She Treads Softly: A Perfectly Normal Childhood

Saturday, July 4, 2026

A Perfectly Normal Childhood

A Perfectly Normal Childhood: (and other lies I tell myself) by Jason Ramshaw
3/30/26; 202 pages
Jason Ramshaw publisher

A Perfectly Normal Childhood: (and other lies I tell myself) by Jason Ramshaw is a very highly recommended, entertaining collection of 33 essays organized chronologically.

The first two parts into the third will find you laughing and smiling while reading them. The later essays are still entertaining but take a different, more thoughtful direction and pull everything together showing the patterns and systems in everyday life which emerged with more clarity as you get older. Actually observing, learning to read the room, and recognizing patterns can go a long way.

In these well-written essays Ramshaw demonstrates that he does indeed, much like David Sedaris, know how to tell a story and make it entertaining but also impactful. The collection is organized into four parts with a preface and an afterword. Part One: The Cul-de-Sac years, stories 1-9; Part Two: The High School Years, stories 10-16; Part Three: The college Years and Beyond, stories 17-25; and Part Four The Examined Life, essays 26-32.

The Cul-de-Sac years are delightful and hilarious. Ramshaw clearly demonstrates that he had the entrepreneurial spirit at an early age when, for example, at 9 years-old he started a newspaper with 11 subscribers or when he organized the Neighborhood Olympics. He showed his confidence to succeed winning the spelling bee (as someone who was out early with "vegatable" I'll admit jealousy) and writing a winning pro-life essay. Even though he may have been called "kind of annoying" along they way, he persisted, even surviving the 8th grade experiment in absurdity.

Events turn more serious and real in the worst and best day of his life. He expounds in these stories on things like his open kiosk law, which requires seeing the door no one else is walking through and considering what his soul is asking, knowing the answer may be in pieces. This leads up to The Examined Life where life lessons are shared, for example on being fully present in conversations and listening, contemplating contributors and receivers, and the importance of language. There are a couple essays on personal annoyances (handkerchiefs and singing happy birthday.) The final piece brings it all home to a satisfying conclusion.

A Perfectly Normal Childhood: (and other lies I tell myself) is an excellent choice for those who enjoy reading essays/personal stories. Thanks to Jason Ramshaw for providing me with an advance reader's copy via LibraryThing. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.