BLOOD ON GUM

Artwork: "Blood on Gum"
By Skitch

THEN:


     In the summer just after I had turned 13, my pop had asked me to go to the Paylo Supermarket, right in front of our home, and get some crackers and milk. I loved wearing summer dresses and flip flops, and my flip flops would sometimes remind me of the items I was walking to the store to purchase. My shoes kept saying, "Crack-ers-and-milk," all the way to the store.
     Once I stepped inside the store my eyesight went dim. The bright light of the sun made the store's interior light seem almost nonexistent. I glanced at the store clerk and felt a certain disappointment that it was Norma. A couple of the girls at the store doted on me but she did not. These others sometimes gave me pieces of the individual candy we called "penny candy". They'd bothered to notice that I bought green apple bubble gum and chocolate Kits when I had a little change left after purchasing whatever my parents needed, and they would sometimes buy me a couple of pieces of candy out of their own pocket if I had not been given permission to spend the coins. Better yet, they talked to me like I was a human being that mattered. They looked me right in the eye, asked me about school or made me blush with talk of a boyfriend before I had ever found the courage to actually flirt with a boy. Norma was not mean to me, but she didn't meet my eyes much and when she did her wide eyed look always left me wondering what she was so surprised about or scared of. That fateful day, she looked me in the eye and I noticed nothing unusual. Two women were standing there, and I assumed they were just ringing up purchases or were friends of hers and had stopped by just to talk. I smiled a luke warm smile at Norma and walked on into the store. I noticed there was a ladder standing near her.
     I had not made it far up the back isle, where the milk was, when I heard a loud crack. It was so loud and so unusual that I stopped in my tracks. What on Earth was that? It sounded like a huge balloon had popped. Had Norma knocked the ladder over? Had she climbed it and fallen off? I started to go on, but my concern for her turned me around and I retraced my steps. When I rounded the isle, I could see one of the women covering her face and the other one looking satisfied. Unfortunately, my eyes were working just fine in the dim light now. As I neared the register I could see Norma lying in the floor behind it. Her eyes were open so wide, like they almost always were, and some red fluid was streaming from somewhere near her face. My confused brain told me it was kool aid, cherry kool aid in a see through plastic tube, but somewhere the tube must be broken off because the cherry kool aid was splasing all over the packages of gum. One of the women began pushing the other one, telling her she was going to be sick. That is when I saw the gun in the other woman's hand, and the smug look of satisfaction.
     I looked back at Norma, and now I could see that there was no plastic tube; there was no balloon,  and no fall from a ladder. I could see that Norma's eyes were opened in death, that the red fluid was blood streaming from a small hole under her eye. I could see that she had been shot. I knew that she had been murdered. I looked back at the women as the one pushed the other one through the door. I glanced at the gun again and it occurred to me to be afraid. I turned and ran toward the back of the store. Sometimes I went home by sneaking out the back of the store where they kept the stock, and today I headed for that door in a blind panic.
     Larry, the store's co-manager and co-owner stepped out of the butcher's room, or the storage area, or the office. I did not know which because I did not really see him until I had ran into him. I was obviously upset and he tried to soothe me. I would have none of it though. I needed my Daddy and my Mommy. I needed my home. I stepped back and shook my head. I tried to form the words to answer him when he kept asking me what was wrong. Finally, my brain brought the words, "It's Norma," to my lips, but they rejected the word dead even though I knew it to be true. I heard myself say, "She's hurt." He headed up toward the register and my brain told me. They went outside. He will be okay.
     I made it home to my parents and crying, told them what I had seen. Later that day, the town sheriff came up to get a statement from me. Pop sat him in a ladder back chair in the yard and brought me out to him. Daddy stayed right with me while the sheriff asked me questions in a calm and quiet voice. Yes, I saw the women. Yes, I saw that Norma had been shot. I told him of going back to find the gruesome sight and then running away. He told me that he had to get my statement but I would not need to testify. The women had both waited there on the police and were not claiming to be innocent. I was relieved.
     That night my insomnia was worse than it had ever been because every time I closed my eyes I saw Norma's open ones, staring at the ceiling they could never really see. I contemplated how easily you could stop being a human and how easily some people could insist on that. I wondered what would happen if the women changed their mind about telling the truth and going obligingly to jail. I wondered if they would come after me if they ever broke out of jail and decided to claim innocence. Could they claim their own confession was a result of some temporary insanity, get rid of the only real witness, and live free for the rest of their lives? I thought maybe they could.
     For at least five years I feared them and knew what I was afraid of, but the panic had somehow erased their faces from my memory and all I knew was that they were taller than me and had brown hair. So many people were taller than me and had brown hair. I thought the lady pursuing the books on the shelves in the library was really trying to catch me alone, the woman walking through my school to pick up her child was really the murderess looking for me, the new "sister" at church was planning my demise, the sick female in the doctor's waiting room was pretending to be sick and bidding her time until she caught me in the restroom or anywhere there would be no witnesses to the pistol that would come out of that legitimate looking purse.
     I carried fear with me everywhere I went, like a dark stone in my gut, but I breathed not one word of it to anyone. I had been properly trained to be, or at least act, tough. I did not want my dad to think I was being a weakling, so I kept my fear to myself.
     Once I was eighteen and moved out of the state, I thought I'd left that fear behind. By that time I had convinced myself that it was silly to think she or they would look me up and kill me after all these years. I had a better sense of how the justice system worked and did not think they could get by with crying foul after all these years. I thought all that "silliness" was behind me.
     Then, in my mid 20s, I started driving a taxi cab. We had moved back to my home town and I started driving for my sister's company. Mostly it was medical related trips that involved taking someone to the doctor or hospital, usually waiting for them while they kept their appointment, and then taking them home. I discovered I hated the waiting rooms. I would sit in the car, stand in the hallway, make a trip to the cafeteria or dally at the vending machines. Every time I went into the waiting room I would feel panicked. I had not really noticed when I took my sons to the doctor. Often I was too distraught with their situation to be upset with my own. Sometimes I took them out to the hallway crying "fresh air" and "germ avoidance". But now I realized it was more than that. I knew I had a hatred of waiting rooms. I just did not know why.
     I married my second husband when I was thirty-two. He noticed my aversion of waiting rooms and began to ask a lot of questions, questions I did not have good answers for. About a year into our marriage, he settled down beside me and asked me to cooperate with an idea he'd had. I agreed and he asked me one question after another about waiting rooms and fear. Several minutes in, I found myself saying with exasperation, "But what if they are there?" And suddenly I knew that I was still carrying that dark stone around with me, and just as suddenly I was no longer uncomfortable in waiting rooms. It was as if all my brain needed was to know what I was afraid of and then it could deal with that fear. Today, I can proudly say, I can wait with the best of them!

MENINGITIS

Photo: Get well card from Sister Katherine

                      
THEN:


     When I was nine years old and in the fourth grade, I missed over 60 days of school, due to many illnesses. Mostly I struggled with bladder infections, strep throat, ear infections, and tonsillitis. The few days I did show up for school, I sat near my friend Paul M. The girls that had been my most constant companions, Jutannia and Angie, were in the other fourth grade class and we only saw each other before and after classes, and at recess, and lunch. We had a bartering game going where we would all bring something from home that we or our family no longer wanted and then we would pass them around and make offers until we found something we liked better and we would trade to get that. Sometimes you would have to make a few different trades before you came up with an item the other person liked well enough to trade you for what you wanted. I got my mother a beautiful broach of a Christmas pin for Christmas that year. During classes I had to do without my girlfriends, but I liked Paul very well. He and I tried hard to pay attention to our very strict teacher, Mrs. French, but the world was full of horses, and motorcycles, comic books, and Saturday morning cartoons, all of which were infinitely more interesting than any of the stuff Mrs. French wanted us to listen to her drone on about. I stayed in a bit of trouble. 

     One day I was so sick that Jutannia walked me to the car and told my parents that I needed to see a doctor. My folks took me to see Dr. Alderman and he gave me a nice hot penicillin shot. I hated shots but it seemed like I got them every time I turned around. A felt better for a bit, but a few days later I was standing at the end of my parents' bed, watching "The Wonderful World of Walt Disney" come on the television and trying to decide if I wanted to crawl up on the bed or sit on the chair that was directly in front of the t.v. I was very tired and lying down sounded great, but my neck hurt and I knew I'd have to crane it to see the show from the bed. Still, I was so drowsy that I felt sure I might fall asleep if I stretched out, and I loved that show and did not want to miss it. 

     The next thing I knew I was lying on Mom and Dad's bed and they were both talking to me, but I could not really understand what they were saying. I had to close my eyes for a moment and rest and when I did a blackness sucked me away. When I opened my eyes again, I was in the back seat of the car. Daddy was driving fast and Mommy was crying and praying out loud. I wished she would not be upset. Everything was okay; I was sure. I closed my eyes again and then I was in a bright room with nurses and a doctor rushing about. I wondered why they were so frantic and closed my eyes once more. When next I opened them I was in terrible pain. A nurse was trying to hold me down and the doctor was behind her, hurting me in my back. He scolded the nurse to keep me still. She scolded me to stay still, but I was determined to get away. Surely they were trying to kill me! Where were my mommy and daddy? The doctor called for more help and other nurses came in. Three of them tried to flatten me to the bed and the blackness, welcome this time, sucked me under again. I woke in a hospital bed and saw my parents standing over me with green masks on their faces and green gowns over their clothing. I was wearing a soft hospital gown and I had an IV in my hand. Mom and Dad told me the doctor thought I had Meningitis, but we had to wait for the test to come back before we would know for sure. They told me that the doctor had hurt me in my back because he had to do what was called a "spinal tap" to see if it was indeed Meningitis and to know how to get rid of it. When asked, I told them I felt better already, and I did. My parents wondered if Dr. Alderman had let them down by thinking I simply had strep throat and giving me a shot, but the doctor at the hospital said Meningitis could not be diagnosed without a spinal tap, and besides, Dr. Alderman had likely saved my life with that shot as they were sure it did make a difference that first night when it was touch and go with me.

     The family only had to wear the masks and gowns for one day, as the test revealed that I did have Meningitis but I did not have a contagious form of it. What I had was bacterial, not viral. Sandi stayed at home but she visited often. Mother and Dad stayed with me at the hospital every day. Lila came to see me several times, but Tanya and Little Johnny were not allowed to come up to my floor in the hospital. I missed them terribly and a kind nurse suggested that she take me to a window so I could at least see them and wave at them. Lila went back out to the car to find the area the nurse had told her she would take me. (The window in my room did not look out over an area where Lila could stand with the kids, but instead looked out over the roof of another section of the hospital.) The nurse put me in a wheelchair and took me to a window and there I could see my sweet niece and my baby nephew with my sister. I waved and smiled and waved and smiled. When the nurse said she had to take me back to my room I was disappointed that the visit, such as it was, was over. I waved one last time and then noticed that my IV was full of blood. The sight both frightened and disgusted me, but the nurse assured me it would go right back into my body and suggested I just not look at it for a bit. At my request, someone brought me my new Holly Hobby doll from home. I had just gotten before getting sick,and I had wanted a Holly Hobby doll for ages. I remember that it was not Holly herself but one of her friends, either Amy or Heather. I have forgotten which after all these years, but I do think it was Heather. I remember being both thrilled to have any of the Holly Hobby dolls and somewhat disappointed that it was not Holly herself. Still, green was my favorite color and she was wearing green. And besides, I had plans to get all the Holly Hobby dolls if I could and also Raggedy Ann and Andy, so I considered this one just the start of my collection. 

     Once, the nice nurse asked me to use a bed pan when I had first been admitted and she did not think I should get out of bed. I put the bed pan on the bed and squatted over it and used it as we used our chamber pot at home. She laughed a bit and said, "Well, that's one way to get the job done." Later that day, I asked my mother why the nurse thought that was funny, and she explained that people usually use bed pans lying down. I was shocked and asked her how they kept their pee from running up onto their back and into their bed. Mother said she did not know, but most of the time that was how people used a bed pan. I was okay with the nurse laughing at me, as I was convinced I had saved myself a wet bed. 
  
     After I started feeling healthier the visitors poured in. Our pastor came, many of the church brothers and sisters visited, my Sunday school teacher, Sister Katherine came to visit me twice. Once I was asleep and she left a card telling me that I smiled in my sleep. Most of the visitors brought me small gifts to help me pass the time. I was given coloring books, crayons, small puzzles, and other gifts. Brother Starland and Sister Gerry did what we, in those days, called "ceramics". Which is to say they poured ceramic into molds and then painted the creations after they had hardened and been removed from the mold. Brother Starland brought me a mug that had a face on it that looked like a totem pole face and Sister Gerry brought me a very pretty box for my jewelry and trinkets. I loved both those gifts very much!

     At one point the nurses had to change the IV from one hand to the other, as the first hand was hurting and was very swollen. Getting the new IV hurt much more than I expected, probably because I had been so sick I had slept through the first one, but I gritted my teeth and held my breath, like Daddy had taught me, and I made through the pain. On the eighth day they did another spinal tap, but having had time to prepare myself, and having my favorite nurse hold my hand made all the difference in the world. I weathered that one without fighting and without crying, but I wanted very much to do both! Spinal taps are very painful! The nurses removed the IV entirely that night because we had been told that I could go home the next day. That night the doctor ordered one last dose of high powered antibiotic and the nurse gave it to me in my leg while I was sleeping. I woke up crying as the medicine burnt all the way to my toes. I had not cried over a shot since I was three, and the shame made me cry even harder. I was concerned that Daddy would be disappointed with me. Mother petted me until my tears distressed her so much she said she had to leave the room. As usual, Daddy was given my tears. He came in as she left. To my great relief, he patted my head and said, "That's okay, Possumfrog. You still have plenty of sand in your craw. You've been through a whole lot and that nurse surprised you with that old shot, that's all." I snubbed a time or two and nodded gratefully at him. Then, still feeling violated but so much better since Pop was not disappointed in me, I drifted back to sleep.

     When we made it home two things happened in a short period of time: I accidentally broke the wonderful box that Sister Gerry gave me and my mother burned my Holly Hobby doll in with the trash. we always burned what trash we could in a rusty old bin outside, and she was convinced the doll might harbor germs from my sickness and from the hospital. She came to me and told me she was sorry, but my dolly would have to be burned. I tried to plead for my beloved toy. I suggested we wash her in the washing machine. Mother shook her head though, and I could see the determination in her eyes. Sometimes she simply must have her way, so I turned to the wall and let hot tears slide silently down my face while my sweet doll was destroyed with the boxes, and paper bags, and other combustible rubble. I gave up on getting any more rag dolls after that. I deemed them too flammable, and I figured my mother would destroy them after every sickness I had. But a few years ago my adopted sister gave me a Holly Hobby doll, Holly herself! And now I'm thinking I just may go ahead and collect her friends and Raggedy Ann and Andy now. After all, I get to decide if they go in the rubble bin now, and if I survive a few more years, I should have more grand babies that will be allowed to visit and able to play with the rag dolls, a sock monkey or two, and all the classic toys I wish I'd had. They can also play with all the ones I did have, like Slinkies, View Master Viewers, and spinning tops. I just need to collect them!

     I still have the totem mug, the cards people brought me, and the memories of a little girl tackling a big, scary illness. I still have a scar on my back from that first spinal tap and one on my hand from the first IV. I still have my daddy's approval, my mother's concern, and I still have the story. And now you have it too. 

Photo: Inside the get well card from Sister Kathrine

                        

ODDISH

Photo: "Mrs. Cellophane"
Taken by spousal unit & edited by Skitch

NOW: 
     

I have been studying the Indigo child. Perhaps I am one. I have most of the criteria that I found listed on web sites, except I was born too early to fit this profile. I was born in 1967. I'm too old to be any kind of "child"! Indeed, I have never felt like a kid at all, but I've always had a child-like spirit, if you will. If other Indigo souls share that feeling it seems odd to call them children at all. I did find the phrase “Alpha Indigo” on one web site relating to older Indigo children, but there is a lot of information to sift through and I don't know if I am Indigo or just plain weird. Either one is certainly fine with me. 

Perhaps my oddness is all in my mind. (Maybe we are all so different from others that everyone feels as unusual as I do.) Perhaps the curious distinctions of the Indigo children are all in our minds. (Haven't children with these traits been born throughout history?) But perhaps, just perhaps, we can discover some truths on this subject by looking at it together!

I have organized all my unusual facts and my oddnesses into categories: 


Heritage:

I believe I am of Melungeon heritage.

My parents are distant relatives (sixth or seventh cousins, they say.)

My father is the seventh son of a seventh son.

My parents tell of an asteroid shower that occurred when my mother was pregnant with me.

I know the story of my conception and it is music. I was conceived ten, twelve, and fourteen years after my sisters. My parents attended a Johnny Cash and June Carter concert out of town. The music left them romantic, but they had forgotten the "protection" at home. Thus they were unprotected from me, and I was born nine months later, at about one a.m. on a rainy night and under a new moon. Thus I was born of music, darkness, and rain. I play no instruments, but I'd love to, and I love all music and feel it in my soul. I have always been a pluviophile, and insomniac, and a nyctophiliac.


Birth:

I was born a "blue baby". My navel cord was twisted around my neck in what my mother has told me was a "perfect bow". I could not breathe for my first few minutes outside the womb. I've often wondered if oxygen deprivation had anything to do with how unusual I am.

My parents had so anticipated a boy that they had no girl name chosen. My aunt was allowed to name me.

I was born with one pointed ear (like Spock.)


Childhood and Family:

At about three or four months old (I could not sit upright yet without props) my mother discovered that I would be content for long periods of time if she would place a book (no pictures required) in front of me. She says I would not tear or wrinkle the book, and in fact would run my finger along the line of print and babble as though I were reading in some foreign language. This rather frightened some of my relatives.

My father tells me that when I was a baby he saw a vision of me. I crawled up to him when he was deep in a coal mine and kissed him sadly on the cheek. He became upset and left the mine, minutes later it collapsed.

My father also tells me I suffered from insomnia even as a baby and that I would listen to him tell stories deep into the night.

I have a startling amount of memories of my early years. I have at least a dozen clear memories of my life before I was three years old.

I was potty trained by thirteen months.

I had a difficult childhood, somewhat abusive and far from "normal". My mother's parents were alcoholics and she suffered terrible neglect and abuse at their hands and worse abuse at the hands of other men that they allowed around her. Because of this atrocity she later became agoraphobic and paranoid. She suffered from clinical depression and, from the time I was eight until after I left home at 18, she slept all but five to seven hours of the day. She was only able to be at ease when I was in the home, so I was rarely allowed to leave except for school. I was told that I would not attend school at all if my mother had her way, but that because of a law I must attend or I would be taken from my parents.

Despite her many other maladies, my mother never had a headache until she was in her late sixties and it was medically induced due to some drug they gave her.

My mother called me "the peacemaker" because as a child I hated discord. I hated to see her angry or hateful, and I found myself often trying to reason with her. I wanted her to see the motivation behind the actions of of others when she was upset with them. I felt that if she could understand she would be less hurt or angry by their actions; instead she felt I was being disloyal. She was not happy with this bent in me and she quickly turned the word "peacemaker" into a curse of sorts. She would spit the word at me in much the same manner one might say the word "asshole".

My mother has many times accused me of living "above my raising" or "putting on airs". I was accused of expecting the best in the world. She told me I wanted to be royalty and should have been born to "some rich family".

I have long felt like my mother's mother, and had a deep desire to protect my father and one of my sisters (the one living at home) from my mom's temper. I felt I could endure her wrath, but they were not strong enough.

My father and two living sisters were all maternal toward me. In some ways I had four mothers.

My sister Lila and I once had a conversation about feeling "different". We agreed that we at least see life differently than most, find more joy in simple things, and that we appreciate life more that most of the people we know.

Except for the fact that I have curly hair, I look like an older sister name Patricia who died at eleven months old. Hearing this sometimes made me feel like a “walking ghost”.

My oldest son has a perception problem and a low attention span for things that he is not naturally interested in.

My youngest son is calm and wise beyond his years.

Both my sons are highly intuitive to the moods and feelings of others, but my oldest is a bit more intuitive, I believe.


Teenage Years:


I created a newspaper advice column at the age of fifteen, and presented and sold the idea to the editor of our local newspaper. I then enlisted my older sisters to aid me with the project; I did so for their benefit and to stifle questions about my ability to run the column alone. I never doubted that I could properly advise my readers. I did not run the column long however. I allowed poor participation to discourage me and I regret that.

As a teen I would closet myself away for hours on end. I felt as if I were unable to tolerate the company of other humans. Perhaps I felt I was being smothered because teens are “moody”. Perhaps it is because I had more “alone time” as a child than when I was a teen. Whatever the reason, I found my insomnia worsening as I realized the solitude I longed for could now be found only at night. I got my days and nights mixed up in order to feel as though I had some calm and some privacy in my life.

When my friends were hoping to grow up to be rock stars and actors, I planned to work at a fire tower and write while I was there, in the quiet of the woods, at least 6-8 months out of the year. To this day, that would probably be an ideal job for me, but I had a family and felt I should be there on a daily basis for my sons.


Education and Learning:


I have a deep desire to learn and I wish I knew EVERYTHING!

I am an autodidact.

I sometimes make up words.

I did not do very well in school. I was rather anti social and considered that many of the kids I met there acted unthinkingly. My friends were sometimes the "outcasts" of the class. I was friendly with kids in every social standing, but did not understand them, nor feel understood by any of them. I was bored by much of the “wordy” school work and, at the same time, felt overwhelmed by the work requiring the use of numbers. Literature was my favorite subject, but even there I would read through all the lessons in advance and then find myself doing the same thing in that class that I did in the other wordy classes. I would daydream or read other books and stories while the teacher taught what I'd already gone over. In Math class, I tried to pay attention but often could not follow where the teacher was going. 

My parents did not encourage my education, and I was disallowed any extracurricular activities unless they could be done during school hours and required no money at all, as my mother “needed” me to be at home and we were very poor.

I've been diagnosed as dyslexic (meaning the perception problem not the inability to read.) I was also diagnosed as having "mixed dominance" dyscalculia, and an attention 'problem'. I have DID, which is to say, "multiple personalities". 

My mind wants to think many thoughts at once. It jumps from incomplete thought to incomplete thought. I could accomplish anything if I could focus more.


Spirituality:

At approximately age twelve I began to discuss the Bible with my parents. I pointed out inconsistencies in what they believed (alcohol as a sin, accepting racism as God's will, etc.) and in what they said they believed (the Bible). My parents argued with me but later came to more closely share my beliefs on some of these subjects. They will now admit that God looks more at our inside than our outside. My mother wears make up now and both she and my sister have short hair, both of which were "sins" when I was little. They no longer think braiding your hair is a sin. More importantly, they are less racists and will admit that Jesus drank "real" wine, though they still believe we should not drink alcohol even if He didn't specifically say we should not. 

People talk to me freely and openly. Very often I hear some version of this statement: "I don't know why I am spilling my guts to you. I never tell anyone these things!" I now call honesty my superpower. People tell me the truth eventually, if I look at and listen to them often enough. 


Physicality:

I used to have headaches very often, but in my forties headaches are infrequent.

I have endured what may be an unusual amount of physical pain: second and third degree burns, shingles, kidney stones, an ectopic pregnancy, two natural births, arthritis, and migraine headaches.



Intuition and the Unexplained:

I can often feel other people's emotions radiating off them. I sometimes become terribly upset when other's are filled with negativity. Sometimes I must get up and leave the room. Upon occasion a complete stranger will walk by me and I will find myself awash with misery as though it flowed from them and enveloped me in an emotional fog.

I have at least one "memory" I cannot explain.

As a teen I heard strange things in my home. My mother disputed my claims about the noises until I proved to her that there were indeed unexplainable sounds in our home.  

I saw a being that I've since come to refer to as an angel. I don't know if what I saw was an angel, but it is easy to call her that because I was not afraid and actually felt bathed in a sort of loving aura. My mother later said she saw this being and felt the same way.

I encountered a creature that was as evil as my "angel" was good. I did not see this one but heard it and felt it. This one emanated pure hatred.

Street lights blink off very frequently when I approach them. I had already noticed this, but one summer evening when my children and I were in a park I walked toward a street light and it went off. I walked away and it came on. My children were delighted by this and I did it about ten times for their entertainment. They were disappointed because when they walked toward the light it did not go on and off for them.

Security alarms sometimes go off when I pass by even if I have no purse or baggage of any kind. This happened to me almost constantly for a time, but happens less frequently now.

I am sure I received spiritual warnings about both my uncle's death and my father's health problems. My uncle's came as a feeling so intense that I sat bolt upright in bed and started crying for him. My father's as a volunteer flower in my yard-- morning glories, his favorite. They grew almost miraculously from a small clump of mud/stucco that had fallen off the side of the house.

My massage therapist gave me a Raki session and I saw vivid indigo lights behind my eyelids when his hands were near my neck.

I believe I "wished" a certain name (Shana) into my sister's mind when she was pregnant with my niece.

I did not become pregnant with my first child until I prayed for a baby. Though I had been having sex without protection for three years. I was tested and found pregnant within three weeks of the prayer and was told that I was three weeks along. I remember the prayer very well and consider it the date of conception for my first child.



Dreams:

All my life I have had strange dreams. I dream in colour, vividly, and often lucidly. Sometimes I fly. Occasionally I am not myself in these dreams but someone entirely different. I have been men, I have been other ethnicities, I have been animals, and (I think) an alien. My husband says I dream "movies". I use many of these dreams to inspire my writings. Writing is my passion. A few themes reoccur in my dreams: I am trapped in a small space, often under a building or house, I lose my teeth, usually my front teeth, I am in a huge house picking out a bedroom for myself and sometimes bedrooms for my kids.

As a pre-teen I had dreams that came true. Never the entire dream, but little slices of the dream would occur, usually the day after I had the dream.

Years ago I was asleep and felt as if my soul were sliding out of my body from the center of my chest. This seemed less a dream and more a reality. It concerned me and I forced myself awake. I wonder, was this a dream or the beginning of an OBE?


Attitudes:

I am not of superior intelligence. I test between 113 and 148 on IQ tests, but I think of myself as a very intelligent person. I love my own blend of intelligence. When interacting with people of higher intellect than myself I am never humbled. I see and appreciate their strengths; I respect their knowledge and learn from them. But I always have the feeling that I have things to teach them as well. I believe that I have a knowledge combination that is mine alone, as unique as my fingerprint, and is my own gift to share with the world.

I feel wise beyond my years. What is it I know that makes me so assured? What is it I fancy I know? Is it some secret of the universe? Does everyone have the secret? Do they have it within reach but reject it? Is it the undiluted meaning of life? Is it a clearer appreciation of life and love? I'm not sure. But I am sure that I want to discover my wisdom better-- and share it.

I have a stronger respect for life than most of the people that I know; (I step over ants on the sidewalk, etc) but this may have been taught me by my sister Lila, as she is this way as well.

Despite my strong respect for life I suspect I could take one if I had to and suffer little to no repercussions. If some innocent were in danger of being killed by another I think I could kill the one that endangered them and never lose a wink of sleep. Especially if the endangered ones were my kids or grandkids, my husband, anyone in my family.  

I crave solitude. I write about it. I dream about it. Being with most people exhausts me. Yet, when I find someone I can connect with I long for them and am rarely uncomfortable in their presence.

I am very emotional but fear is something I seldom feel.

I am artistically creative in many ways. I write everything from blurbs, to blogs, to poems, to novels. I have plans for self-help articles, for cookbooks, for sci-fi short stories. I write in every genre. I love to sketch. I am a happy photographer. I enjoy pottery and sewing. Almost any form of artistic creativity seduces me.

I am here for the benefit of the world and the world is here for my benefit. My purpose is to help others and to improve life. But at the same time, the gentle breeze, the faithful sunset, the scent of honeysuckle, the sound of frogs on a spring night-- all are gifts to me.

I have a deep assurance of fame. I know that the world will acknowledge my fame one day. It doesn't matter if I am famous (by their standards) before or after I die. By my own standards I am famous now.

I am fiercely independent. When I was a child my father and sisters were there for me, and my mother to the degree she could function, still my sister Lila (who mothered me most) swears that I “raised myself”.

I believe strongly in autonomy.

I've often been described as an "old soul".

I witnessed a jealous murder at the age of thirteen. Later a dear friend was also murdered because of jealousy. Her father and her thirteen month old daughter were also killed in the massacre. Because of this I abhor jealousy.

I have always been "different". When I have tried to explain this to others they misunderstood, telling me that we all feel unique. I don't feel unique; I am different.

All my life I've faced accusations of arrogance, but I feel that these accusations don't fit. I don't believe myself superior; I believe we are all "better". But I find that I am nearly alone in this belief. Perhaps I am not arrogant but enlightened. I think we are all better than "they" (most people) think they are. I don't want to rise above others but to tug them up to my level-- where we all belong. Still, if I cannot do that, I will not lower myself to their level. I feel frustrated by my accusers. It is as if I were forced to watch them sit and play in a putrid puddle, smearing mud in their blind eyes and drinking the foul water. They refuse to move or to even stand up and peek over a dune, when the beach and the ocean, with all its wonders, lies just over the rise and fresh drinking water is a short walk away. Yet each time I try to share the ocean or the fresh water with them I am called "arrogant". I am told that I'm “living above my raising” or “ putting on airs.” I am met with hostility. They rant and rave at me. When they calm they invite me into their puddle... No thanks, I'll play in the ocean and drink from the stream.

HOME SWEET HOME: BEHIND THE PAYLO SUPERMARKET

Photo: Parents, Tippy, and Skitch (left)
Cindy and Skitch (right)

THEN:


    When I was 12 years old my family moved off of our grand mountain and into town. I did not want to go. I did not want to be a "city slicker," or to leave my woodsy paradise, or to change schools (even though I was rather mistreated at the school I attended.) The home on the mountain had squeezed so tightly into my heart that even 35 years later, as I write this, there is no place on this Earth that I would rather be! My soul longs for it. What would I give for a drink of water from the spring, for the swing that was practically a trapeze, for the sound of a friend's truck crawling up that rutted road, for a good book on Peaceful Rock, or a walk through the pine grove? What would I give for the sound of rain on that tin roof, or crickets surrounding me while I drift off to sleep, or for a moment safely ensconced inside the back bedroom with my Holly Hobby doll while snow drifts down like cold white fairies? But the home in town, behind the Paylo Supermarket, would be where most of my sleeping dreams settled. Beneath those crooked ceilings and surrounded by those crooked walls, I still have conversations with the dead and the living. I raise my sons there, over and over again, feeling their small bodies climb up into my lap, brushing their hair from their foreheads, kissing their cheeks. I would never get over my mountain home, but something about the home behind the Paylo would stay with me forever as well.

     Mom and Sandi insisted on the move. They said they'd had enough of the isolation. I knew they were worried there would come another day when the snow covered our road up and made it hard to get home, like the late, dark evening when my Pop had ran up the mountain to get the horse. He hooked our dear Flame to an old car hood (taken, I believe, from my beloved International truck/playhouse.) Then Dad and Flame pulled my sister up in the thigh deep snow all the way safely to the house. Having one leg shorter than the other and being overweight made her trip home a lot riskier than ours, and I could feel the tension in the air as everyone hustled to get Sandi home before frostbite could set in. Mom and Sandi also said they were concerned we would need food or supplies, or a doctor and be unable to get off the mountain. Mother said, "I'm not spending another winter on this hill!" And that was that. I lived behind the Paylo with them until I met and eventually married Greg. He would be my first husband and the father of my children. He enlisted in the army and we made our own home near a military base in Louisiana. Eventually, I lived in the House Behind the Paylo again as an adult, several years later, for a while with Greg and our sons, and again for a while after my divorce. By that time, Mom, Dad, and Sandi had moved to another home, the Paylo had been converted to a video store, and both my adopted uncle, Crit and my mom's brother, Uncle Jr. had passed away while living there. The house behind the Paylo was alive with sounds that we could never explain, and it was every bit as crooked as the one my pop had built on the mountain. When we first moved in, it was a twisting home with no doors for any room in the house except the bathroom. You would go in the front room, walk straight through the kitchen, straight through the bedroom my parents shared, then would wind your way around my parents bed to the back of Mom and Dad's room. There you would go through a smallish bedroom that my dad's best friend Crit and my mom's brother Jr. shared. The last bedroom in the home was Sandi's and mine and after that you wound back around and came to the bathroom. The bathroom had a tub with running cold water but not hot and no commode at all. We kept a chamber pot in there and only the ladies used it and they only at night. During the day, we all used the outdoor toilet and even during the night the men did. The house had low tilted ceilings, especially in the bedroom I shared with Sandi. One cousin, Wesley, would run into the light bulb that hung in the middle of that room and burst it out in a flash of blue light and sparks. He did this on more than one occasion. A section that ran along the length of the house, including the bathroom and my uncles' room, had been built on later and was much straighter than the other section of the home. Each of the larger rooms had a straight part at the back and an angled part for the rest of the room. Eventually, my dad unblocked a door between his bedroom and ours that had been covered with plywood, and that turned the house back into a shot gun house. You no longer had to weave around and go through my uncles' room to get to my room. Dad also moved the living room into his and Mom's bedroom and the bedroom into the living room area. You could then stand in front of the large picture window in the front room (now his and Mother's bedroom) and see out the very back window of the house. You could see and even speak to someone sitting on the back bed in the room I shared with Sandi, which was her bed. The bathroom still had the only inside door in the home and only the bathroom, my uncles' room, and a walk in closet that was sometimes used as a small bedroom was off center and not viewable from the front room. It was a fabulous old shot gun house!

Photo: Sissy Sandi and Skitch

                                   
     My sister and I were used to very little privacy and we knew how to dress and undress underneath our over sized nightgowns. We didn't even bother to hang up a sheet or a curtain over our doorway; It would only get in our way. This was life as we had always known it. Did other people have their own bedrooms? Did other homes have doors? Did the people in other homes not troop through each other's bedrooms to get to the bathroom or to their own bedroom? Although, I must confess that many times I wished for a door that would keep the sounds out. I never quite became accustomed to reading when my environment was noisy and now Sandi and I had a television in our room. With her watching one television, Dad watching another, and mother listening to Christian music on the radio in her room, I felt trapped by all the noise. In the summer, during the day hours, I spent a lot of time reading outside. At night you'd get eaten alive by mosquitoes if you took a light out to read by, or you'd freeze if it was too cold for bugs. I would drag an extension cord into the walk in closet in my room and plug up a lamp. Sometimes I would listen to my own radio, mostly to the rock music of the 80s. Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, Loverboy, and The Steve Miller Band would keep me company. I remember lying in the floor, falling in love with Steve Forbert's Romeo's Tune, as I took a break from pouring over Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I remember curling up on a cot in the closet while listening to Abracadabra by the Steve Miller Band. Music demanded my full attention. Books demanded my full attention. I didn't do well with both at the same time, and I still don't. Sometimes I would turn my radio off, hold my fingers in my ears to drown out the other radio and two televisions, and try to read. It was torturous and led to my being up late at night and sleeping most of the day away whenever possible. Only the big box fan seemed to make a sound that drowned out the other noises and yet allowed me to read.


  I felt cramped with town and stuffed in the new home. I missed my mountain. I missed the quiet of my shady pine grove, of Peaceful Rock, and my swing. I had been able to read in our back bedroom and Dad and Sandi had shared the same t.v. in the living room. I hadn't been the least bit worried about medical emergencies. Though I had been rushed off to the hospital when I had meningitis and again when I was stung by a hornet and my throat closed up, I was convinced I had never even seen a "medical emergency" in my whole long life, and I had become pretty sure they existed only on the television in shows like "Emergency" and "Quincy M.D." or they were for all those "other people" in the world. I had no concept of the fact that my own life had been on the line a couple of times up on that mountain. And besides, we were all going to live forever anyway! Yes, I had loved my home, but moving was an adventure, they were determined, and Dad went along with it. So, Bob's your uncle and now we were townies. It wasn't much of a town, granted, but it was certainly culture shock after having 32 acres to myself for the last four very important years of my childhood. Suddenly, we could hear the sounds of autos most of the day and occasionally at night. When before, any sound of a vehicle was cause for great excitement because if you could hear a truck coming it was probably still a mile or two away and crawling steadily and determinedly up the mountain, almost certainly coming to see you. People didn't "accidentally" wander up our steep and rutted road. They came with deliberation and usually they were the dearest of friends or family. Now vehicles were noise not excitement. People came up in our yard on a daily basis and a trip to the store meant a two minute walk to the supermarket that was just below and in front of our home, not a trip to town that would include riding on the hood of the truck all the way out of the holler (hollow). Mother talked about how much safer she felt, but I disagreed. I told her, "I'm more afraid of humans than bears." But humans were comfort to her and (unless family or dear friends) they were largely an aggravation to me, and even more so after I walked into a murder scene at the Paylo. I became even more convinced that it had been and was safer on my mountain. Still, I loved my new school and my circle of friends did broaden out and began to include many of our new neighbors.


     Pop spoiled me and took me to school the first few days, but when I did ride the bus, imagine my surprise to find my favorite new classmate already on there! Nancy not only rode my bus but she lived in a home that was less than a four minute walk from my house. A trip even my mom would allow me to make, if only briefly. Mostly, I would go up and ask Nancy if she could come to my house to play or do homework together. Her parents were usually okay with her visiting me. She had an older brother named Ricky that often rode bikes with us. And bikes! Oh, the joy of a bike! Lila had taught me to ride on the strip job up from the crooked house on our mountain, but now I had a nice long residential road to ride up and down, and up and down, dozens of times a day. Sometimes it was great to ride my bike alone and sometimes it was great to have friends to go along with me. When riding my bike, I would often find myself singing, "I want to ride my bicycle," with great joy and abandonment. Freddy Mercury would have been proud to hear me blast it out into the summer wind! "I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman. All I wanna do is BICYCLE!"

     My friends and I also played King of the Hill and other games on the piles of smashed up cardboard boxes that the store kept in their back parking lot, which was right below my house. Sometimes those stacks would be so high we could navigate our way up to the flat tar roof of the supermarket, but we only went up there briefly and when we were sure no one was looking. We didn't want to press our luck, and we were fairly certain my parents or anyone from the store would yell us down if they caught us up there. The store managers did not like for us to play on the boxes at all and I felt sure they would have some sort of fit if they caught us on top of their store. Looking back, I know they were afraid we would fall and crack open our head or snag our skin on the wires that held the bales of cardboard together and they might find themselves paying costly medical bills - or more! But then, it was so much fun that we chanced their wrath on a near daily basis. Once, Nancy and I grabbed two big boxes that had not yet been "broken down" and were still in box form. We got underneath them and crawled all the way around the store on our hands and knees, chuckling at what a sight we must be to any casual observer. It was hot and there were tiny gravels on the pavement that cut into our knees and the palms of our hands. Every now and then I had to raise my box just a tad and peek out to make sure we were still on course for the front door. We sure they wouldn't let us crawl through the store to get a pop and a pack of watermelon gum, and that was the main objective of the mission. So, when we reached the doors to the store, we counted to three and threw the boxes off with a flourish.  We looked around grinning, expecting a crowd of befuddled townsfolk. We found, to our horror, that the only one really looking was a town cop named Phillip. Phillip was not only a police officer but he was the father of a boy named Buddy that Nancy and I both had enormous crushes on. What a way to impress your hoped for boyfriends dad, we told each other, but we soon got over the scandal of it and giggled up the store isles on the way to get our Cokes.


     A huge willow tree was on the edge of the back parking lot and I must confess I fell head over hills in love with it. It towered so high It looked gigantic even from my perch on the front porch of our home that was up on a hill. Until the owners of the garage it sat near cut it down, Nancy, Tanya, Ramona and I swung from the branches like Tarzan and Jane. It truly was a gorgeous tree and probably not a little responsible for the love I now have for trees. When they cut it down I was completely heartbroken and cried off and on for weeks after.

     There were two other little boys living up the same holler where Nancy lived and where we rode our bikes. These two boys were Shannon and Brad, and they would sometimes come visit and play games with us. Mostly we tag team wrestled, and usually we kicked their butts. I didn't care that they were much younger than me and that only the oldest boy was bigger than I was. They were tough little guys and thus a challenge for my wrestling abilities. We tried to keep Nancy tagged in with the younger/smaller brother, after all she was younger and smaller than I was, and me with the older brother. So, I whooped the oldest boys butt and Nancy whooped the youngest boys butt and all was right with the universe. Nancy was awesomely cool that way! I didn't often hang around girls that couldn't kick someone's butt. My cousins Ramona and Becky were probably the only exception to that rule, but I'd kick butt for them, so what did it really matter?

    It took me a while to figure out that I liked a sissy looking girl that rode the bus and wore one of those super soft and popular "rabbit coats" that caused everyone to ask if they could rub your arm just to feel the fur. Often, the people with popular clothing items were not so nice. Often, girls that had very pretty salon-cut hair were a bit fragile or even uppity for my liking. She was neither unkind, nor fragile, nor uppity. Her name was Cindy, but like a great book with a common name and a cover that might put off even an avid reader, she grew on me as soon as I looked past the surface. Cindy was no sissy girl. She was feminine and kind but powerful. She would stand up for herself as quickly as she would let you rub that soft coat. After I realized that she was both kind and strong, it didn't take us long to become friends. She lived about the same distance from me that Nancy did but Cindy was in the other direction, up the main road. She and I would go to the skating rink together, eventually we dated guys that were friends, and she stayed the night with me many, many times. (Nancy only stayed overnight once, I do believe.) Cindy thought herself fat but really she was not. She had broad thighs but not really any extra stomach, which to me was the important part. If your stomach wasn't big you just weren't fat in my opinion. She would squeeze herself into jeans so tight they had to be torturous. She had white blond hair and the most vivid, bluest, eyes I'd ever seen. I tried to convince her she was pretty, but I don't think she ever believed me. I pointed out that a lot of boys were interested in her, but even that didn't convince her that she was easy on the eyes. It confounded me, but I should have been more understanding, since I also thought I was fat and yet had plenty of guys interested in dating me. It was that un-flat stomach I had that convinced me. The un-flat stomach that no one ever saw because it so barely existed and even if I was wearing a cut off shirt or a halter top, I held my stomach in constantly and my stomach looked perfectly flat. In reality I was of medium build, not skinny but certainly not fat. But both Cindy and I had deep self esteem issues. To me, Cindy was gorgeous, and sweet, and funny, and fun. We would diet for weeks and then give up and have what we affectionately called "pig out parties". We'd buy bags of chips, and dip, and Little Debbie cakes, and we'd eat as much as we liked. Cindy introduced me to the comics Ziggy and Garfield. She and I would lie side by side for hours reading the same Garfield books and giggling like mad. She taught me to give back rubs and we'd take turns spoiling each other. We even gave back rubs to our friends and cousins. For reasons we vaguely understood, our guy friends and boy cousins were especially interested in the back rubs. She and I walked all over town almost every day, rain, sun, or snow. We went to the movies together and told our parents we were going to the movies when we were actually going to the steak house three towns away. The theater was close enough to walk to, but the skating rink was not. We had to finagle a ride there, and we tried to go every Friday or Saturday night. We did hair and makeup for all our outings and some of our "regular days", but when we went to the skating rink either Ramona, Nancy, or Cindy almost always did my hair and make up and Tanya's too. I just couldn't get good at that girly stuff and neither could my little tomboy niece. We listened to The Eagles, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Dr. Hook, and ACDC (down a little lower on some songs so my family couldn't quite catch the lyrics) while we heated up curling irons and drew dark eyeliner lines on the inside rims of our eyes. We recorded the top 40. We wore leg warmers, neon clothing, and had big hair. We rocked the 80s but good!


    Another dear friend I made while living out town was Jimmy. When I first met him, I thought he would make an awesome boyfriend. He was cute. He had brown hair and freckles, and green eyes you could drown in! But more than anything, I liked his attitude. He was almost a boy version of myself. He was kind but he didn't mind letting boys know that if they crossed  him he could blow up on them like a stick of dynamite in a firestorm. He was much more free and open about sexuality than I was and once pulled his penis out in class (a class I was not in) because some girl said he wouldn't. Luckily for him, the teacher did not see. The penis show off episode shocked me a bit, but it didn't kill my romantic interest in him. I laughed it off and figured "boys will be boys" as my mother had told me dozens of times. It was his relationship with a girl named Donna Sue that got Jimmy tucked away into the category of "friend" in my book. I didn't feel that Donna Sue was good enough for him. I didn't find her interesting or especially pretty either, but I conceded that he had his own opinion about things and I let that all be. It was her mistreatment of him and his putting up with it that spoiled my romantic notions of him. He started telling me how mean she was to him and yet he kept dating her, and dating her, and dating her. I lost respect for him and decided I didn't want the kind of boyfriend that would put up with people being mean to him repeatedly. Years later, I found myself putting up with an abusive relationship and, although it was a marriage and I had two children to think of, I began to understand that things are not always black and white. I began to see how that could happen to someone, to pretty much anyone, and I regretted my harsh judgment of his loyalty and love. After Jimmy broke up with her, he asked me to date him but, disillusioned,  I turned him down. In true loyal form, he never wavered in his affection for me. Despite that rejection which I know hurt him very much, he is kind and loving to me to this day. Jimmy was and is loyal if he is anything. He made up his mind that he loved me and he never stopped. He is an Oak, dependable, strong, sheltering. All in all, he was a great friend, and he was the only boy I hung out with that wasn't horribly intimidated by my dad, which I couldn't help but find rather sexy, even if I had decided not to date him. Jimmy smoked, which I told him would stunt his growth. He was already just a little shorter than me. He said he didn't care if he never grew another inch. He was already a man so what did it matter. Once, I was holding his cigarette for him while he stooped and tied his shoe, and my dad drove by. I freaked out!  Jimmy said, "If he noticed and thought it was yours, I'll explain that you were holding it for me. It will be fine." Most of the guys I knew would have left me alone in that situation and I knew it. They were petrified of my Daddy, who made it clear they were not good enough to lick his daughter's boots, let alone hold her hand. Jimmy respected how much my father adored and honored me because he considered me just as worthy as my dad thought I was. And he had grown up with a tough but shaken Vietnam Vet. Jimmy was not easy to intimidate and it was probably impossible to scare him. As it turned out, Dad hadn't seen us at all, but it sure made me feel better to know that Jimmy would calmly sit down and discuss things with my dad in a man to man sort of way instead of running in the other direction. It impressed me a lot. Jim and I took long walks over town. We climbed on top of the high school, sat in the empty school buses, and we squeezed through partially open windows and inside the high school on more than one occasion. We just nosed around, left stupid messages on the chalkboards, and relaxed in the teacher's lounge. My silly young brain thought that it was not illegal to go inside a locked building as long as you didn't steal anything. Little did I know, and how lucky we were that we didn't get caught! When at my home, we liked to wrestle and pretend to do homework. Jimmy was my first kiss (before he dated Donna Sue) and, in many ways, my first love. I know and love him to this day and can proudly say we are still close friends. If push came to shove, we'd shove the hell out of the whole world for each other!

     Our closest neighbors lived across the little holler road from our house, but our home was on the hill and their's was level with the road, the store, and the parking lot. I could look down out of my back yard and into theirs. The family consisted of an elderly man and a woman that is probably a bit younger than he was, definitely in better health than he was. The old man was a Native American and everyone called him Chief. Everyone called the family "The Indians." They had three older sons and two daughters. The daughters biologically belonged to both of the parents and you could see the Native American heritage in both of them, but the three sons were the woman's children from an earlier marriage and did not look Native American. Still, the community called them "The Indian Boys." The girls were a little sharper than the boys, especially the youngest girl, Gloria. She and I played together a few times. We liked each other well enough but never really hit it off to the point where we would seek each other out very quickly. Her big sister was named Crystal. She was quiet and Gloria was not. Both the girls were pretty. The boys were grown men in body. The oldest was John who had dark hair and a mustache, sometimes a trimmed beard. He was a tad heavy and looked like he should own a Harley, dressed like he should own one too, but he didn't. None of the boys could get their driver's license. I think Gloria did learn to drive a vehicle, but I'm pretty sure Crystal never got hers either. Tim was the next oldest son. He had sandy hair and kind eyes. He seemed the sharpest of the boys and he loved to laugh. He understood a lot of the jokes I shot out that went over his brother's heads. Sometimes he had a beard and/or a mustache. And he looked less like a biker and more like a hippie. Joe was the youngest. He was sandy colored like Tim. He was shorter than his brothers and he smiled a lot. He always showed me some glossy photo of his "new girlfriend". Pulled it straight out of Playboy and put it in his wallet. Sometimes I didn't want to see it. Sometimes it was probably from Hustler instead of Playboy. The best you could do though, was pretend to look. He really MUST show you his new girlfriend! One day he noticed my eyes were closed when I looked down at the photo. I learned to look at those photos with unfocused cross-eyes and to mumble, "Yeah, she's pretty." They were all sweet men and they all (though Joe expressed a constant interest in my being his girlfriend) called me "Sissy." There were two other boys that visited the neighborhood off and on, and they spent a lot of time at the Indian's home. Were they cousins to the Indian kids? I don't recall. I do remember that their brother lived in a trailer next door to the Indians. These two boys were brothers. They were both dark in features but so unalike in nature. The oldest one was called Trigger, Lord only knows what his name really was, the years have stolen it from my memory. And one was named Wayne. Wayne was a body builder and a bit of a womanizer. Trigger was vivacious, loud, happy. He rarely dated anyone. It would be decades before I would ask myself, "Was Trigger gay?" The word "gay" only meant happy when I was that young.


              

Photo: Crit, Wes, Big John (bro-in-law) and John Indian

       

     One day John Indian, as he was most often called, came to visit us and he found me working to glue a beloved totem mug back together. Brother Starland from church had made the mug for me when I was nine and in the hospital with Meningitis. His wife Gerry made a beautiful ceramic box for me as well, but, to my utter disappointment, it had been broken not long after I made it home. I treasured that mug too much to let a little jostle off the shelf end it if I could help it. In fact, I still have it today. John came to talk to me, and I decided to put this hands to good use while he was standing around jawing at me. "Here hold this." I said. And then, "Now put a little pressure here." After a bit, he finished talking and said, "You think it's glued now?" I nodded, and he tried to let go. I say "tried" because his fingers were pretty well glued to the mug. John started getting upset and loud. He shook his arm and yelled some unintelligible gibberish that sounded like "Yaaaaaaaahhhhh! Eeeeeeek! Ishhhhhh!." When he shook his arm he yanked me around because I was glued to the mug as well. I tried to tell him how to gently remove his fingers, but he was being so loud he couldn't hear me, and I'd watched one too many Bugs Bunny shows with Dad. I found it delightfully funny that he was flipping out! I started laughing and John started running through the house. Of course, I was trying to keep up so my mug would not be re-broken by either the quick release of my own skin or John's panicked carelessness. I was trying to talk to him and calm him down, but wasn't having much luck for all his yelling and all my laughing. I could not stop. Dad, Mom, Sandi, and Crit all gave us puzzled looks as John dragged me through the shotgun house. He pulled me through my bedroom, though Crit's bedroom, through Mom and Dad's bedroom. In the kitchen, his skin gave way and he was free. He shook his hand, rubbed it as though it were burning, and gave me a dirty look. I think he thought gluing him to that mug had been my evil plan all along, as though I had tricked him. I shook my head and laughed all the way back to my room to put my mug safely back on my dresser.

     The brothers liked to sell and trade in knives and to show off their new acquisitions. I soon learned that they had a superstition about opening and closing a knife. Whoever opened it had to close it or bad luck would befall the knife and whoever closed gave in and closed it. They would hand me an unopened knife to admire I would open it, look it over, tell them what a fine knife it was, and hand it back to them still open. I would then get to watch them pitch a fit because I had not and would not close the knife. Sometimes they would threaten to throw a brand new, expensive knife over the hill and into the deep grasses if I didn't close it. My dad would sit by and snicker while I tortured the poor men. I eventually gave in and closed the knife for them, but there would always be another day and another new knife.

     All three boys had speech impediments and we sometimes struggled to understand them. Tim arrived at the door one day asking to borrow an "uh-un". My dad had answered the door and he scratched his head and asked, "Well, Tim honey, what do you do with one of those things?"

     "You eat it, you blamed fool. You eat it!" That part we understood. Tim was good natured and Dad didn't take the least offense at the name calling or the raised voice. Still, it took several more questions to figure out that Tim was asking for an onion.

     One day, I looked down into their back yard and Gloria was out there with her boyfriend. She was wearing a very pretty white sundress and when I asked about it, she told me it was her prom dress. A few years later, I bought that same dress from her and I was married in it.

     I used to walk all over town. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Cindy, infrequently with Nancy; her mother liked for her to stay in the holler, but mostly, like everything else in the world, I was with Tanya and often Ramona as well. Mother liked for us to check back in at least every hour which meant either dropping a dime in the pay phone and saying, "We're just fine. We're at the Piggly Wiggly... Okay, talk to you in an hour." When we were dimeless, we would dash home as fast as we could go, check in with an adult, and then dash back out town. We were constantly on the look out for coins for the pay phone and pop machine. Lose change was not abandoned long under our couch cushions, and we stuck our fingers in every coin slot we passed. Calling in was so much easier and less time consuming than running back to the house. Usually, when we called, it was Sandi we talked with but we knew Mother would find out if we were late checking in, and late check in calls resulted in not being able to go walking later that day or the next, or possibly for a week! It depended on how annoyed my mother was. She never called it "grounding". She just said, "If you can't be trusted to check in then you can just stay home."

    Once, Tanya and I walked to The White Star Restaurant to get ourselves a real treat, a soft serve ice cream cone. While there we were thrilled to watch a raging storm sweep through town, throwing hail the size of ping pong balls and marbles all over the street while we took our time eating that cold ice cream and looking out the windows with a feeling of safety. The storm brought such a relief from the torrid afternoon, and such a magic show! This was exciting! This was life! The owner of the restaurant let us use his phone to call home and tell my parents we were sheltered from the storm and that we would head back as soon as it blew over. When we went back outside the world had been transformed from a steaming sweat house to a misty magical place. The air was cool and breezy. There were branches down and ice pellets still melting in the sun. We walked home loving the storm, the White Star, and small town life on a sunny summer day.

     We weren't allowed to ride our bikes anywhere except up the holler, but a group of boys rode their bikes all through town. We called them "The Gang," because they were our small town's answer to big city gangs. They liked to harass us. They would bully us, call us names, steal our snack money, or our snacks if we had taken along something to eat later. They would leave us alone if Jimmy was with us, which rather pissed me off but relieved me as well. I was pretty good at fighting boys off in the singular or even in a two on one situation, but with them there were always at least four guys. It was always Elmer "Fudd", his brother Hobart, with Thomas and his brother Jeff, and sometimes they had other boys with them. Always it was Elmer and Hobart and Jeff that bullied us but they were never opposed by any of their friends and were encouraged by some of them. Only Thomas stood by quietly, but his silence hurt me more than the other boy's hard words or even their blows. Thomas was in my class in school and I liked him pretty well, so I felt especially betrayed by his failure to speak up for us. We tried to avoid them when we could and we quickly learned to seek out crowds, especially crowds with lots of adults that would encourage them to leave us alone. One such day, we ducked inside an arcade called "Mr. Wizard" when we saw The Gang coming. It was not exactly and adult hangout, and those boys must have felt encouraged by the kid friendly atmosphere, because they marched right in and began trying to force us to give them our once-frozen snack cakes and the change we had scraped up for a coke. When I refused, Fudd pushed me hard, and I fell flat of my rear between two pinball machines. To my utter dismay I was shocked by the electricity both going down between the machines and coming back up. I was almost ready to cave when some guy with a baseball cap and curly brown hair came over and asked what in the world was going on. He asked me if I was okay, and when I said I was, he told the boys to leave. They gave him a little bit of lip about it but he was bigger than the biggest of them, he wasn't the least bit intimidated by their numbers, and he did not give an inch. He insisted they leave and so they left. And thus, I met my second husband before I'd even met my first. Tanya and I bought a Coke and sat at one of the tables and ate our snack cakes. We decided to stay home the rest of the day, and we expressed our hopes we could time our trip home to avoid seeing The Gang again. As always, I assured her no one would get by with hurting her, but, though I was sure she knew I'd give my life for her, I was also pretty sure she knew I was not much of a match for all four of those boys. I stole glances at my "hero". He was cute, especially when he smiled, which was often. I wondered if he would be interested in me, but everything about him told me he saw me as a little girl. I was 13 and looked younger; he was 17. Besides, I was more than a little uncomfortable about the fact that I had needed help with those boys. I never wanted to be the damsel in distress. I wanted to rescue my knight in shining armor, for crying out loud! I didn't know then that this guy would not always see me as a little girl, that I would not recognize or remember him the next time I saw him, that I would be married to him for ten years and sit up in bed one morning and ask, "When you were working at Mr. Wizard, did you ever run a gang of bullies out of there because they were picking on two little girls?". Once we were both adults, the four years difference that once seemed so large would seem like nothing at all. We would join our hearts, our lives, and our dysfunctional families, and be each other's heroes forevermore... But I did not know that then.


     Ordinarily, bullies did not get the best of me. It was not long at all before I'd had my share of fights and most of them were with males. I didn't give one whit (as country folks would say) if you had a vagina or a penis. You messed with me and my family, and I'd break bad on you. I did prefer it if my crazy verbal reaction got you to back down (and it usually did with females) but if it didn't, I was not entirely opposed to carrying it to the next level and backing up my crazy threats with crazy actions. In fact, the Irish temper in me sometimes enjoyed it!  I guess my first physical altercation was with the visiting cousin of Chris, a boy who lived by our church. The cousin shot a B.B. pellet at or near Tanya. I gave him one fair warning. "Do NOT point that at my niece! Do NOT shoot that anywhere near her!" He tried again. He thought it might be funny to shoot at her feet and make her dance. He didn't think it was quite as funny when I rubbed his face in the dirt and bit the inside of his thigh as hard as I could when he was squirming off, trying to get away from me. I could tell by his attitude that he was not trying to get away and leave me alone; he was trying to get away and point his B.B. gun at me or at Tanya. Chris danced around the fight as though he were deciding if he should pull me off his cousin or help one of us beat the other one up. By the time the cousin did get away, he limped back to Chris' house trying to hide his tears. I handed the B.B. gun to Chris, told him they were lucky I had not decided to wrap it around the nearest tree, dusted the dirt off my dress, and wiped futilely at the grass stains on my knees. Mom would quarrel at me, but it would be worth every minute of it. I didn't want anyone disrespecting Tanya, let alone shooting at her, and now he knew it, they both knew it. I didn't think he or anyone that had seen the fight would be mean to Tanya again. That thought gave me great pleasure.

     Several years later, when I was in the sixth grade a high school guy named Scott thought it would be fun to pull Tanya's hair. We were on the bus, and she was riding home with me one Friday evening to spend the weekend at my house. I told him, calmly, to stop. He pulled it again. I told him a bit more excitedly to stop or I would "pull you bald headed and see how YOU like it!" He pulled her hair one more time and I loosed the beast. I came over the bus seat on him. I buried both my hands in his hair, and I pulled for all I was worth. He fought me off of him fairly quickly, but not without considerable hair loss. I thought about going in for another pull, but when I saw the tufts of hair I held in my hands I let them fly leisurely out the open bus window and decided to see if that wasn't enough for him. Maybe he didn't need another go 'round, but if he did I was willing to give it to him. My face was pink where he had smacked at me, but I didn't feel a thing. I was still too enraged. Besides, it was clear he'd gotten the worst end of the deal. He sat there for the rest of the bus trip, cussing and pulling loose hair from his head, letting strand after strand of his longish light brown hair fly from his fingers and out the window. The other boys on the bus laughed at him, told him he had been given fair warning, pointed out that he did indeed have some bald spots in his head now. He objected at their laughter. He called me names, but all I cared about was whether or not he had learned to leave Tanya alone. I waited and I watched vigilantly, but he did not touch Tanya again. I noticed that she tossed him a look of amused superiority before getting off the bus, and I was okay with that. She needed to know that she was worth a fight when a fight was called for.

     The bus was always a place for confrontations. Kids felt freer to bully where there was only one adult and that adult was focusing on something else, like the road ahead of us. Often, the bullies I had to deal with on the bus were big high school girls, but not once did I have to fight any of them. They were not mean to Tanya, they kept things on the verbal level, and they did back off when I loosed my own verbal crazy on them. I would say things no sane person would expect from a tiny blond wisp of a girl. On the bus you did not usually shout. Shouting in that environment was a cry for help from the bus driver. First you would respond with threat for threat. If they kept up, you would say something like: "I'll bite off your ear, take it home, keep it under my pillow, and touch it lovingly each night before I go to sleep." Say it so calmly and so quietly that they have to strain a little to catch all the words. Often, they would just sit down and leave you alone, convinced you were madder than a hatter. The people around you would be a little freaked out until they saw how fabulously it worked, saw that you were smiling, figured you for clever instead of crazy. Then all was back to normal for you. On the bus when I lived out town, a big high school girl liked to bully me and a friend of mine from school named April. April and I were not usually "sit together on the bus" friends like Nancy and I were, but we were "you mess with her you're messing with me" friends and the high school bullies found that out quickly enough. There was something thrilling about working as a team with someone else who understood that crazy trumped bully almost every time. April didn't make the same kind of insane threats I did, but she managed to back down many big bullies that tried to intimidate her just with normal "I'll kick your ass!" threats. She was indomitable, and I loved that about her! She got such a kick out of my crazy remarks. I would say, "Sit down and leave her alone or I'll break off your own arm and beat you to death with it." The bully would sit down and April would laugh all the way home. She could jump on that bandwagon too, when needed. Often she carried my threats a step further. "After she breaks off your arm and beats you to death with it I'll piss in your dead, open mouth and I'll wrap that arm up and keep it until Mother's Day, then send the stinky thing to your stinky mom." Yeah, we were soon considered too crazy to mess with and that was fine with both of us!

     Despite my craziness, I went to Awana on Sunday nights like a good little Christian. I got to see Buddy there and he was my biggest childhood crush. For three years I thought he was the end all be all of boydom. Once, I was being dropped off from Awana and was climbing out of a jeep when a boy named Greg, that had picked on me all the way home, thought it would be really funny to kick me out of the jeep. I almost plowed up the gravel with my nose, and I completely lost my temper! In front of the astounded eyes of the church "Brother" that was driving the jeep, I dived back into the vehicle, knocked Greg off the tire he was sitting on, and pummeled his face repeatedly with my fists. He was too shocked to fight back, and Buddy told me later that everyone "cracked up" after I was pulled off of him and the jeep had traveled on down the road. Buddy said the Brother mentioned that some people didn't respond well to being teased. The rest of them laughed, but Greg did not find it very funny. Well, neither did I, but he didn't pick on me again. Which was the hoped for result.

    On August 1, 1981 MTV launched their channel and changed the way we all looked at music. I was sitting in front of the television when the first video played. It was the Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star from 1979. It is impossible to explain to people that watch the bogus channel now, how cool this channel was in those first years. For one thing, 80s music was almost all good, and it flowed out of MTV 24/7, and it filled our days and our minds with not only sounds but images that spurred imagination. This was a time when John Lennon was still in the top hits, and bands and musicians like ABBA, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, and Diana Ross might play right before a more contemporary artist like Foreigner, Journey, and Air Supply, and right after a disco song from The Bee Gee's or a country crossover like The Oak Ridge Boys' Elvira. My family could occasionally afford to rent a VCR and a couple of movies. My boyfriend had an Atari. Life was rolling with hitherto fore unknown technology and I had decided that all the sci-fi novels I'd read were prophecies. The 80s were hip, new, exciting, and yet as comfortable as your favorite pillow. They were amazing, and I am glad I did not miss them!




     When I was 15, my cousin Wesley came to live with us. He was 24 and Sandi was 27, but he seemed nearly my age and Sandi seemed nearly Mom's. It was awesome having someone in the home that would listen to rock music with me and sit up until the wee hours of the morning talking. Wes worked at Long John Silver's and would bring home the food they told him to throw away at night. Every evening was a late night feast of fish, and chips, and chicken. Then he went to work at Hardee's and the feasts stopped. At that time, Hardee's pretty much made it as you ordered it. This was about the time I quit school and two things influenced me to do so: Wesley and a book called "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". A lady named Liz had helped my daddy get disability due to his stomach issues and she quickly became a dear friend of the family. She loved us all and we loved her too. She said she was inspired by the fact that every year at Christmas, Daddy would find some way to give Sandi and me 50.00 each and we would spend it on presents for the rest of the family. She said most girls she knew would have gone out and bought a new coat or a good pair of shoes. She loved the fact that I was a reader and she gave me a copy of the book "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" saying she thought the main character, Francie, was a lot like me. To this day that is my favorite book (other than the Bible). But I did take too much note of the fact that Francie quit school to make money for her family, and when Wes began to urge me to quit school and get a job where he worked I did just that... Well, the first part of it. It turned out it was harder for a 15 year old kid to get a job at a local restaurant where 30 year olds were standing in line for work so they could feed their family. Instead, I wound up with a job babysitting and making eight measly dollars a day, which, even in those days, was so puny Dad would not touch any of it and insisted I keep it for spending money. One day, I marched into the local newspaper office and sold the editor on the idea of an advice column named "Ask Aunt Gabby". I enlisted the aid of my sisters to help me run it. For this we were paid 50.00 a week and I could keep my babysitting job as well. But when, week after week, we had to make up all our own letters I grew discouraged. In several weeks we received maybe four letters, not enough to fill one column, let alone the five or six columns we had published. I told the editor to just forget it. Looking back, I do wish I'd been more tenacious. I think the letters might have started coming in after a month or so more, and I wish I'd stuck with it just as long as the editor would allow. When I was not working I stayed up all night reading and soaking in the quiet of the house with only the box fan droning on, and I slept until nearly three the next day. The entire family found that odd, but they allowed it. I had always had insomnia so it did not surprise them too much, but for me it was more about the quiet, the alone time than anything else.

      Pets and wild animals were much more scarce in town. Daddy came home with a puppy that was part wiener dog (Dachshund) and part Feist. He was short haired and a pretty honey color. He had one white spot on the tip of his tail, and so I named him Tippy. Daddy thought it was awfully funny when I "spanked" Tippy for leaving the yard, but soon enough I had him trained to stay out of the road. I had been so concerned he would get killed by an automobile. Tippy would "sing" when I played the harmonica (which I only knew how to make noise with.) And if you went outside and called him, ignoring the fact that he was underfoot, he would howl like a banshee. He  was the sweetest and funniest little dog. Once I read "Every dog is a lion at home," by H. G. Bohn and, I knew that Bohn had once known at least one dog like Tippy, fearless in his own territory. But it was probably that same fearlessness that brought on his demise many years later. I was grown, married, and living on my own when Tippy was found dead near the garden. Dad said he had probably been in a fight with one of the big dogs in the neighborhood. Tippy never did figure out that he was a small dog.

     Of cats I had a few: Princess Paddypaws was a long haired gray and white cat, very elegant and regal. She had babies that grew up and looked a lot like her. Dad could not really tell one from the other. He told me one day that "one of those gray cats" had jumped up on John Indian's bare back for woolling them roughly on the head repeatedly every time he came up to visit. John got scratched up pretty good and tried to get Pop to punish the cat, but Pop, through his laughter, told John he should not have annoyed the animal in the first place. Briefly, oh too briefly, I had a sweet little black and white kitten I named Abadaba. He was to be my assistant in a magic show, but he did not live long enough for us to get the hat trick down. Lord Amber was named after a character in an Andre Norton sci-fi book called "The Crystal Gryphon". That cat had orange and white hair and, like the character in the book, amber eyes. Once he "gifted" me with a live green snake while I was lying on a blanket in the yard trying hard to get a tan on my shiny white skin. He looked at me with unveiled disgust as I froze and let the reptile slither off my blanket and away into the grass around the hedges.

     Another pet I had while living there was Angel, a pigeon, but she was more of a friend and less of a pet. I nursed her back to health after finding her unable to fly. I then set her free. Angel liked the warmth of the house and would hang around outside in a cabinet on the porch. She waited until I came out to go to the bathroom or bring in wood for the wood stove. Then she would fly over, land on my shoulder, and ride me back inside. I would keep her hidden from mother for a bit, but once discovered, she would have to go outside again and the game would start all over from the beginning. Eventually, spring came and she discovered that there were a bunch of other pigeons at a store a few miles away, and she took up residence with them. Soon, she was too wild to come to me anymore, but I was happy that she was happy and free. I had a poster that said, "If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours. If it does not it never was." I knew that, for a time, Angel and I had belonged to each other, but that ultimately we were both free and had our own lives to live. Still, she remained forever dear to my heart.

     And so did that spooky, old, crooked home Behind the Paylo Supermarket...