The Story of Impala aka "The Epic of Impala"
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While my brother and sister-in-law have new floors installed, my nephew is staying at his grandparents' place. This means trips to the zoo, and the train museums in Baltimore and Ellicott City, and to the Walters Art Gallery and the Maryland Science Center, and of course, daily walks with the dog, Mateen, in my old stomping grounds.

One day my dad and nephew were sitting up by the playground next to the old barn overlooking Wilde Lake. There's a swing set, and a small jungle gym, and two spring animals, a turtle and a chipmunk. The boy had a matchbox car with him, a purple early-70's Impala lowrider. "Will you tell me the story of Impala?" he asked. "Impala?" my dad answered. "Why, sure."

"Once upon a time, Impala found himself sitting next to a barn by a big lake with his friends Turtle and Chipmunk...."

And so it began. That was a year or so ago. By now my dad describes it as an epic: the Impala and his friends have walked very far indeed, meeting little black gentlemen with white moustaches and self-driving EV-1's; they've climbed trees and swum and flown, chased ducks, and generally done a little more than my nephew might do on his own.

Now the kid's trying to write some of these stories down, in the form of "e-mails" written on sheets of looseleaf paper and slipped through the gap beneath the door to my parents' room. He writes a pretty good sentence, my dad says, but his spelling is atrocious.