Sexualizing

Trigger Warning: Child molestation

My clearest memories begin when I was about 8.  Things before that are just blurry snapshots of isolated events – none of them particularly memorable which makes it a mystery as to why I remember them.

Fifth grade is especially vivid.  At school, they had started a new program for 5th graders.  Funny, I remember the acronym SQ3.  It involved us going from classroom to classroom for different teachers.  I didn’t like it.  Though we didn’t know it then, I was ADD and that disruption of moving from one class to another was a form of sabotage.  While I remember my 3rd and 4th grade teachers, vividly, I have no idea who taught me in the 5th grade.  Mostly, I just remember moving from one class to another.  I do kind of remember the guy who taught us History.  I wrote an extra credit report on Marco Polo.  He questioned whether I wrote it or not.  He said it sounded too grownup.  I was shocked that he would think I had cheated.  I assured him I had written it. 

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Katmandu

Photo by Long Truong on Unsplash

I was reigning at Table 28 as usual.

The Inferno in Huntington, West Virginia was the area’s premier disco. Sleek, sophisticated, trendy – or at least as much as it could be in an old warehouse on a crumbling street near the river.

Its claim to fame was that each table had a red phone on it with a light fixture overhead emblazoned with the table number. You could call from table to table just by dialing that number. It was a new era in pickups.

My best friend and I weren’t even old enough to be in the place when we first started going. But we each dressed to the nines as was traditional with disco and pretty much behaved ourselves as far as the rules went. Donnie was a guy. We had an unlikely friendship, but a very close one. We were inseparable. Folks thought we were dating, but we weren’t. We were just good friends. Perfect friends. Completely accepting of one another.

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The Sidetracked Sisters Podcast: Creativity and Writing

On July 4th shortly before 4 pm, I was outside and got caught in a downpour. Soaked to the skin, I did not have time to dry my hair or fix my makeup before what I thought was a 4 pm video interview. I am so thankful for that misunderstanding. I looked like a drowned diva.

Lisa of The Sidetracked Sisters made me sound good! It was a fun interview and I’m glad they chose me. You can listen here.