Snapshots of Fictionalized Facts
Angie Kress
Snapshots of Fictionalized Facts
By Angie Kress
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Angie Kress
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This book is dedicated to my husband, whose continual support and encouragement made this work possible, to my daughter, whose continual belief that I am a rock star encourages me to reach for the stars and to my family for providing me with endless material..
Secrets. As I type these memories, my daughter asks me to read her some of my story. She, like most children, loves to hear about my childhood and frequently asks my husband or me to tell her a story about a time when we were growing up. We, like most parents, look for funny stories that will give her a sense of who we were without exposing her to anything that might taint the world she lives in or the esteem that she holds us in. I wonder if all parents censor in this way.
Ironically, telling real stories is much weightier than recounting The Three Little Pigs. You are left with a responsibility not only to your child, but also to everyone else that she loves and adores. To tell a story that portrays a loved one negatively will forever alter the perception she has of that person.
I tell her, “No, this isn’t a book for children.” She of course plagues me with the question that all children like to torment their parents with, “Why?” Somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to tell her that I am writing a book about my dad who is not Grandpa Kenny.
Even as I type this, I wonder what her stories will one day be. Will her childhood be an open book that she can skim through at leisure, pulling any memory any time, or will they be sifted through and selected with care? Will she one day decide to record her own memories and have a daughter of her own asking her to read a section only to find that she can’t? That it isn’t appropriate. What will her secrets be?
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It was fall, and my family had just moved. We went from having a three bedroom, one bathroom house in the city with a tiny yard to a three bedroom, two bathroom ranch on a half-acre of property.
I was only nine, and this was an exciting time for me; I was getting my own room, I had always shared with my sister before, and a whole new school. Kelly was less ecstatic; probably because in the past year this would make for our second move and our third new school. She was eleven at the time and a lot quieter than me; she was tired of moving and making all new friends.
I, on the other hand, was the type of kid that never shut up. The one that you worry will take off with a stranger. I didn't care that I was leaving behind friends. After all they'd only been my friends for the last year. I only thought about the new friends, the new teachers, the new possibilities.
My only regret was that the new school didn't have an orchestra, but on the upside, this meant I could join band. I had wanted to do both in the city, but my mom made me pick one, so in a way now I was getting to do both.
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Moving wasn't the only change. The year before, my mom had married a man named Kenny, and my dad, Rich, had married a woman named Rona. That summer Rona had a baby boy named Richard. Now it was three months later, and my sister and I were going to see Richard for the first time.
When my parents were divorced, my dad was awarded visitation rights. He could see us on Sundays from 9-7 pm, but he rarely ever actually picked us up. It didn't occur to me at the time, but Rona was actually closer in age to my sister and me than to our dad. That's probably why we got along so well; she was basically a kid herself.
My sister and I spent the day with them; we couldn't get enough of Richard. He was such a cute kid although his head seemed slightly too big for his body, but this is exactly the type of flaw that makes kids extra cute. Other than that, he had the same sandy brown hair that Rona had with the same big blue eyes. He didn't look like my dad at all. My dad has dark brown hair and brown eyes; he's also always really tan and Rona's not.
Rona seemed so happy playing the role of the happy mother and housewife. We made caramel apples that day, but they didn't turn out. I think the caramel was too hot, so when we dipped the apples and set them down to harden, all of the caramel and nuts slid off onto the wax paper.
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My mom and Kenny were married in 1989, and I was eight years old. I liked Kenny so much. I was super excited when I found out that he was going to be my dad. I always used to ask him if he was going to marry my mom. I really hoped he would. He was nice to us, played with us, and our mom was happy. I couldn’t wait for them to get married and to move in with him permanently.
After they were married, I wanted to call him dad instead of Kenny. It was a little strange maybe since I was eight at the time and even though I had known him for the past six years, I had always called him Kenny.
I’m not sure if I actually called Kenny dad or not, but one day shortly after they were married our dad picked us up and took us over to Grandma Barb’s house. I was used to saying Kenny because he was always around, and I liked talking to him, so I talked to him a lot. I remember going to talk to Rich at different times during the day and messing up and saying Kenny instead of dad. After the fifth or sixth time that this happened, Rich erupted on me. He started yelling about how he was my dad not Kenny. I needed to get that straight. If my mom thought that he was going to adopt us, he wasn’t. There was no way that he was going to let that happen. We were his kids. After that I was scared to say Kenny or dad because I was afraid that I would become confused and say the wrong thing, which would set him off again.
He showed us Terminator that day. I remember being terrified. I kept leaving the room and going into the kitchen to “get something.” Finally, he asked, “Don’t you like this movie? You keep leaving.” I didn’t want him to make fun of me for being a baby, so I went back into the room and tried not to watch what was happening.
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Before my mom married Kenny, we lived on my grandma’s property. It was awesome! There is no other way to describe it. She had her house, a shed, and a barn. There was a garage on the property that had been converted into a house for us. It had this huge window on one side of the wall. I remember my mom giving us these oil crayons that we could use to draw with on the window. The house backed up to a cornfield, and there was a bike path that ran alongside both my grandma’s and our house. There were also mulberry trees in the backyard that my sister and I used to eat. I remember hours of fun playing with my sister: riding bikes, running through the cornfield, playing in the sandbox, swinging on the tire swing, making mud pies, finding inch worms, watching the swallows fly through the barn, and going up to my grandma’s house to play.
My mom was riding around on the lawnmower cutting the grass, and I was engaging in one of my favorite activities: snooping through her desk. I don’t know if I was looking for something in particular or if I was just being nosey. I just remember having this incredible need to know things when I was younger.
I found a bunch of old calendars, the type that can slide into a pocketbook. My mom til this day is still a fan of this type of calendar. Why, I will never know. After buying one of these calendars, it took me about two seconds to realize that I had to shrink my writing to an illegible scribble in order to fit into the miniscule square that is supposed to designate an entire day. Then you of course can’t read what you have just written, which means you won’t remember the event that you just recorded anyway. So, basically you just spent $5.00 without increasing the odds of remembering anything.
So, it is while flipping through a stack of these useless contraptions that I spot a square that clearly says Rich court. I sense that I am on the scent of something bigger. I continue to flip through these calendars until I reach a square that says Rich jail. I continue to snoop but do not find anything else. I will have to ask my mom. They are her calendars after all, and he is her ex-husband. The obvious problem this creates is that I will have to admit that I was snooping through her stuff, which may not go over so well...Her answer to why Rich was in jail...is that I should ask him...
What?! Does she not realize that he is psychotic, that he is a mean drunk with a temper? That I do not and never have stood up to him? And, I most definitely do not ask him anything that might make him angry.
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Kelly and I were in the backseat of Rich’s car being careful not to stick our feet through the hole in the floor while we waited for Rona to come back out with whatever she had forgotten to grab. As she went for the handle of the door, Rich thought it would be funny to drive away. He stopped the car and again started to slowly pull away while Rona attempted to get in. I remember thinking over and over please don’t run her over or end up dragging her. Finally he got tired of taunting her and let her in.
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I used to have long, light brown hair. It would turn blonde in the summer and brown in the winter. It was half way down my back. I used to rock myself to sleep when I was little. I couldn’t sleep otherwise. My hair would end up becoming one big snarled rat’s nest that my mom would have to brush out.
When I was around seven years old, she decided she was going to cut it to make it easier to take care of. Initially, I remember I didn’t want her to cut it. Afterwards, I was fascinated with the idea of cutting hair. I used to hide under our kitchen table, cutting my hair. I would only cut a small amount at a time because I didn’t want to get in trouble.
Rich picked us up and decided to take us to his mom’s house. Linda, Rich’s sister, was at the house too. I asked her if I could cut her hair, and she said yes. Rona was telling her not to let me cut it since I was just a little kid and would most likely mess it up. I don’t know how Linda is now but back then she was a walking advertisement for the dangers of drug use.
I remember this time Barb was having a garage sale, and Linda was over. She was talking to me about my mom having her tubes tied. I was only like seven at the time and had no idea what she was talking about. Then these African American women came up and Barb was selling these chocolate treats, but they were made out of white chocolate. Linda went up to these women and started talking to them and then made the remark that they probably wouldn’t like them since the treats were white. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know what was wrong with her or what would possess her to say such a thing.
I didn’t like being out in public with Linda because you never knew what was going to come out of her mouth. She used to bring food over to Barb’s for a potluck, and it was always horrible. People said she was a really good cook back in the day before she fried her brain.
She was always asking me to come to these meetings with her. She would tell me about how it was great because you could make new friends and the friends would always help you. They were great people to know.
Rona was coming up the stairs and heard Linda telling me about her wonderful new friends. Rona told Linda that I didn’t want to go to any meetings with her and turned and rolled her eyes at me. Later I asked her what Linda was talking about. She said Linda had started going to AA meetings; she kept going on and on about how great the meetings where and now wanted everyone else to go with her. Rona didn’t think that Linda understood that AA wasn’t meant for everyone. I of course was too young to know what AA stood for.
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Rich was always showing us movies that were completely inappropriate. I don’t know if he thought he was being cool or if he was just completely clueless as to what eight and nine year olds should be watching.
I remember going to the video store with him and Rona and him picking up Porky’s. Luckily Rona had some sense and told him no way. Not that it really mattered since he always followed it up with equally inappropriate movies. I remember him showing us Flowers in the Attic, a movie about a mother who keeps her children in the attic and slowly kills them off by poisoning them. He also showed us a movie about a woman ghost who is dressed all in white. She also kills people. My sister has always loved scary movies and used to like to scare me. I remember having to go to the bathroom and Kelly telling me to look out for the woman in white. I was terrified to go upstairs and use the bathroom. Rich’s house at the time had a kitchen and living room downstairs, then a narrow flight of stairs that led upstairs to the bedroom and bathroom.
It seems like whenever we went to Rich’s, I would either come home with a stomach ache from eating junk food all day, a stomach ache from all of the cigarette smoke, or I would feel fine, but I would have nightmares for weeks on end.
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I went through this tennis ball phase. I’m not sure why, but I loved tennis balls. I thought they were so much fun; I could bounce and catch them and throw them. Also, they were fairly light, so I could throw them pretty far, and it didn’t hurt to catch them in my bare hands. I remember going to the store with my mom and buying a container with 3-4 tennis balls in it. I couldn’t wait to use them.
Kenny used to come over to our house by my grandma’s and play catch with me. I remember this one day in particular. We were at my grandma’s house, and it was sunny out. Kenny and I played catch for what seemed like hours. In reality, it was probably only 20 or 30 minutes, but when you are a kid, time always seems so long.
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We always used to go to this park by my dad’s house. It's the kind of park that is always full no matter what the weather is like. There is a bridge with a river and a waterfall and a bunch of caged animals. It's not like going to the zoo though where the animals run around and play with each other; these cages were too small, and the animals never moved. They just sat. Probably hoping someone would put them out of their misery. On one side of the animals is a flower garden and on the other side there are a ton of hills; the kind that are good for sledding. There are also a couple of grills and fire pits. In the fall the hills are always coated with leaves from all of the oak trees, and the smell of BBQ lingers in the air.
I remember one time my sister and I went to the park with our dad, and he brought a box of Mr. Bubble’s soap. If you've never seen the box, it's the one with the big pink bubble on the front, and the bubble has a cartoon face. Hence the name Mr. Bubbles. Anyway, my dad dumped all of the soap into the river, so it would get all foamy showing off for my sister and me. He was always doing dumb stuff like that.
Another time, before Richard was born, my sister, my dad, Rona, and I were in the car driving, and he decided it would be cool to show off his talent of driving with his feet. We were all over the road; he also had a habit of pouring beer into pop cans so that he could drink while driving without actually appearing to drink and drive. Rona was yelling at my dad to stop, that he shouldn't be doing this stuff with us in the car, but he just got mad at her and continued. I remember being frightened, watching us weave into oncoming traffic, hoping that Rona would win just this one time. I don't think it ever occurred to him that my sister and I weren't impressed with his stunts.
Later that night, we bought food from a Mexican restaurant/grocery store. The kind where half of the store sells groceries that are only in Spanish and the back sells carryout. I ordered tacos and immediately felt my stomach begin to clench up. I couldn't wait to go home to my mom. I spent the night throwing up and didn't have to go to school the next day.
Looking back now I know that Rona wasn't happy, but she was probably too afraid to show it. It's funny because at the time I remember thinking that it was weird that she seemed happier being with our dad than my sister and I were. We were always afraid of him; I am not sure why because I don't really remember ever seeing him get mad and my mom never spoke poorly of him, but we were.
A few years earlier my sister and I didn't' want to go to our dad's anymore and my mom said, "You don't have to go see him, but you have to tell him why. I won't because I don't want him thinking that you aren't going over there because of me." We never told our dad; we just kept going over. He didn't come to get us that often, and I suppose we felt it was just easier to go the few times a year that he did come. Some people thought that we didn't want to tell him because we didn't want to hurt his feelings, but it wasn't that.
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It is a warm summer day, and we are spending the day at my Grandma Barb’s house, who is also my dad’s mom. I like it better when we go to her house than when we stay at his house. If we are at her house, then my sister and I can go to the park to play or up to the pool to swim. Sometimes our cousins are there, and we can play with them, or my dad’s brothers and sisters are there. They are always fun to talk to. If we are at his house, he is usually sprawled out on the couch, drinking beer, and watching football. This continues all day until he passes out. Finally, he wakes up and takes us home. When he isn’t between girlfriends, my sister and I hang out with whoever the unlucky lady of the hour may be.
That is one thing about his girlfriends; they were always super nice, young, and too good for him. I remember asking more than a couple of them what they were doing with him. Also, they never lasted long. It was not unusual for him to have a different girlfriend every time he saw us. Not that he saw us that often, but still. The only girlfriend that ever really stayed with him was Rona.
Rona, my dad, Kelly, and I were at Barb’s house. It was a beautiful day, and we were sitting in the back yard at her picnic table. I can’t remember if our cousins, Keith and Craig, were over or not. Rich wanted to play baseball, so we gathered up the beer cans that he had accumulated over the course of the day and smashed them into bases and balls.
I remember my dad sitting back at the table, laughing with Rona, and talking. I thought he is in a good mood, I will ask. After mustering up courage, I asked, “Why were you in jail?” He said, “Did your mom tell you that?” I explained that I saw it somewhere, and when I asked her, she told me that I should ask him. He laughed and said, “Because of her” motioning to Rona.
Right away I knew it wasn’t true because Rona looked hurt. Plus, I knew from the calendar that it happened before he even met her, so there was no way that she had anything to do with it. She looked at him and said, “No it’s not,” and that was the end of it.
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My mom was cutting the grass on the riding lawnmower, and I was outside playing. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old because we were still living by my grandma. I looked over and saw our cat lying on the gravel in front of the barn, twitching her tail back and forth. She wasn’t on her side though; she was on her stomach with her paws out. I went over to see what she was doing. She had a baby robin trapped between her paws. I don’t know if she was just playing with it or if she was going to eat it. It was still young enough that it didn’t have feathers and it could barely hold its head up.
I yelled for my mom. She got a cardboard box and scooped the bird and a nest up into the box. My sister and I were telling her that she should feed it puppy food. We had just had a speaker come to our school and talk to us about raising baby birds. I remembered that the woman had said puppy food because it seemed like such a strange thing to give a bird. Our mom had never heard that before and said that we could just give it raw hamburger meat. She thought that since mom birds chew up worms for the babies, this would be better for it than puppy food.
I thought it was so neat to be able to feed a baby bird. I loved giving it little chunks of hamburger meat. After a day or two, the bird started to throw up. Our mom put us in the van and took us to a bird rescue. I was sitting in the back seat, and my sister was in the middle seat with our mom in the front seat driving. I had a stick to try and help scoop the puke out of the bird’s mouth so that it wouldn’t choke.
I have this fear of earwig bugs. Well while we were driving along, earwigs began crawling out of the box and the nest. I yelled for my mom, and she told my sister to help me. Kelly was not sympathetic. I believe her response was something along the lines of, “No way. I’m not helping. I don’t like earwigs either.” My mom tried to calm me down saying that we were almost there.
We brought our bird into the rescue where the woman told our mom that baby birds should be fed puppy food because their tummies cannot digest raw hamburger meat. I remember walking around outside the rescue and looking at some of the birds that they had rehabilitated but couldn’t release into the wild for various reasons.
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My mom and Kenny were married in July, and we had just moved into his three bedroom house. We were leaving behind our one room schoolhouse that housed roughly 30 kids (K-8) and entering a large public elementary school. The one room schoolhouse my sister and I had attended was a public school also; it was just really tiny. I went there from the time that I was in kindergarten until the end of third grade. Before fourth grade, gym class had consisted of playing outside during recess. I thought I loved gym class! I quickly realized that was I knew as “gym” class was not gym class at all. At least not as far as this new school was concerned. As far as I was concerned gym was a time for playing with classmates, running free, and burning off loads of extra energy. Public school believed that gym class was a time for students to be together in a group of 30, learning skills, and playing competitive games where there is a clear winner and a clear loser.
Now don’t get me wrong; I am not one of those people who believe that everyone’s a winner, and there are no losers. I believe that you should always try your hardest at everything that you do, and this is what makes it okay to lose because in reality you are never going to win every game, every time. However, if you don’t try your hardest and you win, in my opinion, you still lose. That being said I do not believe that teams who come in tenth place deserve a medal. I don’t care how hard you tried; the reality is that you still lost. Our kids need to understand that there are times that you win, and there are times that you lose. It is trying your hardest that matters in both cases.
I digress. I am in fourth grade and in my first official gym class. What do I realize? I hate gym! We are doing a gymnastics unit. The other kids seem excited. Apparently they did this unit last year. I look around and see a balance beam that looks like a lot of fun. Everything else, I have only seen on TV while watching the Olympics. Granted, I’m not the teacher, but something tells me that my untrained, nine year old body is not supposed to be on any of the other equipment.
The class stands in a line. We are supposed to follow each other through the stations. I walk across the balance beam with the rest of the class continuing on to the other stations when I realize that we are going to go on the high bar. I am afraid of heights, and hanging off of a bar that bends with our weight does not look like a smart idea to me, so I decide to cut out of the line and join my other classmates back at the balance beam. I do this a couple of times when all of a sudden I hear the teacher call out to me to come to the high bar. He has realized that he has never seen me at his station. I walk over and explain to him that I am afraid of heights, and I do not want to go on it. I kid you not. The man picks me up, puts my hands on the bar, tells me to hold on tightly, and flips me over the bar. He puts me down saying, “See that wasn’t so bad.” Shaking, I walk over to put my shoes back on since class has just ended, and immediately start crying.
Every year from here on out, I will be leery of gym class. Every time a new unit is started, I will get knots in my stomach, worried about what I will have to do this time.
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I was a sophomore in high school, and my sister was a senior. I was working at a local grocery store/butcher shop, and she was a waitress at Cooley's. Mr. and Mrs. Cooley owned Cooley's; it was a local hangout. The kind of place where you walk up to the counter and place your order and then the waitress brings it out to you. It was the one place in town where the old and young came together. The old would sit in the corner booths and talk about the good old days and speculate on what was wrong with today's youth while the kids hung out eating ice cream and fries talking about how they hated living in a dead end town. All of the food on the menu was created by either someone who worked there or someone in the town. At least other than the basics like hamburgers, hot dogs, and their famous broasted chicken.
Anyway back on track, that year Rona had convinced my dad to buy her a car so that it would make her daily life easier because she now had two kids to look after while doing daily chores. Rona was a housewife and baby machine because she was not allowed to work because then hey she might actually meet someone better than my dad, which believe me wouldn't be too hard to do, and she'd leave him. I wish I could say there's an upside to being someone's slave, but there's not. She was allowed a meager budget to keep things running smoothly and snapped on frequently when thought to be spending too much. So he gets her a piece of junk, will break down on the highway and leave you stranded, type of car and expects her to be forever grateful. Believe me Rona is grateful; this is her chance at freedom, and she knows it.
Rona decides to go grocery shopping and pick up some steaks. After all it is Valentine’s Day, and Rich loves his steaks. After coming home from shopping, Rich yells at her for not buying enough meat, drags her to the garage, and slams her arm in the fridge door, fracturing it.
The next day Rich goes to work, and Rona takes the kids and drives all night to Texas. I know all of this because Rona made one stop along the route and that was to call my mom and ask for her help. My sister tells Rona, "Of course she'll help you" because obviously my mom wants to relive the nightmare that is called Rich. So what does my mom do? She tells Rona," I am sorry you are in the situation you are in, but I am not going to be dragged back into this. If I were you, I would go into hiding; change your name if you have to."
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Before my mom and Kenny were married, he used to come over to the house and lie on the floor of the living room and try and catch us as we ran past him. Because the house was a remodeled garage, the rooms weren’t that big. It wasn’t like he could lie in the middle of the room, and we could run past and miss him completely. Anyway he would reach out and grab one of us and tickle us. Then he’d release us, and we would run again. My sides used to throb from laughing. It hurt so bad. It was great. I still think about those days.
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I loved visiting my grandpa Dale. He had a great sense of humor and was always making us laugh. He would perform magic tricks or card tricks when we’d come visit. He loved to golf and was always going on golfing trips or sitting at his house watching golf. I didn’t actually realize that he worked until many, many years after he died. I always thought he was rich and just traveled the US golfing.
He was married to a woman named Peggy. For as long as I can remember, her hair was always styled and her nails were always painted a bright red. She always cooked big meals when we’d come over, and they were delicious. My grandpa used to pretend that he made the food. He was always kidding around.
When I was in fifth grade, my mom told me that he had cancer. He had five tumors in his brain. When we went over to his house for Christmas that year, he had bought us all kinds of stuff from Disney World. We had never been, but he used to go quite a bit. One of his tumors erupted, and he died shortly after. I just remember being outside after lunch. A teacher came and got me, saying that my mom was there to pick me up. My mom never came to get me early from school. She was a school fanatic; you were only staying home if you were puking or dying. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that grandpa had died earlier that morning.
She created all of the centerpieces for his funeral. My favorite arrangement was a large black magic hat created out of cardboard. There were flowers in the hat with two large cardboard bunny ears sticking out of it. There may have been cards and a wand too. I don’t remember. Twenty years later, and my mom still has those bunny ears. They appear in her outside window box every year around Easter.
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I hide in the bathroom, eavesdropping on a conversation between my mom and Kenny. They speak in hushed tones, not knowing that I am on the other side of the wall, straining my ears, hoping to hear more about my mom’s past with my dad. Wanting to hear confirmation that he is the scum that I think he is. It’s as if I have more memories than I actually have. These memories prove that he is not a nice person, but I can’t access memories from when I was a toddler. I can’t confirm my own memories or even know if they really are my memories. Is it just a feeling that I have when I look at him combined with the scattered memories that I do have that paint this image for me? Or when I was four did I remember things from when I was two that told me that he was not good...things that I have long forgotten?
I hear my mom tell Kenny about a friend of hers. He used to always say hi to her, and Rich used to get jealous. I’m old enough to know that when dealing with a mentally stable husband, jealousy is not typically a big problem. It’s comparable to a light summer rain. It can put a slight damper on things but never does any real damage. Rich, however, is anything but stable. He is less of a summer rain and more of a monsoon, destroying everything in his path. In this instance, the destruction came in the form of a metal pipe that he used to keep in the trunk of his car. Apparently one night Rich beat this man with the metal pipe and said something along the lines of, “he won’t be saying hi to you anymore.” According to my mom, the man was never quite the same after that.
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I am sitting in homeroom, counting down the minutes until I can go home. Homecoming was yesterday, and everyone is still laughing and recounting all of their favorite moments.
All of a sudden I hear two of my classmates whispering about someone getting busted at the dance. I assume they are talking about someone showing up to the dance drunk and could care less, so I keep talking to my friend.
One of the kids turns to the teacher and says, “Is it true that two students were caught having sex at the dance?” The teacher responds that she is not at liberty to discuss this.
I wrinkle my nose at my friend and say, “Ewwww. That’s gross.”
The girl turns to me and asks, “Do you know if it’s true?”
“No, I hadn’t even heard that anyone was busted for that!”
“How do you have sex at a school dance anyways?” another student asks.
The girl who initiated the conversation has a gleam in her eye and a huge smile plastered on her face. She looks around the room for a moment, surveying everyone, making sure all eyes are on her. She is loving the chance to be the center of attention, being able to recount the juicy gossip that none of us seem privy to. “I guess they were sitting in a chair at a table, so it looked like they were just dancing. You know like she was grinding on him. But, a student saw them and told a teacher that it looked like they were having sex.”
While all of the students laugh and make comments, I ask, “So, who was the student who got caught?”
She smiles at me like she is about to deliver the best punch line of all; she pauses and says, “Your sister.”
I am aware of two things happening simultaneously. The room becomes deathly quiet, and my face feels like a furnace. I don’t have to look into a mirror to know that I am a bright shade of red.
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I have just come back from visiting Peggy. I don’t remember how much time passed since my grandpa died. I don’t think it was too much time. Six months, maybe a year, maybe less...
She was talking to me about college and the possibility of going to Judson in Elgin. I didn’t know anything about Judson. All I knew was that it was supposed to be a good school and that it wasn’t cheap. Peggy said that maybe I could live with her while I went there. I came home and immediately relayed this conversation to my mom. She seemed upset, and I got the impression that she was not a fan of Peggy’s. In fact, I got the impression that she downright disliked Peggy.
In what was now standard, expected behavior, my mom went outside without saying anything negative about her. I knew that the only way that I would find out anything about what my mom was thinking and feeling was to eavesdrop on her. What I heard was in complete opposition to what I had just experienced.
Apparently, after my grandpa died, my mom inquired about his will. He always said that education was important and that college would be an option for my sister and me. He had set up a trust fund that we were to use for college. He also had several stocks and properties that he had included. My mom and grandpa had had this conversation numerous times, so you can imagine her surprise when she found out that three days before he died, he had changed his will and given everything to Peggy.
She confronted Peggy. Apparently Peggy had been having an affair. She brought her boyfriend to my grandpa’s funeral. You can imagine everyone’s reaction when they saw her suspected boyfriend comforting her over her late husband’s “body.”My mom hired an attorney stating that Dale had changed his will at a time when he knew he was going to die and didn’t want to be alone. Three days before dying, with five tumors in his brain, he was not in the right frame of mind, and didn’t know what he was doing. The attorney she consulted advised her that the will was iron clad, and there was nothing he could do about it. This is when my mom decided to confront Peggy, and Peggy told her that as far as she was concerned, we were dead and would never see one cent of that money. Needless to say, we never saw Peggy again.
**********
“Congratulations!” my favorite teacher exclaims. “Come here. Let me see!”
I walk over to her desk and ask, “See what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I heard you got engaged over Christmas break.”
“What?! Are people crazy? I’m a junior in high school. I didn’t get engaged.”
**********
“So, is my editorial going to appear in the school paper?”
“No, the teacher thinks it will start a fight. She doesn’t want to deal with the backlash...”
“That’s bullshit. So Casey can write an editorial about how people should look in the mirror before they leave the house and make fun of a bunch of people, but she won’t publish my response to the so called ‘fashion police’. Screw the school. We should put out an underground paper.”
Amid cries of “That’d be awesome” and “Yeah do it,” he turns to me and says, “Are you in? It’d be awesome, and she’d never suspect you cause you’re on the school paper. It’d be perfect.”
“I’m in, and I already know exactly what I’m going to write about. Teachers, like Mrs. Rawlings, who thinks it’s okay to tell kids to shut up!”
**********
As I’m coming out of Foods class, I see Jason headed my way. I smile and wait for him so we can walk together.
“Hey, so earlier someone asked me if we got engaged over break.”
“Me too! Mrs. Tyndall just congratulated me and asked to see the ring! People are crazy…not sure why people are talking about us though.”
“I just overheard some of the guys saying that your sister and Jared got engaged over break. I asked Jared. He said it’s true. Guess she hasn’t told your parents yet.”
“Of course not. God, my mom is gonna flip out.”
“You can come over and stay for dinner if you don’t wanna go home.”
“It’s cool. I’d have to deal with it eventually anyways.”