Music & Inappropriate Faire

It’s 5am—I went to the bathroom and decided it’s time to start getting up.

First Far From Over by Frank Stallone then Wham Wake Me Up Before You Go—then something I had no idea what it was so I told Alexa to go to the next song 🎶 John Parr with St. Elmo’s Fire.

Then They Played Hot Stuff—When we were little Mom and a friend used to bring us to movie (theaters) to give themselves a break and some air conditioning—the two movies I remember the one had to do with song and was TOTALLY inappropriate for kids—and Xanadu which when I asked Mom if she liked it (later in life) she said a definitive NO.

Our generation was allowed to see things in movies that today they wouldn’t show…

The theater was a respite from being out all day playing in the non air conditioned world.

When Mom and Dad went out of town they left us with an older woman named Mary various times. She usually stayed out of our way of playing—but she was able to use the boat of a car that was Mom’s—it had the license plate DANI SAM.

Mary introduced me to her grandson and I think it was the first time I fell in love—about 13 years old—but he didn’t reciprocate…Although we had fun playing in the pool I remember…And the night that she brought us all to a drive—in movie. Again, the movies were inappropriate—Red Dawn and Purple Rain. We watched Red Dawn and left when Purple Rain started…

She was the one I got in trouble for stealing something from a store—Playdough—The young ones fought over it and we went to her to figure it out—she was mad because she didn’t buy it—she found out we took it.

Just Dumb.

We had some good times with her but mostly she left us alone to play with ourselves or other kids.

She came when Mom and Dad went out of town—a few times—so we knew her—felt comfortable with her. And, the point was we stayed in our own house—no moving around…

I could talk about the inappropriate movie I went to with my Grandma—it only happened once—it was a movie about a Unicorn 🦄

And though not totally inappropriate the times I talked sex with Caroline Baker and Sunny Chingala—both friends of Samantha who I walked the same canyon with finding out how some things worked that my parents left out of any conversations.

The last thing I’ll remind you of is the day you had Mary bring you to a girlfriends house and Lisa pissed pissed you off—so you went home. You tried to hitch hike and someone brought you home—to the end of the street—I didn’t want him to see where I lived…So many things could have gone wrong—but luckily they didn’t…

The thing with Bradley’s brother was worse,

Now that I’ve been through all these things that shaped me—the one day I remember vividly was when I was in 5th grade. I brought home a report card with 13 Ds or Fs on it—they made the teacher write this out?? I got 13 smacks—Dad hurt his hand and it was in the morning so I had to go to the bus stop—the woman who lived on the corner was worried about me so she called the school—and I told them what happened and it was NEVER talked about again until I was an adult…

Parents were allowed to smack kids for doing bad things—but this was for poor grades—not something I did that was bad.

The Principal—Mr. Shattack—was nice to me after that—he let me run the big apple out in the back field—that’s when I liked running.

I finally ran on the running team at McGehee—I have a picture in the yearbook—for short girls and me.

But that didn’t help me with my confidence—I always thought I was short—5’7” is not short compared to a lot of people I was in life with. Now I know that I’m tall and happy with it…

I’ve been writing for an hour—damn I got a lot out…….