Fiction Writing Exercise 1:

     I don't why I remember changing the channel. A naked posterior is displayed prominently on the screen and my family screams while I fumble to push a different button. Everyone but my brother, that is. He turns away from rifling through the suitcase on the bed to look at us. The hotel room we occupy is nice, but like everything in Chicago, it's probably overpriced. I could never understand why I have to pay three hundred dollars a night for two beds and a cot with clean sheets, ice we have to get ourselves, and cable TV that exposes a family to someone's rear end.  
     My brother asks us what we were shrieking about. I can't bring myself to look at my mom, my dad, or my sister, but we all say it was nothing almost in unison. I finally decide to watch a game show while my sister brushes out her hair, while my mom complains about how long my sister takes to get ready, while my dad figures out the best way to get somewhere, while my brother asks again. He's about fourteen, so he's old enough now to understand what porn is, but I don't think he'll ever be old enough to hear about that sort of thing from me.
     I ignore him and answer trivia questions incorrectly while my parents start to fight about how we should have left an hour ago. Then my sister starts to yell because, of course, it's not her fault she took so long in the shower; it's mine, because I took such a long shower before her. I don't participate and instead watch people win money they don't deserve with my brother sitting beside me. We've forgotten the whole fiasco only five minutes before and have settled back into our routine of having one argument a day during a vacation. This fight is the one we always have before we leave the hotel to explore our destination. It's not as bad as the fight we have before we leave the house, but it's a lot worse than the fight we have before we check out of our temporary residence and go home. No matter what fight it is, though, someone always has to mention how we're an hour behind our schedule because we're always an hour behind our schedule.  Sometimes it's more.
    It's another twenty minutes before we decide my sister's hair can dry on the way and we head out the door to enjoy our vacation. It's a pity I can't remember the rest of it.