It’s Friday again, and I’ve made it another week on this! I really am starting to not want to do this at all. That probably means that I need to keep doing it, even when I don’t want to!

Write about the stray animals you brought home.

A not so great picture of Oliver, with our rat terrier puppy, Corky. Kind of fun that WordPress makes it look like an old Polaroid, since it actually was scanned from a Polaroid one-step print.

Well, there weren’t that many memorable ones. The one that I remember best is Oliver, my little black and white cat.

It was 1990, and Mom and I were going out for a little bicycle ride. We liked to ride around the section – a four mile bike trip in all – on our old-school bikes. Hers was one she had since she was a kid; mine was a restored bike from the 1960s.

We were over by the Cox place when we heard a little mew.

It was a kitten…a scrawny, poor looking black kitten with white accents. Poor little thing. We tried to catch it, but it ran from us.

But it was only a kitten, and a kitten hiding in Johnson grass is no match for two big people who can move quickly. We caught the kitten and carefully took it home. Once in our yard, I sat it down with food and water and it scurried away to hide in the lilac bush.

The lilac bush was a better protector than the tall grass on the roadside, and I couldn’t catch the kitten anymore. I sat around for a while, but finally started to go back around to the front of the house.

But oh how that kitten cried when I walked out of sight!

I came back around the corner and he ran under the lilac bush again. I turned and walked away, and he cried and started to follow me. I started to come back and he raced again for the lilac.

This went on for a while. I finally got him out with some food placed near the lilac bush, where he had to come out a little to get a mouthful. After he felt more comfortable eating like that, and thought he had nothing to fear, I grabbed him. Just like that.

We named him Oliver, after the orphan in the Dickens’ novel, and moved him into a box in the laundry room until he felt more comfortable around us. Our other cats, Frosty and Jezzie, hated him violently, but Oliver never hissed back or got angry. He was very nice. He was also a little addled, I think.

I had never thought about it before, but if people can be mentally handicapped, it would stand to reason that a cat could too, I guess. Oliver was as sweet as can be, but he had some major problems mentally. He had to be taught, again, and again, that the food and water was on top of the dryer. (We kept it there so the dog wouldn’t get into it.) There were other instances that made me feel he wasn’t all there, but a lot of it was just the look in his eyes. Unlike the other cats, Oliver just sort of looked like he was a few bricks short of a full load. It’s hard to describe…but I’ve never met another cat quite like it.

We had a fire a few months after he came to live at our house, and the laundry room burned pretty bad. My parents had it renovated, and the door to the outside was moved from the back of the house to the side of the house. Poor Oliver never quite got over this.

The back door was the cats’ main way in the house, and where they came to eat and drink. They were able to easily open the screen door with a swipe of the paw, and they would relax in the laundry room, then go back out to the big bright world.

When the door was closed off, Frosty and Jezzie didn’t like it, but they were able to adapt.

Not Oliver. Years after the laundry room door moved, Oliver would still be sitting on the little square of cement that marked the old back door, meowing to be let in. I’d call him over to the side door, and he would come over and go inside, but he always tried to get in the old door first.

Of course, he might have been hoping to get back into the old laundry room before the renovation – the one that was messy and had a concrete floor and there was a way to get underneath the entire house in the crawlspace…a cat’s paradise. The new laundry room was clean and organized, and there was no way to get in the cobwebby crawlspace any more. Poor kitties.

Frosty and Jezzie gave up on the old laundry room, but Oliver never did.

Oliver died in the same way all of the cats of my youth did, in the street in front of our house. Not Frosty, but he was Marissa’s cat. My girl Jezzie and another black cat of mine, Cassie, also died in the road. Not a good place for cats.

He is buried there at the house…I can’t even remember exactly where. But I do remember how slender he was, and how sweet, and how much he loved me. And I remember how he cried for me when he was a little kitten, even though he was afraid of me. I called him Oliver Andrew Pace. He was a good kitty.

I’m so glad we went for a bike ride that day.

And now I enter a new realm of journaling, in which I have to talk about people that will probably see this. Unlike where I mentioned someone briefly or they were part of a group of people, but not mentioned by name, this is right in the trenches.

How did you get along with your cousins?

For purposes of this journal entry, I am going to define “cousins” as the children of my parents’ siblings. That makes it quite a bit easier, especially since I have no cousins on my mom’s side of the family. I do have distant cousins, some of whom I consider myself closer to than my first cousins, but for this journal, we’re sticking with the Pace side.

I was nearly the youngest of the cousins, with only one living cousin younger than me. We went, from oldest to youngest, Karlene, Brian, Lisa, Stefani, Marissa, Scott, Grant, Regina, John (who died as an infant) and Kristin. Let’s take them on a case-by-case basis.

Karlene – My oldest sister, who is 11 years older than me. Since she’s not my cousin, I’ll leave this for another day, which I’m sure these journal topics will cover.

Brian – My oldest cousin. Brian was a little younger than Karlene, although I can’t remember the particulars at the moment. He was so much older. I didn’t have much of a relationship with him. Plus, he was male, and since I had no brothers, I was always a little timid around boys. I do know that he was really cool. Brian held Black Cat firecrackers in his hands when he popped them off. Unfortunately, because of my apprehension about him, I never really got to know him. I hugged him when we went for get togethers, and asked him how he was, and was always really interested in what he was doing, but I guess we never got to know each other as friends. I’m sorry about that because he died too young, just a few years ago. He has a son but I don’t have much contact with him either – even less since Aunt Mary died.

Lisa – Lisa is Brian’s sister. I have always been infatuated with Lisa for some reason, and I don’t know if she knows it or not. She will probably be surprised if she reads this. I always thought Lisa looked a lot like me since we both had brown hair and shared a lot of the same features. Plus, she was really, really nice. Lisa would always ask how I was doing and really seem interested in what I had to say. She was a big girl and so this was very flattering to a little person. I didn’t spend much time with her either, since there were cousins my age that needed to be run around with, but I always get a smile on my face when I think about Lisa. She was (and is) always so nice to me.

Stefani – Stefani was next in line, and since she was closer to Marissa’s age, she paired up with Marissa by default if it was only our two families there. She also hung around a lot with Lisa if their family was there too. Stefani was cool, no-nonsense, and said what was on her mind. She also liked to watch sports on TV and to throw around the football in the yard, which I didn’t understand at all. Stefani is always nice and always fun to be with. I also think that we have ended up having a lot in common. We are the two in the family who enjoy working on genealogy, so that’s pretty neat.

Marissa – My sister…to save for another day.

Scott – The first of the three Musketeers. Scott, Grant and I were all born in 1974 and we would run around together. From what I’ve been told, we were very cute when we ran around together when we were very small, and once all three slept on one cot when the entire family was at Grandma’s for Christmas. Scott was the oldest of the young half the cousins, and these are the ones I knew the best. Scott was very cool, seemed confident, played sports and was a neat guy. Matter of fact, to my eyes he almost seemed to cool for our family. Scott was also pretty cute, which wasn’t a problem when I was young but became more of a problem when I was older. It was awkward having this cute guy sitting next to me on the couch while we watched T.V., and I wasn’t well equipped to deal with it. I also felt a little embarrassed with him (and Grant too, for that matter) when we went to swim at the creek or something like that. Anyway…

Grant – The boy cousin I knew best. Grant was easier to get along with, probably because he lived right next to Grandma and so I saw him and Kristen each time I went to Stilwell. Grant and I ran around together a lot, with Kristen in tow. I liked to hang out with Grant, and I still like to when I’m at Stilwell, which isn’t very often. Sometimes I would spend the day at Aunt Sue’s house, playing with Grant and Kristin, and when the end of the day came, I’d spend the night there. It was always weird how I hung out with Grant all day, but when night came I went and slept in Kristin’s bed with her. Once we were in nightclothes, Grant and I were incommunicado. Of course, how else do I think it should have been? It was just weird feeling, that’s all.

John – I’m going to mention John too, even though I didn’t know him and never met him. He died when I was less than a month old, only a few days after he was born. He was Brian and Lisa’s brother. I mention him because it was such an odd thing for a child to learn about. One day Scott and Grant and I ran through, and someone called us the three Musketeers, which was normal, yeah, that’s who we are, and then someone, Grandma maybe, sighed, “There would have been four Musketeers.” This was news to me, and I listened for more. Maybe I didn’t get it then, but I learned later that he was born, he had lived for a little while, and he had died. Knowing how the boys sometimes dumped me and went off together, I thought that if he had lived, it still would have been the three Musketeers, but I wouldn’t have been one of them. I always wanted to know more about him, and when Aunt Mary died, I finally was able to see and photograph his grave. I have a picture of me and Scott and Grant with the grave, which was something I had wanted for a while. I hope that’s not strange. I wish John had lived.

Kristin – And now Kristin. My friend, my nemesis, my cousin. So many things wrapped up into one. Kristin was littler than me, and sometimes I was okay with that, and sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes when the three of us were playing, Grant would tell Kristin to go away and I didn’t always stop him. That wasn’t very nice of me, now was it? On the flip side, sometimes I got booted with Kristin when Grant and Scott were playing together. I was always so hurt and horrified when I got pushed out along with her. Surely you don’t mean me, guys…do you? Kristin got on my black list for a while too, after I used some of my mom’s perfume and then Kristin trotted right out to her Aunt Janice and told her. Mom didn’t do anything to me but the very idea! In her defense, she was pretty little. Kristin is the only one of my cousins who has come to visit me since we’ve been grown up old people, and she and Matt came and spent the night. I wish we could get together again like that.

Overall, I think I got along pretty well with all of my cousins. I can’t really remember any of them ever having really cross words with me, or of us having a fight. We all just got along. I looked forward to seeing all of them whenever we got together, and I missed them when it was time to go home.

I was always a little jealous because the rest of them knew each other better. The other cousins were all children of sisters, and they all lived closer to Grandma than we did, and so they got together more often. Karlene and Marissa and me, the kids of the brother, lived farther away and didn’t get to go but a couple of times a year.

They still get together more often. We do our best to go once a year, and don’t always make it. I figure it’s a lot like we are with Karlene and Marissa and I now. We get together at the drop of a hat – for birthdays, holidays, or just whatever. I figure that’s kind of how Aunt Mary and Aunt Sue and Aunt Nancy were. I wish we could have been there more often too, but it was (and still is) a four hour trip and not something to take lightly.

So that’s me and my thoughts on my relationships with my cousins. It’s really weird knowing that every single one of them who is living is on facebook and may see this. Well, maybe they won’t read it. I don’t think I’ve said anything too terrible…but it is hard to bare your soul in any capacity when you’ve spent so much time hiding behind your façade!

Write about a privilege you earned. 

Time to put on the ol’ thinking cap.

This is the oddest thing. I can’t think of a single privilege I have ever earned. How strange is that? I have been sitting here for seriously ten minutes and I haven’t come up with anything.

As a little girl, I was not offered rewards or privileges for doing chores or minding, I was rewarded with not getting a spanking.

One awesome privilege I got in first grade was getting to read out loud to the class, but I didn’t really earn that, unless getting taught to read when I was three constitutes “earning” something. That was amazingly cool though. Mrs. Jones would have me read all of the time. I even got to read the filmstrips (and push the little button to go to the next slide) while she graded papers.

No privileges earned in elementary, so I’ll try to think about my later school days. Did I ever earn a privilege? I guess I earned things when the whole class did – soda pop parties for collecting the most Campbell’s soup labels in middle school; homeroom pizza parties for doing the best with the food drive in junior high; getting to go early for lunch with the rest of my grade for having the most spirit at the pep assembly in high school. But did I ever, singly, earn a privilege?

When I was in the eighth grade, I got to go to a scholastic meet. I did not make good grades in the eighth grade; I didn’t want to be there at all. My principal said they were going to send me because they knew I was smart, and they wanted me to see what kind of rewards went to the students who worked hard. It was fun. I liked riding on the bus with the smart kids, hanging at a college all day, taking the grammar tests, and winning an award (when none of the usual smarties did – double the pleasure). It probably made me want to buckle down and fly right for about twenty minutes. I suppose you could say I earned that, if I earned it by not taking the time to do my homework all year and barely scraping by when I had the potential to do much better.

My parents never withheld things until I did stuff when I was in high school. Maybe it was because I was the third child; maybe it was because I was pretty trustworthy…whatever it was, I was really without too many limits. All my friends had curfews, but I didn’t even have one. I guess it was because I told my parents what I was doing, and where I was going, on my own. I’d drop off my friends before their curfews and then go home. And what would I have done on my own anyway? I didn’t go out all that much anyway. Even in high school, I was more of a homebody. I’d go out occasionally on the weekends and cruise or whatever, but it was mostly because my best friend Tina wanted to, and I wanted to make her happy. So I never “earned” the right to go out driving around, or “earned” a later curfew, or “earned” staying at a friend’s all night or anything like that. It just wasn’t like that.

I mean, I’ve earned stuff, sure. I’ve earned positions in the band (first chair clarinet in high school and college); I’ve earned parts in plays (some great…some not so great); I’ve earned good grades and bad grades; I’ve earned awards and trophies and all kinds of things.

But I can’t say I’ve earned a privilege.

And I have lots of privileges. I am the mom of three pretty incredible people, and I get to live in a darn good county; I get to drive a car whenever I want, and I think I have it pretty nice. There’s some complaints, sure, but nothing to get worked up about.

Didn’t earn any of it really, though.

Was this just really an off-the-wall journal question, or am I the only person who never earned a privilege? Anyone?

Write about a time you cheated and were caught.

Here’s the thing. I can’t for the life of me remember a time I cheated and got caught. That is not to imply that I am an innocent darling who never cheated. I cheated lotsa times…but I don’t recall ever getting caught. Maybe I blocked it from my memory, or maybe I really am just that good. Does it matter now?

Instead of wasting time trying to think of a time I got caught, I thought I’d relive the times I didn’t.

Example 1: The shoe hide

So it was junior high, and it was time to show our knowledge of the periodic table. We had a series of tests focusing on them…like 10 or 20 of them at a time until they were all through. I memorized the first couple, but then I got tired of it.

I gave it a good try; I really did. At home, I typed up study guides for myself, with the name of the element and the abbreviation, on the 286 and printed them out on the dot matrix. But there were so many. Some were easy. H…hydrogen, duh. O…oxygen. Even AU…(A-U, come back with my gold) and some of the others were a snap. It was a big ones that I just gave up on completely.

After the first couple of successes on the tests, I started not studying very well…or at all…and I did poorly on a few. That’s when the idea for the cheat was born.

Looking back, I’m surprised I actually went for this cheat. I was pretty shy, and a “good girl,” and I didn’t want to be caught. But I wanted to memorize them less. I was an aide in the library, and during library time, I took the library scissors and cut my little study guide out of the piece of paper it was printed on. I got the library Scotch tape dispenser and used the tape to attach the now small piece of paper to the bottom of my shoe.

It was simple; it was ingenious.

I carefully walked to class and made sure I was the first person in there. I wanted to sit in the far back left hand corner. I got my prize spot and we got our test papers. The teacher’s desk was in the front right hand corner, but she walked around the room to make sure we weren’t cheating or looking at someone else’s paper. I calmly crossed my leg and started taking my test. I answered the one or two that I knew and then…I flicked my ankle up and looked at my cheat sheet. All of the answers were right there and it was oh-so-easy. From my position, no other student could see what I was doing. When the teacher came near, I simply pointed the sole of my foot more at the ground.

Test over; I handed my paper in. When the bell rang, I walked out the door, stepped over to the trash can by the entrance doors, pulled the sheet off my foot, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the trash. Never got caught. Didn’t try it again, though…I wasn’t stupid either.

One painful memory…the next day, this teacher came up to me all smiles and commended me on doing so well on the test. She knew that if I just applied myself, I could do a great job, and my score proved it. Ouch.

Example 2: Designer pants

Okay. To start this one out, you have to know about my best pants.

When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to have a pair of jeans with my friends’ signatures on them. My dad gave me a pair of his old jeans, and I soaked them in bleach all night in the bathroom sink. I washed them and washed them to get the bleach out, and then wore them like that. They were a really light color. I took a sharpie and asked all of my friends to autograph my pants…and they did. People wrote all kinds of things on my pants, drew pictures, etc. The pants were wide ankled boot cut pants, and I wasn’t crazy about those (this was 1990 or so), so I tight cuffed them. They also rode a little lower than I liked at the waist (again, 1990 high-waisted pants time) so I always wore my t-shirt on the outside.

Long story short, these pants were extremely cool. I thought so then, and I think so now. I still have them someplace. I ought to dig them out and look them over again.

I wore these pants quite a bit…probably once a week or so. Maybe twice a month. Something like that. Sometimes I would doodle on them with my pencil or ink pen during class or in the library or whatever. That would always wash out. The sharpie was permanent. That’s when the idea formed.

I think the cheat took place in history class, which doesn’t make sense because I really like history and am generally ready for it. The thing is, my big cheats never seem to be so much about cheating – they’re more about seeing if I can get away with a scam.

Anyway, you guessed it…I just wrote on my pants. You may recall I mentioned always wearing my shirt on the outside of these pants – never tucking in. Well, in the library (apparently my cheatin’ stompin’ grounds) I used a study sheet and wrote dates, names, etc. on my pants with a pencil. All writing was placed above the shirt line, on my legs. (Again, 1990s…I had some pretty long-tailed button down shirts in the closet.) I put everything I was fuzzy on right there on the pants, went in, took the test, went home, washed the jeans, and sent the evidence down the drain. Worked like a charm.

One thing that really stands out is the teacher talking about my jeans…but was it actually the time I cheated, or was it another time? Surely it was too much of a coincidence for it to be that same day, but I think it really might have been. Whatever the date, what happened was that I was walking into class, and this teacher mentioned that it was a good thing they had seen me wearing those jeans so many times, or they might have to look over them to see if I had put the answers to the test on there. We both laughed and my heart about stopped. Could it have been that same day? It does make the story better, doesn’t it?

Example 3: Tiered tables

This one’s boring, but it’s the only other time I remember really cheating and getting away with it like this. It was a college class, and the room had tiers of desks rising up in the back, and since I wore ball caps a lot because I didn’t do my hair, I wore my cap and looked right at the paper of the people in front of me and took care of business. The instructor watched us the whole time, but my eyes were behind my hat and I suppose I wasn’t one she would imagine would be cheating anyway.

Miscellaneous

There are possibly two other times I have pulled off scams that I thought were kind of cool, and both times I only did it just to see if it could be done. However, as these could possibly be considered federal or state offenses, I don’t guess I can go into it here on the Internet, which is a shame. Perhaps I will put them hypothetically?

Hypothetical Example 1

I was still pretty young, probably 9 or 10, when I thought about what happens when you forget to put a stamp on an envelope when you mail it. Why, the letter gets returned to the sender. So what would happen if I put my own name on the front of the envelope, and my cousin’s in the return place, and left off a stamp?

I found out, and I told my dad, who worked for the post office, about it, and he told me to not do that anymore. And I minded him. Knowing it worked was enough.

Hypothetical Example 2

Back in the dim dark days of 1992, if you lost your driver’s license, you could take your birth certificate and get a replacement made. I have no idea if this is still the way it works – surely not. They quizzed you when you got it, sure, and asked for your address, and phone number, and social security number…but what if you could get ahold of your sisters’ birth certificate, and the address and phone number were the same, and the social was only four digits off of yours so it was easy to remember…and there was a tag agency one town away where they didn’t know you from Adam?

And what if you even took your niece with you while you did it, and you were playing with her and didn’t even hear them call your “name” when it was your turn to go up and so you covered by telling them it was pronounced differently when they had to call it again, louder, to get your attention?

And what if then, after handing it to you, they warned you to be careful with the birth certificate and license because you had just turned 21 and there were all kinds of kids out there who would love to get their hands on a fake ID?!?!?

Not that the ID would ever be used for any purpose except for being stared at in amazement that it actually worked and it really was that easy…and would even be proudly showed off to Mom at one point of pride for the criminal in question…

Not that either of those two hypothetical scenarios ever happened…after all, I’m a writer, correct?

Or at least I’m trying to be.

An Essay on Cheating

-fin-

This one’s another one of those topics that probably wouldn’t apply to everyone, but I can make it work for me, I think.

Did you ever fall through ice?

This is a very scary question. Like falling through ice wouldn’t be the absolute worst thing ever. There is a lady who used to write stories for the newspaper whose son fell through ice and died when he was about 12. He was away from home, visiting his grandparents, I believe. That is what I think of when I think of falling through ice.

I did fall through ice once, but really only up to my ankle. Not really much of a fall. This was at my grandparents’ house in Stilwell. Grandma and Grandpa had a pond at their place, and their cows would drink from it. There were really two ponds, but one was, in my mind, the main pond. It was closer to the house and the road and therefore it was easier to remember it existed. One time we were there and it was iced over. Marissa and I went down there with our cousin Grant, and maybe his sister Kristin, to see it.

We stood on the iced over edge of the pond. Very slippery. Very neat.

Grant stomped through the ice. Marissa and I were impressed. I tried to stomp through, but couldn’t, because I wasn’t confident in the grip of my other tennis shoe. Marissa and I continued to inch our way along the slippery ice. Grant continued to stomp holes. I took one little step and splashed through to the ice. Yuck. The water was cold and wet and dirty.

I lost interest in the iced over pond, and we trudged back to the house to sit by the wood burning stove and play with Grandma’s dominoes and cards that she kept in the drawer in the coffee table.

I didn’t like to play dominoes or cards, but I liked to make little houses and buildings with them. I also liked to peruse the big book Grandma had that was published by the Tulsa World and included pages from all of their most important headlines over the years. I would frighten myself by reading the stories of the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders again and again, until I could barely be alone outside without constantly looking over my shoulder.

My experience was commonplace, and kind of fun to remember. It’s much different than my friend’s experience. I can’t even think about the pain of losing a child. When my mind even flits close to the idea, like it is now, a knot in the pit of my stomach forms. I had to put a story about my friend’s son in the paper. I had to do that many times when children in our community died. I still remember each one of them.

To lose a child…Marissa says that if she lost Sarah, she would have to kill herself. I don’t think I would do that, even though how could you want to live anymore?

This is getting awful, and morbid, and I’m feeling kind of sickly, and I’m not going to think about it anymore. I’m going to get off this computer, and go in there and give each of my children and kiss and a hug, and say a prayer of thanksgiving for the blessings that they are.

Thank you angelfire journal topics page for this delightful romp down memory lane with your number 8. Ha ha.

I have been thinking on this one since the big birthday break yesterday. I actually thought I might journal after all yesterday, but one look at this convinced me it wasn’t a good idea.

Today’s topic is:

Write about an enemy who eventually became your friend.

Seriously? I don’t even know where to begin on this one. I am actually going to take a few minutes and lay down my head and think about this. Belinda’s napping; Lenora’s on the computer upstairs; Bennett is hiding out so I don’t make him clean something. It’s an opportune time.

Okay. That worked. I actually thought of someone who would fit the bill. I’m astonished that I did – I wouldn’t have never thought I had anyone in my life that started out as an enemy and ended up as a friend.

Enemy is kind of a strong word. Nemesis is better.

The year was 1988, and I was a geeky kid with glasses and a perm that wouldn’t quit. It was the first day of high school, and bad news was afoot. Instead of going to the band room, we were told to go straight to the library. There, we would meet the new band director.

His name was John P., and he quickly became one of my least favorite people. I don’t remember all the details, but I do know that he was always joking with me…and I didn’t think it was very funny. He called me “Frizz” in reference to my hair. He singled me out and insisted that I play loud. He was loud and in-your-face and a real pain, if you asked me. I was always ready to talk about how much I couldn’t stand Mr. P., crack jokes about him, or whatever else derogatory thought came to mind.

But something happened. Again, I don’t remember the details, and that is a shame. But I started to not only like Mr. P., I started to adore him.

Probably a lot of it started when the two seniors graduated, and I was suddenly first chair. The music was fun, and there were solos sometimes. Mr. P. didn’t like the tone of my ligature, so he bought me a new one. I didn’t have to pay him back. I still have it. The jokes that used to annoy me so much started to get funnier and funnier. For him, I learned to play my clarinet loud, but still stay somewhat in tune, for marching band. For him, I lifted the bell of the clarinet up high, even though none of the others did. For him I practiced my solos at home. For him I remembered to wear black socks.

Liking Mr. P. was part of a metamorphasis I went through during my first years of high school. I went from a person who didn’t fit in anywhere to someone who had friends and enjoyed school and the social life it entailed. My best friends were my band crowd. We would ride together to ball games, sit together at lunch time, and complain together at early band practice. Somehow while I was rediscovering myself, I also knocked the chip off my shoulder that made me dislike John P.

In later years, some other kids in band got mad at Mr. P.; most of them quit band over it after I graduated. I was glad that I was gone for that, because I could not have quit band when I loved it, and my director, so much. It was a father-worship type relationship for me in a way, I guess.

He didn’t teach band many years at Tuttle; I think it was over whatever it was that got everyone mad at him. He taught vocal after that, and sometimes I would see him when I would go visit my sister Karlene at the school. He loved to tell people how I called him on his birthday one year when he wasn’t home. It was in the summertime – June, if memory serves. I left a message on his answering machine, telling him happy birthday and reminding him that it was also the birthday of my dog, Corky.

Then I got a good idea. I called all of my friends and asked them to wish him a happy birthday.

Mr. P. said that when he got home, the answering machine was full of kids calling to tell him happy birthday.

When he told me about it as an adult, I had sort of forgotten about the whole thing. But I love thinking about it now. I remember now that all of my friends didn’t want to do it. Why on earth did I want them to call the band director and leave a message on his answering machine? But I pleaded and they did it – probably to get me to leave them alone. I told them it would be funny. I also thought that it would mean a lot to him – that his students thought enough about him to think about him in the summertime and call him on his birthday.

It must have meant something to him, since he was talking about it a decade later.

When I think back on the whole thing, I can’t believe that there was ever a time I didn’t care about John P. I don’t feel like I am the same person who didn’t like him. It makes me wonder how different my life could have turned out if I hadn’t made the transformation I made in high school, or if some of my choices had been different. I’m glad I turned out the way I did. 🙂

I may take tomorrow off, as a birthday present to myself. For now, I’ll… Describe a great fort you built or a great game you played as a child.

Okay. The absolute best place I had as a child was my little playhouse. But it wasn’t a built playhouse of wood or anything; it was a little place in the trees.

In our yard, there was a big, big pine tree. It was surrounded by one medium sized mulberry tree and a bunch of smaller mulberry trees. To the south of the whole thing was a forsythia bush.

At some point, the big pine died and my dad cut it down.

Some time later, I was checking it out and discovered that there was a whole little area you could go inside to play.

This is really hard to describe, so I went ahead and drew a (bad) picture of it in paint…just to help you get the idea.

Okay. So the right is south. The green blob with the yellow dots is the forsythia bush. The olive parts are the mulberry trees. The one with the maroon dots is the medium mulberry tree that actually produced something. The brown blob is the stump.

My fascination with the playhouse began when I found it, and then found a penny half buried in the dirt. When I went to pick it up, I found another penny! I dug in the dirt. There were literally hundreds of pennies out there! No one in the family claimed to know the origin of the pennies, and my mind raced at the possibilities. (Of course, Marissa later admitted to having taking the pennies from our dad’s big Mr. Magoo bank and burying them out there.) But at the time, it was a mystery, and a profitable one at that. I spent the rest of the day (and probably the week) digging up pennies.

While in the comfortable shade of the forsythia, I started to see how delightful a play place it was, and I began making improvements. Upon first discovery, the forsythia filled up most of the open space between itself and the mulberry area. You really had to hunker down or crawl in there, and I was a little kid. I got some strong twine from the shed and used it to tie the forsythia back. The chain link fence was right behind it, and I tied the twine to the fence, then wrapped it around the bush to the fence on the other side. I pulled and pulled, and the forsythia raised up higher and higher. I stopped when an adult could walk there, but the forsythia branches still offered a canopy overhead. It was like a little roof! Streams of sunlight shone through, but it was still nice and shady, with pretty green leaves and little yellow flowers overhead. I took the old picnic table bench out of the yard and placed it underneath the canopy. Nice!

Using Mom’s good rose cutters without permission, I cut back any mulberry branches that were in my way. There were a couple in the path, and I cut them to the ground. I also cut back the viny thorn thing that would be my constant roommate in the playhouse. I could cut him, but he kept growing back. I knew the area to avoid though.

I also tied back the mulberry trees, gathering them together to ensure maximum usability of the playhouse. I used old wire hangers, opened up, to bind the trees to each other.

Pilfering from Mom’s storage in the shed, I continued to decorate the playhouse with end tables, chairs, wooden pictures, and anything else that caught my eye. I also hung delightful crochet chains that I had made myself from the branches,

When I was done, it was a sight to behold. A real playhouse! I had really made myself a real playhouse! My family was invited to a housewarming. They liked it, but Mom said I had to put some of the stuff back. So I did. I was allowed the picnic table bench, some metal folding chairs, a beat up metal and wood chair, and the worst of the wooden pictures. But that was quite all right. It was still a great place.

Such a great place, in fact, that the playhouse and I remained close throughout my high school years. I would tie it back again each summer, and at one point I even was able to put some old scrap carpet in there, which held up better than you’d think. I’d take my CD player out there and run an extension cord back to the house, and listen to music and read or just think about stuff. If the music wasn’t loud, or I didn’t have the CD player out there or something, sometimes people would look for me and not be able to find me. I remember family members coming out and calling me, and I would be able to see them from within my house of leaves, and they wouldn’t be able to see me. It was grand.

The playhouse is gone now. It was there for a long time – I even got to show it to Ben – but now it is only in my memory. I wish it was still there so I could show it to the kids. I know they’d love it. I also wish there was some kind of amazing place like that here for them to play with, but there’s nothing even close.

Well, they could probably hide behind some of the weeds we have growing in the yard, but that’s not quite the same thing!

Okay. I’m officially sick of journaling. Maybe I’ll take weekends off. Too bad it’s only Tuesday.

Write about a babysitting experience.

The first thing that popped in my mind when I saw this was the time I was babysitting two children who lived down the road from me. I was probably about 14 – I know I rode my bike there. Anyway, long story short, I made a judgement mistake and ended up doing something that I still wish I hadn’t. I can still feel the shame I felt when it all became clear that it had been the wrong choice.

Matter of fact, the shame is still so strong that I don’t even want to go into it here. And that’s probably a bad thing. Isn’t the point of a journal to bare the soul and get it all out?

After all, there are lots and lots of other babysitting experiences to document. I remember watching the toddlers at church. A little one was crying, and another teenager in there blew on his tummy to make him laugh. When she had to leave later, I tried it and he became hysterical. I felt so dumb and awkward.

I used to babysit Krislyn and Kevin all the time. One time I took them to Minco to play on the toys at Bill Johnson Park. I turned my back for literally one second and somehow Kevin morphed to the top of the giant slide. He was like two years old. I ran in slow motion to the slide, holding my hand out – “Keeeevvviiinnnn….nnnnoooooooo” – and he looked at me and fell over the side.

And I just knew when I got to him his skull was going to be cracked open and there was going to brain showing or something terrible like that but he was still intact and he cried but it was okay. I told Karlene all about it…on Kevin’s high school graduation day. At the time, I only told her that he had a little fall but seemed okay. I didn’t want to not be trusted with them anymore.

I also spent a school year babysitting two great boys every day after school. Best memories? Playing Castlevania on the old-school Nintendo with all the cheat codes and screaming when the final bad guy appeared, and the boys throwing popcorn at the television and shouting insults at Ranger Rick, the afternoon kids’ club host at the time. Worst memory? Allowing the older boy to ride on the back of my car (they lived in a tiny, hardly populated addition and I was going slow, but still), where he slid off and hit the gravel hard.

There’s also the time that Ben and I kept Krislyn, Kevin and Gary while Karlene and James were in Branson or something. Gary was very small…three months old or less. Ben and I took turns taking care of him in the night. Ben didn’t know that you shouldn’t leave a little baby without a diaper for even a minute when you change them. So Ben was up changing him and feeding him and Gary went to town in that bassinett and there was poop everywhere. Poor Ben.

Poor me, too, because on that same visit, I had both big kids in bed with me one evening because Ben was watching TV with his friends. I asked him to please move the kids when he came to bed, because they had bedwetting issues. He agreed but then fell asleep in front of the TV and the friends let themselves out. When I woke up, I couldn’t figure out why I was so wet. Is this sweat?my mind asked. Then I realized and got up quick. Both kids were already gone. I stepped onto the carpet and squished into another damp spot. Seems Krislyn had gotten mad and moved to the floor in the night.

And still, with all of this, the memory of the time down the road still pricks my mind, and it’s still painful.

It really wasn’t a big deal. And I have to remind myself that I was still pretty much a kid myself.

Okay, see, these kids rode the bus with me. They were great kids, and I enjoyed their company. So their parents asked me to babysit, and I did, several times.

The last time I did it, the little boy was sick. Not bad sick, just not able to play outside sick. And I was a fun babysitter who was open to the idea of playing outside, under normal circumstances.

So we watched TV, and played inside. But the kids really wanted to show me something they had been building down at the creek. We couldn’t go, because he was sick. But they really wanted me to see it. The boy (he was maybe 9) really wanted me and his sister to just go ahead and look at it really quick. He said he would be okay in the house for a couple of minutes while we walked down there.

They both wanted it so bad that I finally gave in. And before you’re wondering, nothing bad happened. The house didn’t burn down, the kid didn’t die, and everything was fine.

The only bad thing was that the kids’ grandparents happened to drive by and they could see the two of us at the creek. They asked what was going on, and I told them we just walked over for a second to see whatever it even was. They were obviously hacked and didn’t agree with my decision and told us we’d better get back to the house right away. So we did.

And that was the last time I babysat for them.

I don’t even know if the parents were mad. The kids never said that they were and we still were on the bus all the time together. Also, I was hired to babysit for their cousins later that year, and they said they called me because of the original parents’ recommendation. So I don’t know what to think.

Incidentally, that one wasn’t too hot either – the parents were taking their first night out since learning their daughter was ill with something…diabetes maybe? They went to Remington Park. They wanted us to contact them if there were any problems, no matter how small. This was, of course, before cell phones. So the little girl got sick with a fever and I had to call the parents. I had to call Remington Park and ask for them, and they finally found them. I told them that I didn’t think they needed to come home, but I knew they wanted to know. Well, they were really worried, and they came home.

That was the only time I babysat for them too. I heard later that they didn’t go out much after that.

So, that’s my babysitting experiences in a nutshell. One dollar per hour per child, whoohoo!

Did you ever have a paper route?

Did I ever have a paper route? Who comes up with these things? How many children actually have paper routes anymore? Isn’t like more Leave it to Beaver stuff?

I never had a paper route. But once again, I can figure out a way to provide a more thorough answer without having the experience, because although I never had a paper route, I have delivered papers.

This happened when I was working at the Tuttle Times. I was there for almost 10 years, and I was a writer, photographer, layout person, etc. Even sold a few ads once or twice. Jack-of-all-trades, if you will.

One thing I did not do was deliver papers.

But one day, there was a terrible storm coming. Big snowstorm sleety mess. I was innocently finishing up the newspaper at the Chickasha office, getting it ready to print. Lenora was over at the Epworth Christian Dayschool, where she went for the one day a week I was in Chickasha. She was little then…two years old or less, anyway.

After I got done with the newspapers, they would go through the big printing press. I liked to stick around until they printed, so I could see how it looked before I went home. Sometimes I didn’t wait, and just saw it when it was delivered to Tuttle the next day. This day I wasn’t planning on waiting – I wanted to get home early and beat the storm.

So I’m working away, and the lady who was in the charge of the circulation department comes over to me. See, it’s her job to deliver all of the papers to the Tuttle Post Office for mailing out the next morning. She lived in Moore, so she would go through Tuttle on Tuesdays to deliver those papers to the back dock. But she also wanted to go home on the turnpike so she could also beat the storm. So she asked me, since it was on the way for me anyway, if I could deliver those papers to the post office.

This was a hard question for me, because I did not want to do this. However, I also realized that she was a department head, and I tried very hard to do what they asked of me…you know, be a good employee and all that.

I tried to get out of it; I really did. I told her that I had to pick up Lenora, and I didn’t want to wait a long time for papers because I’d have her with me if a storm hit. But she assured me that the printing wouldn’t take long, and that there would surely be no problem and she basically made it clear that I was going to do this regardless and thank you very much.

So there I was.

After my part was done, I hung around at the basically empty office (everybody wanted to beat the storm) and listened to the radio talking about the weather. It sounded bad. I tried to call my boss to tell him my dilemma, but his phone didn’t pick up.

As 6 p.m. neared, I drove over to pick up Lenora. The school was like a ghost town. Everybody had picked their kids to…yeah, you know; to beat the storm. I strapped Lenora in her car seat and we went back to the newspaper office. The papers were finally printing.

Then they had to have inserts put in…and be labeled…and then Lenora and I got around to the side door and we started loading them in the car. Everybody was in a hurry because the storm was starting.

And then we left for Tuttle.

Obviously it was survivable because Lenora and I are still around and it’s quite a long time later, but it was bad. It was really bad. I have never driven in worse. I could not see the road. Everything was white. There were no other cars. Sometimes I could tell where the road was, but some of the time, I couldn’t. I just kept trying to go in a straight line. By the grace of God I could see the road in the curvy spots on the road.

I went about 15 miles an hour the whole way and saw no one. Four times my windshield froze up so much I had to get out and scrape it, even with the defroster on and the wipers going. They just froze right into the ice. I stopped the car right in the middle of the road and scraped it while praying no one would come skidding up behind us.

No cell phone, of course.

By the time I got to the post office, my fingers were numb and raw, my ears were ringing and my eyes were snow-blinded. I couldn’t go all the way to the back dock because it has a ramp, and I knew I’d never get back up it in the car, so I stopped in the parking lot and slid/crawled my way to the dock with all the papers. Then I made my way back to the car and made my way home.

Lenora slept during the horrible ordeal and was annoyed to be awakened to the blustery world when we got home. Lucky she slept – if she had been crying, and I hadn’t been able to focus, who knows what might have happened?

I was never so happy to go into my warm house, wrap up in a big blanket and pull my chair by the fire.

My memorable experience delivering papers.

Did you ever hitchhike?

Excuse me? Did I ever hitchike? Hells, no. Raped and murdered ain’t my thang.

I have ridden with strangers, though. I know. Super-smart. I know I did when I was a kid and missed the bus once. This nice guy came along and offered me a ride (this was on our rural little road.) I don’t know who he was and I’m very glad he wasn’t a serial killer. I was probably about 12 or so, so I was ripe for doing something dumb.

I got a ride from someone when my car broke down on the way back to Alva, from Enid, once. Well, that’s not being completely honest. My car did break down, but it was after I thought it would be fun to take the back road between Carmen and Dacoma, and the main back road was closed due to flooding, and I’d already come way too far so I took a road that went from bad to worse. When I attempted to ford what was basically a river in the middle of the “road,” the Camaro gave it up. Turned out to be a good thing too, because there was a drop off right in front of the car and I would have been in major trouble. God was surely looking out for me that day. I took off my shoes and waded to the road, then went, with mud to my ankles, to a house that turned out to be abandoned. Walking on, I ran into people in a truck and I figured I might as well go for it, as my sitation was bleak anyway. I don’t remember anything else (or even if I actually got a ride with them – I assume I did because what else could I have done?) but I’m still here typing, with no weird flashbacks or anything, so I guess it all went okay.

I always feel sorry for hitchhikers. I want to pick them up and help them. But I also do not want to be murdered so I have to let them walk. It was always nice to be in the Malibu with all five seats taken by Ben and me and the kids. Can’t feel guilty when there’s no place for the hitchhiker to go.

Ben thinks that he would like to be a hitchhiker-type guy, or a hobo or something, and ride the rails and eat beans out of a can and see the country or something. I say he’d better go in the fall because he hates pollen (spring), heat (summer), and cold (winter.) I guess he could start being a hobo in September and then maybe call me to pick him up near the end of October.

I would not like to be a hobo. Like hitchhiking, girl-hoboing sounds like another really good way to be raped/murdered.