Since Dad got us on the weekends growing up, Sunday nights were spent driving back to mom’s. We would crank up the music, roll down the windows, and cock the side mirrors just right, grabbing sideway glances of our Rock-n-Roll faces. One particular night though, Billy Idol got the best of me. We were on [...]
Beware the Invitation, 2013 If you allow it, a person—young or old—can come in and bless your soul, change your life. Allie did that for me. She was my much younger sister, not by blood but by spirit. My junior year of high school Allie was born, and my dad raised her for the first [...]
I’ve seen my dad go through two fashion faux pas in my life. The first was his Rock-n-Roll 80’s that fearlessly trudged on through the 90’s. He was known then for his big hair, sliced and diced t-shirts, holey jeans, and his white Camaro. I loved that Camaro. When Dad would sleep in in the [...]
Oh but you see, I didn’t!!! I swear. I was falsely accused, and I’ve been serving this sentence—doing time—for years. I’ve never peed my pants. (Post partum jump roping just does not count.) There I sat in Coach Tate’s class. The class was mainly sophomores with a few juniors who dreaded the very sight of [...]
My dad nicknamed me “Rosebud!”, and it took me years to learn that that was no term of endearment. Ah, the growing pains of being a girl…even when nothing is growing. When my mother first told me about the training bra, I was five and thought the idea of it was fun—like a new purse [...]
I often found myself rummaging in my grandpa’s barn for tools I could tinker with. I loved taking the wheels off my bicycle just to put them back on again. It just felt productive and bad-A. My grandpa, whom I have always referred to as Ampaw, limited me to the third drawer of his toolbox, [...]
When I was ten my dad put me in the ring with a neighborhood boy, James. He was my age but stood a few pencil marks above me. He couldn’t resist calling me names and pinching that sensitive spot under my arm . I think the teasing is what drove my dad to force us [...]
