. I was sure I heard him mutter,
"I think the drag was safer."

*
My father looked on as I hammered the last couple of nails in above the window and stood back. Two-thirds of the tree-house was now complete, and I'd finished the conservatory. I smiled, pleased with it.
"The reporters are here," he said. "You made it into the papers. By the way, have you seen your brother?"
I shook my head, and headed out to talk to people about my tree-house, which was the size of a small bungalow, built across four trees, had a conservatory, a solarium and would eventually have solar-powered showers and a jacuzzi. The outer design was all curves and twists that drew the eye in and then confused it, leaving it lost in what might be an optical illusion. And it was all constructed from natural materials.
The reporters started up a clamour when they saw me, and I smiled a little. I was going to be one of those people in the newspapers after all.
As for my brother... well, he was one of those people in the foundations of the treehouse.