My Life Story: Religion

My family went inactive when I was very little.  I remember being in sunbeams.  I remember nothing else after that point.  My dad had gone inactive a few weeks after he and my mom were married.  She tried for so long but hauling three children alone to church without any help was difficult.  After being the only volunteer to show up to several activities and then this crazy thing with her parents (my grandma thought she was the anti Christ) she stopped going altogether.  I remember being in third grade and realizing that my next door neighbor/best friend Raquel (who was a Jehovah's Witness) and I would not be able to play together on the weekends if I were going to church on Sundays.

This changed when I was in fifth grade (my smelly years).  The missionaries found us.  They asked my mom if she wanted them to teach us the discussions.  She jumped for joy and said yes.  After not going to church for five or six years we started to go again.  A member family, the Bucks with all their many children, became crucial in our reactivation.  Their oldest daughter Cerise became my best friend.  We hung out at school and at church choir.  She sat with me in Primary.  I loved the missionaries.  Elder Hawk and Elder Halterman were nice and fun.  They would eat at our house and one of them was really allergic to something my mom cooked and explained that his whole mouth would swell if he ate it.  He was Canadian and joked about clubbing and eating seals.  My dad would eat dinner with us and the second it turned to a gospel discussion he would leave the room.  While I liked the missionaries I did not like the lessons.  They asked hard questions that I didn't know or care the answers to.  I would have to leave my trampoline to read passages of the Book of Mormon before they came over.  They gave me homework.  I didn't like it.  And I don't think that I necessarily believed any of it, either.  Because I remember my baptismal interview and feeling like I was lying when I said that I knew the gospel was true.

I was baptized on May 23, 1999.  I was ten.  I had to wear an ugly white jumpsuit and after getting wet I didn't feel any different.  Jacob and I were both baptized that day, by our uncle Kenneth.  I remember Brother Buck had made us presents.  He had taken colored wire and clay and had made me a rose and Jacob a dragonfly.  I loved mine.  I didn't feel special.  Not in any way.

Over the years my mom would take me to church and most of the time Jacob would also come.  Jason didn't typically go.  I remember becoming a religious fanatic trying to read as much of the Book of Mormon as I could and doing my best to pray every night.  When I was so tired that I slept through church I would wake in a panic, pull out my Book of Mormon and have my own religious service.  One time a fire hydrant in our neighborhood went off and Jacob and I said the Sacrament prayers over the water and told my mom it was holy because we had blessed it.  She told us never to do that again.

I wore a purple dress most Sundays.  I loved it.  But the actual dress was a tank top cut without sleeves and came with a sheer jacket.  The girls in my class told me that I wasn't modest.  I didn't understand.  I felt like the girls were older than me and didn't like me.  There weren't many girls my age.  I felt left out most of the time.

When I moved to Arizona the person I liked the best was my Primary teacher.  She would take the scriptures and "modernize" them to help us understand.  I thought all the children there were pious and stuck up.  I hated them.  They thought that they were better than me because I was different.  I hated Mutual, where they wouldn't let me wear capris.  I was with a ton of older kids that knew so much more about the scriptures than I did.  I had one friend named Amy.  When Jacob was sexually abused by our neighbor Amy wasn't allowed to be my friend anymore.

My family moved back to California a year and a half after leaving.  My mom stayed in Arizona and it meant the end of church for me, as my dad wasn't religious.  After a couple of months she joined us and I began to go again.  I recognized people.  Marie was there, and so were Ben, CJ and Aaron, all of whom I remembered.  And while I had been away Sabrina had been baptized.  We went to elementary school together and we became best friends.  I became steady with my church attendance.  I went every Sunday, just me and my mom.  When high school started and my mom wanted to sit with young families to play with their kids I would sit with Sabrina and the Sanchez family.  Corky would play with my hair in Sunday School and made me feel special and worthwhile.  I had a string of really kind and amazing Young Women's leaders.  Sisters Kidman, Jaster, Ranum, Lovstedt, Greenwood.  I loved them.  They were nice to me and loved me and treated me like I meant something.

When I was a sophomore Sabrina moved away and stopped going to church.  She no longer believed it was true.  She had had such faith.  I always felt insignificant next to her.  The next year Tati would start coming to seminary (which I only went to for a couple of sporadic years) and during senior year she was baptized.  She was my new best friend.  After a year she stopped going to church.  My mom stopped going to Sacrament.  My brothers stopped going. 

I never understood.  I still don't.  Why am I still here?  Why do I still go to church?  How did this happen?  There were so many people I knew that seemed to have stronger testimonies.  I never felt sure about the church, and I didn't until after a year at BYU.  I went to church because I felt guilty if I didn't.  I resented my mother for not going and making me be the spiritual one in our family.  I didn't know how to react to my best friends leaving the church.  If we didn't share that, was there anything left for us to talk about?  Did they figure out something that I hadn't?  Was it more of a disappointment than anything?  I still don't have the answers to any of these questions.

Soundtrack of My Life Part VI

I had a lot of anger in high school and right after graduation.  A lot of this was directed toward my mom, who at the time was dating a man that I detested.  This man called me a lesbian because I didn't like men (correction:  I liked men.  Just not controlling ones like him and my dad at the time).  He almost hit Jacob.  He argued with me about the meaning of "narcissism" (I told him it came from Greek mythology and meant to love yourself, he claimed something completely different but refused to look at the dictionary).  He threatened to have his old high school gang buddies beat up Jacob to teach him a lesson.  He often said that I would never make anything of my life while his children (especially his daughter Jesica, with one "s") would be great.  I have since graduated from college while Jesica is living with a man with a son closer in age to her than she to him.  Did I mention she got way into drugs and had a pimp?  He always had to be right and usually he wasn't.  He was domineering and controlling and no matter what I said to my mom she stayed with him because no one had ever made her feel loved like he had.  It went on for two or three years.  I seriously don't think that I was mad at my mom for any other reason.  But she stuck with a man that threatened her kids because he loved her.  And I got so fed up feeling like the parent between the two of us (telling her to stop breaking the Law of Chastity, asking her what time of night she was going to be home on a regular basis) that when I heard this song it was just what I needed.

One night I was playing a board game or something with my mom and Jacob.  I had previously confessed to Jacob my feelings about this song, and how I sang it in my head whenever I was mad at her.  I offered to get my mom a drink of water or something and when I brought it back I mentioned that I was the golden child (something we frequently fought over growing up).  Jacob got mad.  He got jealous.  And next thing I know he was telling my mom that there was a song that Regina Spektor sings that reminds me of her.  I was livid.  I started yelling at him to shut up.  But my mom had heard enough and asked what song I sang whenever I was mad at her.  In a moment of redemption Jacob hesitated and said "Fidelity."  I don't know if he was sparing me or my mom. 

Unfortunately, the damage was done.  For years my mother would bring this up in an argument.  She would tell me that she never had the heart to listen to the song because it might break her heart.  To this day we do not mention Regina Spektor in her presence. 

My Life Story: The Enforcer

I played water polo all four years in high school.  I did it because my best friend freshman year was Samantha Bacon and she wanted to play.  So every school day I would wait outside of the gym for an hour for the bus to get our team and we would go to a different high school to practice, as we did not have a pool.  We wore a strange, sun bleached blue parka with yellow yarn inside.  Our suits typically had some type of zipper on them, as well as rubber.

As you can imagine, I was not a fast swimmer.  But our team was small and often we had to use JV players during the varsity game and vice versa.  I was a sophomore when I made my only two goals my entire water polo career, during a single JV game.  But I had enough fat to buoy me and I didn't need to tread water.  And... I was rough.  While one goal stood between me and MVP that year, I did get Best Defensive Player.

This... is for a good reason.  I wasn't a fast swimmer, so I would hold on to my opponent's swimsuit.  This did double duty, to slow them down while allowing me to stay very close to them.  And because I've had short nails my whole life (nail biter) I would easily pass our nail checks (to prevent us from gouging out eyeballs, I guess) and was able to scratch the crap out of the other players.

I always had the most ejections in a game.  You are allowed three ejections in a game before you are not allowed back in at all.  One game I got four ejections.  But both scorekeepers missed one allowing me to stay in the game.  Unfortunately, it wasn't just for holding and scratching. 

There was the sprained wrist.  This girl wouldn't stop holding my swimsuit so I held her wrist really tightly to stop her.  Apparently I twisted at the same time.  She was on the Oxnard team and my friend Robia had been watching the game.  It was one of her best friends.  The girl cried.

Another girl cried (either from Oxnard or Pacifica) when I punched her in the mouth.  She had braces on and was a bit roughed up from the attack.  I don't really remember what triggered this event at all.  But it happened.

The last girl that I can remember didn't cry.  In fact, she was a really good sport about it.  I was playing at Oaks Christian, a private Christian high school in Thousand Oaks.  Those girls had everything.  My team had to share a pool with another school and couldn't afford a lot of equipment that we legitimately needed.  There just wasn't a budget.  And it was one of maybe two games in four years that my mom was at.  She was walking around the pool taking pictures and getting whistled at by the refs because of it.  It was a varsity game and the ball miraculously found its way into my hands with a clear shot of the goal.  I pulled my arm back to throw the ball but right as I was about to let go the girl defending me knocked my arm out of the way.  It was my only chance at a varsity goal and my mother had been watching.  I got so unbelievably upset that I turned right around and punched the girl in the face.  Hard.  After the game she came up to Mr. Hill and told him that I had broken her tooth.  She laughed it off and said "what happens in the water stays in the water."  Maybe she just had weak teeth, because a few weeks later a girl on the Pacifica team knocked the rest of that girl's tooth out. 

After the last incident Mr. Hill and I made the mutual decision that I would no longer play.  Instead I would simply keep score. 

But for three seasons I could be relied upon to hurt someone.  If one of our players was being roughed up Mr. Hill would line me up with the rougher-upper to teach them a lesson.  I was always so proud of myself in those moments.  In those moments when Mr. Hill would refer to me as The Enforcer.

Summer Reads

One month post graduation.  Finished:

Julie & Julia:  Not what I expected.  I expected cutesy, clean, just like the movie (which I love).  But instead it was naughty, crass, maybe a tiny bit vulgar.  I loved it.  LOVED it.  Still love the movie, but in a completely different way.  I literally laughed out loud several times, as she described how animalistic it was to cut open a cow's leg bone to get to the marrow, which tasted like sex.  I started this one weekend before finals and read through quite a chunk of it.  Then I had to stop.  I picked back up while staying at Snowbird with my dad and Peggy after graduation.  I read it sprawled on my couch pull out bed and while getting sunburned by the pool.  In one day.

A Walk to Remember:  Biggest book disappointment of my life.  Have you seen the movie?  I typically like books better than movies (Harry Potter, Hunger Games) but I had my hopes too high for this one.  It was slow, sappy and way too Christian.  I know, that's a terrible thing to say.  But the last thing I expected to read when I picked this up was the Bible.  I expected to ball my eyes out like I did in the movie.  I didn't cry once.  Maybe I was heartless?  I finished this before I left Snowbird.  I should have gone swimming instead.

Doubt:  This was originally a script for a play, and then it became the movie with the lovely Meryl Streep.  I may be in a book club where we read a book and watch the movie adapted from the book.  This was our first read.  I especially liked the intro and the first sermon, when the priest explains that doubt can bring people together just as much as a tragedy or a shared interest.

Harvesting the Heart:  Oh, Jodi Picoult.  I don't know why I keep coming back to her.  But I do.  This was a decent read.  Decent.  It focuses on a woman who has no plans of becoming a mother and finds herself having a baby (yes, she's married). 

A Long Way Gone:  Horrific.  This is the memoir of a child soldier in Sierra Leone.  I started reading this while I was still working at Campus Accommodations, but it was literally too much to handle and I didn't pick it up again until half way through this week (about 2.5 weeks later).  You can tell that the author's native language isn't English, as it seems clipped.  Like the sentence structure is a bit off.  And it's interesting that he doesn't go in to a lot of detail about many things except the horrors of war, and you can see that the violence completely took over his life.  He can't tell you what he did for weeks at a time as he wondered through the jungle alone, but he tells in detail what it was like to slit a man's throat or to watch his friend die.

The Lovely Bones:  Creepy.  So very, very creepy.  Susie gets raped and murdered in the first chapter.  The ending is lovely, so it does get happier as the book goes on.  However, out of nowhere she will remind you of a horrific detail during the attack.  Hauntingly beautiful.  I read this in two days.  The second in our book/movie club.

Currently:  Songs of the Humpback Whale (Another Jodi Picoult)

Other books I currently have from the lovely Provo Library: 
Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk (the talented David Sedaris of Me Talk Pretty One Day)
Middlesex (of course I would read something about someone with a sex development disorder)

And yes, I now have a Downton Abbey Pandora station.  I'm still confused by why the Turk died.

Also, if you know what's good for you you will view this recipe and eat it as soon as you possibly can:  Bright-eyed Delicious

MIA

I've been pretty MIA for the last little bit.  My new life consists of:

Waking up whenever I feel like it (between 8-10am)
Eating, showering, teeth brushing
Internet surfing
Watching WAY too much Downton Abbey (Matthew get your head on straight and ditch the fiance)
 (Semi) applying for jobs

I have barely picked up a book since I left work a week and a half ago.  I've found myself only putting on make up if I have a job interview or church. 

I must sound like the laziest person ever right now.  But in all honesty, it feels SO good.  For the last four summers I have worked 40 hour weeks and I've taken a crap load of classes while working 20 hours a week and I've worked almost every holiday.  I don't think my body remembers the last time it just sat.  Or when I slept a full night.  I know that I'm no different from other people, and that lots of people have worked and taken classes.  But this break is a God send. 

I have a job interview today, and another one tomorrow.  There haven't been many opening around Provo that I'm at all interested in, and without a car it's difficult to work in the surrounding areas (like SLC).  But until I get a job, I'm just fine where I am, watching Downton Abbey with Marie and finding delicious looking recipes online.

Late Night Escapades

We need to talk about my roommate situation.  I have switched rooms in the same apartment in order to share a room with the lovely Marie.  Selina is still here, and we have three new roommates.

First off there is Alyssa.  She shares a room with Selina and is a little fireball.  She is 23 and seems to be go, go, go all the freaking time.  But if it weren't for her we wouldn't have nearly as much fun.  Alyssa brings all the boys to the yard... for our roommate Hope.  Hope is just barely 18 and is on the Obama train like a few other people we know.  Hope is gorgeous.  She is also usually mature for her age and says her biggest goal in life is to make it to Heaven.  She's a rock star.  She also thinks that there is nothing wrong with the 20 year old girl she shares a room with... Ann.  But here's the thing.  Ann has Asperger's, I'm pretty sure.  We often exclaim that we don't trust her to drive because of it.  Ann is WAY tiny and wears little girl clothes.  She has a boyfriend, Jesse, who is equally as awkward (I think he also has Asperger's) and they flirt with each other and cannot stop touching each other to save their lives.  They also pray and read scriptures together which makes us all feel awkward.  Did I mention that they have very strange hobbies like watching anime and "practicing" a song together that is a duet from The Prince of Egypt?

Ann has been known to come out of her room and yell at us if we're being too loud.  But we can't take her seriously because she looks like a child and (I know I'm a terrible person) has a speech impediment that takes away any credibility.  Last night Marie and I were in our room watching a little Netflix (Switched at Birth, don't judge me) and then we talked for awhile.  Next thing we knew it was like, 2:30am.  I needed to go to the bathroom but heard voices.  I wondered if Hope was in the living room with someone and then I realized that it was Selina's voice, and I could hear her and Alyssa talking to each other in their room (although I couldn't actually hear what they were saying).  So I sneaked over to their door, threw it open and yelled a little, which caused both of them to freak out.  After we settled down we got back into our own beds and the following texting conversation happened between me and Selina:

Me:  Umm... Someone is in the bathroom and it's not us or you.  Who did we wake up?
Selina:  Check their bedroom.  Probably Hope.
M:  Their door was open but I was scared.

Then Selina and Alyssa ran into our room.  We talked for a few minutes and they left, and I promptly let out the biggest fart of my life.

S:  Did you just fart?
M:  I know not of what you speak.
S:  I heard somebody make some noise... and then you laughed.
M:  I did laugh.  I'm still laughing.
M:  Ok, it was me.  But this is a 3am secret that no one else hears.
S:  LOL

Marie and I start talking about how she needs to pee but is scared.  I try to convince her to hold it until the morning or to use a cup in our room.

M:  Marie needs to pee but she's afraid that Ann will be standing outside the door with her hair in her face like the girl from The Ring.
S:  Are you sharing a bed still?  Also that's terrifying.
M:  No.  But she asked me to guard the bathroom door while she's in there.
S:  Sleepover in the living room?
M:  We're scared of Samara Ann.
S:  Is that her new name?
M:  And I'm gassy.  Yes it is.
S:  Well Lyss is going to get farted on tonight.
M:  Marie is freaking out that she needs to use the bathroom.
S:  Do you want us to help?
M:  No.  She wants me to help.
S:  Have fun!

Huddled in the living room terrified.

At this point Marie and I get out of our beds and I grab a glass bottle in our room that we use as a vase.  I hold it above my head as we walk into the hallway.  Promptly Selina and Alyssa run out of their rooms at us with their hair in their faces.  We all run into the living room when we hear it.  The middle bedroom door has opened and Samara Ann is yelling "GO TO BED!"  Absolutely terrifying.  We all bolt to the couch where we start shivering.  Marie looks absolutely terrified as she covers her face and repeats "I'm so scared, I'm so scared."  We are all cowering and I start laughing so hard that I begin to pee.  But just a little bit.  We try to quiet down and take turns using the bathroom before we go back to bed.  Once in our beds again:

S:  Did you hear that?
M:  What/Who was that?
S:  Was that you?!?
S:  Ah!  I bet it's Samara eating spoiled pancakes! (Ann's milk went sour so she used it to make a hundred pancakes that she then froze in our freezer)
M:  No!  Our door is locked because we're terrified!  It has to be you.
S:  Not us.
M:  She's scoping the joint out!  So creepy.
M:  And she's not back in her room yet. (four minutes from the time we heard a door open.  We also heard a cupboard open, the water running, and a cup set down, but never a door closing.)
S:  What if she's going to Jessie's?
M:  No way!
M:  She put her cup down and we haven't heard any other noise.  What if she's outside our doors?
M:  Stop laughing so loud, Alyssa!
S:  She says it's Lyss.  Can you really hear it?
M:  Yes!
S:  Yikes.  Poor Samara.
M:  Stop yelling!  OMG!  DOES SHE WANT THE WRATH OF SAMARA ANN?
S:  Our door doesn't lock...
M:  We know.

And at 4am we finally drifted off to sleep in the silence that terrified us, imagining Ann standing just outside our doors.

My Life Story: Jessica the Spy

When I was a little girl I loved Harriet the Spy.  I loved Harriet so much that I found an empty notebook, wrote the names of all of my classmates on separate sheets of paper and wrote all my observations about them in it.  I also had a pink plastic suitcase/briefcase type of thing that I filled with necessary spy items that I found around the house.  I would take this suitcase/briefcase type of thing and I would walk around the Port Hueneme Naval Base that I lived on and look into people's windows.  I took notes about the kinds of things I saw.  All I can really remember is sneaking around behind the pink apartment type housing and seeing Filipino families getting ready to eat dinner. 

Seriously?  I lurked around people's homes and looked into their windows?  What was I thinking?  I was thinking that I was having a whole lot of fun for an eight year old.  But my teacher and classmates did not think that what I was doing was fun when they heard about it.  Eventually it wasn't fun anymore and I stopped.  But for a brief time I felt untouchable as I hid under windows listening to conversations people may be having. 

These days who would let their child run around free throughout the neighborhood?  Granted, my mom didn't know about what I was doing (at least I don't think so) but the base we lived on seemed so safe.  We knew our neighbor's names.  Their high school kids babysat us and mowed our lawns.  We shared treehouses and patches of wildflowers.  I wonder if I will ever think my neighborhood safe enough to send my kids out to play unsupervised, to run around wherever they wanted without supervision. 

My Life Story: Death

I didn't have a weird fascination with death growing up.  At least, I don't think so.

The only person I really knew growing up that died was my uncle Gerald.  Gerald was my mom's oldest sibling.  I don't remember him before he got sick very much, but from pictures I can tell that he was suave.  He was a cowboy at heart.  I have no idea how much of an education he had.  I know that there was a woman he loved at one point, but he died having never married.  He served a mission in England the year Charles and Diana were married.  He sent us commemorative coins from the event.  He loved A&W root beer and sarsaparilla.  He didn't take crap from his dad, who was fairly abusive.  Instead he would go on rants about how even Nephi had to find out for himself if his dad was telling the truth (because my grandpa was crazy and expected the kids to just accept whatever he said). He played with us.  He was quoted as often thinking of himself as Baloo and my older brother as Mowgli. 

Gerald was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was six.  He died right before I turned 10.  During these years he tried living with us.  My parents made him a custom, large desk with room for his wheelchair so he could play computer games (which he loved).  However, as Gerald was my mom's brother and not my dad's the military (we lived on a naval base at the time) told us that he had to move out.  There wasn't anyone else in the area to take care of him so he ended up first in a small, creepy apartment adjacent to a bar that was near us and then to a home down the street.  I remember his bar apartment was small and sketchy people hung out there.  It was so small that his bed took up most of the space.  One time I insisted that we bring my cat to visit him.  We put a cat least on the cat but its body was twisting and turning all over the place that it got away and it took us forever to get it out from under Gerald's bed.

When he moved to the home I would walk by it on my way home from school.  But by this point he scared me.  He shook all the time.  He had to wear big, thick glasses and had a huge magnifying glass on his computer screen.  Lots of old people lived in his building and it smelled funny.  He had started losing his hair.  He terrified me.  I didn't know how to talk to him.  He started losing his mind and claiming that my mom was stealing his money.  They didn't talk for a long time.  But my brothers kept going to see him when they could.  They would go over and play video games with him.  I think they thought he was cool. 

Halloween 1998 he wanted us to come visit him so he could see us in our costumes and give us root beer barrel candies.   He always had those things.  I didn't like the way they tasted.  But things were still rough between he and my mom and she was so tired after taking us trick-or-treating that we didn't go over. 

A week or two later I came home from school and my dad was on the phone.  I think he was crying.  I heard him mentioning that Gerald had died.  I went to my room to process things.  I tried to make myself cry.  But really, I wasn't upset.  The whole thing felt kind of strange.  Jason took it like a champ, but it was only a day or two before we heard him crying while he was taking a bath.  My dad built his casket while my mom made the lining and the pillowcase.  I donated my pillow.  Jacob "tested out" the casket.  I thought that was morbid and creepy.  I refused to do the same. 

Our whole family, including my mom's brothers, put him in the casket and drove him across the state line to Arizona to be buried in Snowflake, where his grandfather was buried (at least, I think that's why he was buried there).  The picture below is of him in that cemetery, maybe a year before he died. 

We had the burial on a Sunday, and the cemetery was closed but we begged a caretaker.  We lit herbs on fire and smoked items that we put into his casket, a Native American tradition (Gerald was obsessed).  The whole thing weirded me out.  We ended up moving to the same town two years later and I cannot remember ever going to his grave.  Now I never will.  Snowflake, AZ is not a place I want to spend any more of my time in.

He was around 30.  He had bent down in his wheelchair to pick up the key he had dropped and didn't have enough strength in his neck muscles to lift himself back up.  He suffocated.

I went on to spend a good amount of my time in high school reading books like Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and reading poetry in a cemetery or buying flowers to put on lonely looking graves.  Sam and I took our friend to a cemetery one night to read Shakespeare in a family plot.  We weren't even through one sonnet when the coyotes started to howl. 

These were my youthful moments with death.

P.S. This Happened

My Life Story: Hygiene Problems

Puberty came too early for me. 

I was one of the youngest kids in fifth grade in a combined fifth/sixth grade class.  And yet I was the big boobed girl.  It wasn't something I was proud of.  And when my mother first told me I needed to wear a bra I felt mixed emotions of excitement, uncomfortableness and humiliation.  What people don't usually talk about when it comes to puberty is how you also start to smell.  Heaven knows I needed deodorant.  Badly.

I had not started my period yet (that would just be icing on the cake a year later) but my body had changed.  Adiposity rebound hit me hard and I had gained weight, in addition to the new boobs.  I had a belly.  Previously I had never been the overweight kid.  It just hit all at once.

I found myself in fifth grade with a pudgy body, boobs, curly hair that I'd never been taught how to brush and subsequently was always in a "rats nest" at the nape of my neck, temperamental about my bra and deodorant (both of which I didn't wear nearly as often as I should have) and never having been taught that soap, tooth brushing and washing behind the ears were important.  I became the dirty smelly kid in class. 

The sixth grade girls would often make fun of me for all of these issues.  Mostly about the hair combing.  I had few friends.  I had Christina, who was a sixth grader with similar issues, Sam Bacon, who had been my best friend since third grade, Sarah, who I would find out the last day of fifth grade was actually mentally retarded, and Cerise, whose family was trying to reactivate my family back to church.  This was the year that I became so, so self conscious about who I was.  I found myself earnestly believing in dieting. I would cry in my room thinking that if I died no one would care.  And then I would think of Grammy Callahan and that she would miss me.  One person.  I believed one person would truly miss me if I died. 

Now talking about my hygiene problems is a joke.  Some of the things people don't fully grasp is that I didn't stop having the rat nest hairstyle until I was in seventh grade, which was about the time that I started wearing a bra and deodorant consistently.  I had lice for six months-partly because my mom thought I just had fleas, and partly because we couldn't brush through my hair with the teeny tiny comb included in the lice shampoo box.  I didn't start using soap when I showered until I was a sophomore in college.  And I'm embarrassed to say when I actually started brushing my teeth.  I still haven't mastered washing behind my ears or making my shoes not smell. 

Sometimes, there are things in our life that make us want to shudder.  Like being the friendless picked on smelly kid in school.  But we learn and we grow and the people that stick around are the ones that are really worth something.  I still get self conscious about my hygiene, and I probably always will.  These things happen.  And life goes on.

Also, why didn't my parents have an intervention?  If my daughter was walking around braless when she shouldn't be, there would be a talking to.  The end.