I was a junior in high school before I first attempted to take the bus to school. If you lived more than two miles from school, the district would provide a school bus for students. This was a new experience for me. I was nervous. I had always walked to school, but the idea of not being cold in winter or arriving to school sweaty in June was enticing.
It’s tagline was, “If you forgot what terror was like…it’s back,” except I wasn’t terrified until I went to sleep.
We all agreed to meet at my mom’s house in New York and spend New Year’s Eve in New York City.
I was finishing up for the day at the Star-Herald when I received a text message I was hoping not to get. It was from her.
“Are you sure you don’t want to do it?”
There are three things I remember about Mrs. Blustein’s 5th grade class – a politician spoke to us, Joe’s boogers, and how I learned I was really poor.
As a 17-year old high school senior, my English teacher, Ms. Prather, assigned me and my classmates the task of writing about our bedroom and what we saw using as many adjectives as possible. It could be real or imagined. My story was a mix of both. We were also supposed to let the details do the work – show don’t tell – through the use of metaphors and similes.
We spent a week working on the assignment before turning it in on March, 4, 1988. After working on the suggestions Ms. Prather made on my third rough draft, I was confident I would receive a good grade.
I’m still not sure why I was home alone that monumental day, but I had graduated from setting the table for dinner to making the meal by myself.
Gram at Uncle Dave’s fishing competition July, 15, 2007.
I grabbed the softball and turned it around in my glove until my first two fingers were set where I wanted them along the seams. I focused on the placement of the catcher’s mitt, ignoring where the batter would be. My task was to put the ball in the catcher’s mitt. That’s all I looked at. I stretched back and released the ball.
As a young girl, I used to ride my bicycle down the road with her name on it. It was the main road around the Middletown Psychiatric Center where my mother worked and was named after the woman who spent her life working to make the lives of people with mental health issues and prisoners better.
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