Bent and hollowed like a roof or gutter tile.
One of the more memorable chores from my youth was cleaning the gutters of the house. There was no screen or netting atop the gutters, so all manner of leaves and sticks from the oak tree clogged the passage, making it functionally useless. The bed of leaves and twigs attracted all manner of roaches and snakes, so my work in shoveling out the leaves was akin to evacuating a well-established community of wildlife.
My attentiveness to chores was poor, and I believe now that certain of my parents’ idiosyncracies contributed to my ambivalence. In particular, my father and mother both had a way of just watching me work. It drove me crazy. They would just sit (or stand) and just watch. There was no expression to it, no real interest. I felt naked at these times. No, I felt invisible. That is the irony. The staring was blank and useless, not even rising to the level of apathy, contributing nothing but taking away.
