YOU

YOU.... YOU piss me off! Really, YOU do... always letting me go when I'm not ready to go...what if I wasn't ready? What it wasn't my time to leave? What if there was more knowledge to be gained? YOU make no sense.. YOU say the same thing over and over and I wasn't listening the first time YOU came off with your attitude... I understand your blowups and rationalities but YOU are not comprehending what I am trying to say. YOU are not listening. YOU are not comprehending? YOU are not paying attention or are somehow unable to absorb correctly...

And YOU... YOU don't even want me to start on YOU.. YOU have alot of nerve. YOU talk a big talk but sit back and watch it all happen in front of YOU. YOU have excuse after excuse and reason after reason... YOU don't call.. YOU don't text... YOU don't anything. YOU think I am someone I am not.. YOU got it twisted.. YOU want me to be someone I'm not.. YOU say YOU don't play games but YOU were playin from day one... YOU got me thinkin somethin else... YOU are probably beyond repair and don't want me to go there...

YOU should of stayed quiet cause now it's fittin to come out on YOU... YOU are worthless.. YOU had me all wrapped up in your twisted world and YOU played with my emotions... YOU, YOU, YOU are so not even worth it anymore... YOU really let me and mine down.. YOU gave up on me and YOU walked away... YOU had me believing in something called forever and then before the impact even occured YOU hit me with hurt and pain... YOU never were a forever kind of person were YOU??? Did YOU plan it all along?? YOU should have thought about things? YOU should of trusted in me? YOU should of known me better? You should of known? What YOU know now besides the silence YOU created??

YOU... always tryin to pull one over on me... YOU .. YOU know who YOU are...YOU think YOU are slick but YOU ain't... YOU always wanting and never giving... YOU always beggin.. YOU a sly guy YOU... always doing the minimum and gettin the maximum... YOU feel like I owe YOU?? YOU need more training.. YOU are spoiled and selfish and weak ...YOU shouldn't of slept through class... YOU don't struggle, YOU have life handed to YOU... YOU are a child.. a step below me and YOU don't have the guts to get on this level.. YOU are silly to think YOU can compete.... YOU need to get on this level... YOU need schooling of some sort to think YOU can come up like that... YOU a dreamer ...

YOU... boy YOU trippin... talkin bout' YOU want me to do this and YOU want me to do that... YOU love me.. YOU want to take care of me... Do YOU even know me?? Do YOU know yourself?? YOU are crazy to think YOU can handle this... YOU are too out of the game to know the first steps... YOU are self absorbed and YOU are not healthy... YOU are toxic and YOU should not be subjecting YOU to other people... YOU are nuthin' but a pipedream and YOU live your life accordingly... YOU are easy to read and easy to please.. YOU roam too much and end up in too many wrong places at the wrong times... YOU need to know better cause YOU are to old to be doing such childish things... YOU are silly to think noone else sees your foolishness... YOU trippin...

Tragedies....

You would never know if you saw me at my place of employment or in a public setting that I have lived a hard life. If I helped you with an item at work you might say I am happy and helpful, joyous, cordial or nice. It takes ALOT for me to carry that persona everywhere..... Did you ever wonder about the person behind the gas station counter, or the waitress that just brought your drinks, or the check-in clerk at the hotel? They "seemed like a nice girl" is probably what you would think, but did you know that they probably really fight the urge to call in sick or hide from the mean cruel world known to others as "the public".....

My hard life consists of crazy things I have witnessed and experienced along my twisted path .... Check em out ....

in no particular order............

One month before my eighteenth birthday I was arrested for Driving While Under the Influence of alcohol..... I was less than a quarter of a mile from my house and in a brand new car I hadn't had for more than 10 days. I was coming home from a party, highly intoxicated, and lost control of that super soft to the touch power steering and flipped my car.. end over end ... sideways in one side of a six foot ditch... over.... and landed on the other side... my neighbor Chad saw and heard my brakes from his house and said "my car looked like a basketball being dribbled down a court"..."I should of never walked away from that accident" Fire and Rescue said.... I blew a .116, well over the legal limit, and had to be picked up from the Johnson County jail by my mom, who was being hit on by the drunk in the holding tank next to me.
6 days after my accident I got the license plates in the mail to the vehicle I had just totaled.....

My bad luck............

When I was 18 I moved six hours from home to a town I knew three people... and to top it off ...one of those people was incarcerated. I got a job and saved all my money to bail out said person only for said person to pawn my stereo and all my Cd's and tell me he loaned them to a friend for a party. I was young and naive and went to retrieve the items after he had been sentenced to prison weeks later only to find out they were gone.... this same person bragged to all his friends in my apartment about how stupid I was for believing his lies about all the times he had cheated on me while I hid in the closet with a friend and heard it from his lips....

My life..............

When I was 19 years old I was stabbed at a party by a crazy guy who was trying to start a fight in a very small, one bedroom apartment that I happen to live at with my dog. When the crazy guy lunged at me and three guys got up to pull him back he fell on a glass coffee table and me, trying to get myself and my dog out of harms way, was stabbed in the leg by the glass from my own coffee table......

My skills................


When I was 27 years old I came home to an apartment I shared with my son and a boyfriend to find drugs in my home. When I did not approve of said drugs I removed them and when the boyfriend came home and saw the said drugs missing he did not ask where they were, simply put a gun to my head in front of my five year old son and said "give it back or say goodbye"
My son and I moved 5 days later while he was at work......
And I lived in fear for two years after that..........

My grief............

Two days before my thirty second birthday my boyfriend of one year moved out while I was at work. No note, no notice, just gone..... This was tragic because my children were both involved and I had no answers and no way of knowing.... He made no contact for two days and finally said he decided he wasn't ready for the whole family thing.... I mourned him and our break-up like a death... I didn't celebrate a birthday that year even though my co-workers tried awfully hard and I had to have a friend come and stay on my couch because I would have bad moments and needed someone to come pick up my shattered torn heart......

My sadness..............

When I was 25 years old I received a phone call from a man who claimed "his wife worked with my husband and did I know they were having an affair???" When my husband found out I knew of his indiscretions he said he really never wanted to be married and wished all of it, even our son, never happened to him......

My heartbreak...............

When I was 19 years old I went on a wild shopping spree and ended up in Newport News, Virginia where I purchased my Dog. She was a purebred Keeshond and her name was Princess. She was my everything. She was with me for nine years.. through a marriage, a divorce and the birth of my son and lots of other failed relationships and moves including my move to Kentucky..... six months after our arrival Princess was stolen off our front porch. I was again devastated and no dog has EVER taken her place...........
I saw her one year after her disappearance at a house and was unable to retrieve her and when I went back they were gone and so was she........

My tragedy..............

And to think I carry such a happy bubbly personality and if you saw me you would never know the trials and tribulations I have seen and suffered..... and this is few of many..... what I can talk about.... the tragedies I have been able to overcome.
I will return to enlighten you with some comedy I have experienced and maybe in a moment of weakness I will touch or embellish on one of these memories....

Until then they are just memories that make me hard and rough on the inside afraid to let people in or see the tragedies I have lived and witnessed.....

One of Life's Journey's......

we all have many....... journeys of life that is. And sometimes those roads are bumpy, there were signs warning us, but we ignored them, and instead traveled down those roads awaiting an exciting or sometimes dangerous adventure. Sometimes the roads were smooth and pretty with scenery, but that was usually when you were looking out the window, as a passenger, on said journey of life. I have had many journeys which have led me to the far norths of Iowa to the far souths of Kentucky. This story is about another friend of mine and her journey. But before I can tell you about her I must tell you how I met her......


I was working at a telemarketing gig, which I've always been pretty good at, in the oil & gas industry. Being from a small town in Iowa, I had no knowledge or need for oil & gas investing, nor did I realize the fine lines drawn in the sand between the brokers and SEC. There are LOTS of shady oil & gas businesses and TONS of people going to jail and indicted for mail fraud and stealing people's money, but none of that concerned me, because where we worked we didn't deal with that end. All we did, as a group, was find qualified interested investors, other companies did the rest. My boss was a tyrant. Some would say, an asshole. If you asked others, cruel, mean, controlling, brainwashing and evil have been words used to describe The Great Tommy Caffee. I actually thought he was a great motivator and a good guy, (this is while I worked there) who had a dream and desires and put together a workforce he thought would accomplish these goals for him. He was hard and harsh and sometimes, yes, even an asshole, but it was his company and if you didn't like it you knew where the door was. I worked there for 4 yrs. and even though that doesn't sound long, in a company that employed 45 people yet hired 600 + per year, with that type of turnover rate I moved up the ladder quickly. Some people were fired for being a minute late to work, others for not performing as well as the rest, some were let go because they were targeted, it was a struggle to last as long as I did, but at the end of it all, I DID meet some truly wonderful friends... that I still have to this day 4 years later. One of the programs they had at work was a type of mentoring program where people with success in the company would mentor those having difficulties in order to try and help them do better or get the knack of telemarketing, so to speak. I was involved in this program and my assignment was to mentor a 19 year old girl named Cindy.

What I knew of Cindy wasn't much, she was quiet, stayed to herself, a cute little girl, brown hair, big brown eyes, pretty face, a "Cinderella" in the rough. We started hanging out at work and sure enough, she did get better. Since most of my life I tended to bond in my relationships with those who were in need of help or those I thought I could fix, Cindy and I not only bonded but became pretty good friends. We would hang together at my house. She would teach my daughter about high heels and make-up and fingernail polish, she was definitely a girly-girl and together they were like peas and carrots. As she got older and acquired more independence she started making some good and bad choices as far as her peers and I tried like any good friend to guide her. To suggest maybe who was really trying to be with you or just using you for your car. Who your friends were and who your FRIENDS were. We had these discussions often and even though I wasn't her mother I knew she looked up to me and I knew she heard what I said. She sometimes agreed and sometimes probably didn't want to hear it, but nevertheless, she made all her own choices.

She had ups and downs in her life.... mostly because of who she hung around with and sure enough sooner or later it did catch up to her. A boyfriend used her car to give a friend a ride home and they were pulled over and searched and low and behold there were drugs in her car. In the backseat behind the passenger seat. Charges were dropped later on Cindy, but in the meantime she made other choices that left her in deeper trouble.

When I was going through boyfriend troubles, it was Cindy who came to cheer me up. It was Cindy who stayed on my couch so I wouldn't be alone. It was Cindy that distracted my kids while I cried and mourned the loss. She made them laugh. She helped us forget the pain we were going through. It was Cindy, who respected me and my kids enough to take time out of her "thug" life to help heal me. Cindy had officially become part of our family. I will never be able to repay her for that or tell her thank you enough... she was a healer, and when I was always the one who motivated and lifted her spirits, she swooped in and saved the day.

Cindy had three close girly- friends from high school that she had run around with since forever and this was her crew. As each one got closer to 21 the more parties began and the rougher the crowd they seemed to be hanging with. Not long after her first arrest, her and one of her friends were again pulled over and this time they both had possession of weed and paraphernalia and both high school buddies were carted off to jail. When Cindy was finally released she learned her buddy was already out of jail, the same day as the arrest. She had wrote a statement against Cindy and no charges were then filed on her. Because of this and it being a second arrest Cindy was ordered to attend rehab and drug court. While she was there we lost contact.... for more than one reason ( my kids, my future, etc. ) I could no longer surround myself with her choices. It didn't mean I didn't support her, I just had to distance myself from her lifestyle. She was trying to live a "thug life", while I was trying to raise two kids. Really didn't mesh.....

When I no longer worked for the company in 2006 we remained friends and kept in close contact. Sometimes she would come to the house and we would sit in front of the TV for hours watching the Bachelor and talking about who He should end up with. Because of her troubles Cindy always had to be home and by a phone in case drug court called. She had to remain in her mom's house, supervised, and she was determined to change. She had a slight realization that those friends she had, may not be that good of friends after all.



On June 19th 2008 our lives turned drastically!



My family was scheduled to leave out of the country the next day for a week long trip to Canada. We were ecstatic and Cindy would be house sitting and taking care of our dogs. She was also excited because she wasn't gonna be stuck under her mom's roof, and would have free reign of our remote control... and WE HAD CABLE! My fiancee and I had gone over our HUGE list of friends, and of all those that could house sit, we knew she would be able to be there the most, plus, we knew she wouldn't have parties or destroy anything, she respected us. She was there for rest, relaxation and peace, and WE didn't want to worry about the house or our dogs while on vacation. A win-win situation for all. Cindy's mother called me in the afternoon on the 19th of June to inform me that Cindy had been arrested, along with another high-school buddy, April. April's boyfriend was a HUGE drug dealer in town and was indicted with 27 kilos of cocaine and over 100 "ex"stasy pills. "Operation Smooth Sailing" is what the local police department called it and lots of arrests were made. Cindy was one of four being held. All of them were given an opportunity to write a statement in their defense, and each were told if they did in fact write this statement, the District Attorney would recommend release until trial. When it was Cindy's turn she wrote her statement so she also could leave, but when she went in front of the judge the next morning, they recommended instead that she be held, due to her previous charges.

Since it was a federal case she was kept, hauled back to jail, and left to rot until a federal court date was set. Cindy was the only girl they kept in jail. April, her high school buddy told her, "she just couldn't do jail time.. she knew she wouldn't last," but Cindy on the other hand had been in jail before and so therefore April was prepared to let her friend Cindy take the rap for this. Their other high school buddy, Daisy, who was in the car with her during her second charge and wrote a statement against Cindy then, turned state's evidence against Cindy and April's boyfriend this time. Even went up to Frankfort and testified against them, and no charges were filed on her as well. ALL of these girls reaped benefits from April's boyfriend's drug dealing.... he paid April's rent, he paid his own rent, he gave out money freely, for nails and tanning and shopping, he provided for nights out, hotel rooms, parties, they all were taken care of. Cindy paid for her own rent but did get in on the parties and freebies. It was too hard to resist. April, being the girlfriend probably reaped the most benefits and to this day she has only served one day in jail.

While Cindy was incarcerated I went to visit her. I tried to get there at least once a month at first. My daughter visited, my son...... none of Cindy's high school buddies came. She never got one visit. Her mom came and I came... everyone else put her out of sight, out of mind and went on with their lives. Cindy, the girl who was trying to change, could not move on with her life because she was stuck in jail. Life is not fair and all should of been punished. But life plays funny games and roads traveled aren't always smooth sailing roads. When I would visit she would talk about her "thug life".... how she missed it... how she missed her friends... how she couldn't believe they just left her there but she was forgiving and ready to do whatever she had to to get out. She was stubborn and thought she wouldn't need to change her surroundings, just make better choices. She wrote her friends, who didn't write back. She wrote her boyfriend who also seldom responded.... time was slowly ticking away and her life was stuck in limbo. When her lawyer got the discovery for her case, he informed her that her statement alone was enough to convict her. The very statement they promised would set her free. She would have no choice but to wait until trial. She was frustrated, hurt, and betrayed. How could they not do anything to help her? How could the system let her down and misrepresent themselves? She was heartbroken. Sometimes she would cry of loneliness when I visited, sometimes she would cry just because she missed socialization. Sometimes we would cry together but no matter what, I was there for her when no one else was. My mom always told me when everyone else lets you down and leaves... I will be there.... and Cindy's mom must of also felt that way because no mater what she was always there for her daughter.

For Cindy, life in jail was not easy. Crazy women, fighting, arguing, counting the days of being locked down, missing out on her brothers growing up, as well as her mother being diagnosed with cancer. It was a lot for a 22 yr. old to deal with, incarcerated with no way to help. After spending a second birthday there this past March, Cindy made a decision : out with the old and in with the new. She dumped the jailbird boyfriend, chose not to have communication with those friends that had let her down so many times before, and move on with her life.. For Her.

Every time I would visit we would talk about life choices and she would say "she was not hanging around with those people anymore, she was going to go to school to be a cosmetologist". Perfect for the girl who used to do my daughter's hair and nails before this terrible nightmare had separated the two of them. She had really grown up and I was convinced whenever freedom would come for her she would be ready. Ready to make responsible, good choices, ready to face the world, work for the money, Do The Right Thing. She was ready. She had grown up, the hard way.

I went to visit her again this past October and she informed me that finally they had set a trial date and sentencing for her in early November. By now she had been incarcerated for 17 months. Seventeen months of not being able to hug your mom, watch your high school brother get into the trouble and seventeen months of not going out and hanging at the local clubs with her friends. Seventeen months of staring at the same guards and same walls and knowing your only contact with the outside world usually came on visiting day when Mom would show up. She said her lawyer was going to try to get her a minimum sentence since she had been incarcerated for so long, and she was hoping for the best.

On November third a miracle happened. Cindy was sentenced to two years probation and released from jail. Yes.....FREE! Her friend April was also sentenced and although the judge did not know the whole story as I did, he sentenced April also to two years probation and 1 day of jail, already served. Life isn't fair and Cindy learned the hard way. She paid for her friends. She paid with time. While they went on with their lives, had babies, got married, graduated from college, moved from place to place, Cindy sat behind those same walls and paid.

Cindy has come over since her release and my daughter and her have already done hair and dress-up. Make-up is next visit I'm sure. She has been in contact with her old high school girly-friends who are trying their best to seek forgiveness as their guilt continues to eat away at them, and Cindy has a heart and will probably forgive. Hopefully she will stay clear of their "night's out" and remember that these girls were not her friends for those 17 months of hell and she has already paid dearly for them. Hopefully she will not forget those days she was all alone when they forgot about her.

My mentoring days with Cindy were over years ago, but she still seeks my advice and I gladly tell her what I have experienced and what the outcomes will be. She is a strong girl who has become a tough woman with a hard shell around the heart that was always readily available. She will succeed, She will become better than the friends that left her behind. She will become an inspiration to my daughter who already idolizes her beauty and femininity. Life's journey had gotten her off the bumpy road she detoured thru, and has given her a chance to ride down a new road.... A road to recovery..... A road to salvation...... A road to peace and tranquility............

Roll On Sister........

My "Edward"

We all have one.... most of us have read the book or seen the movie.. maybe even both. the "twilight" series... a series I vowed not to read at first and then just HAD too because I wanted to know what the hype was all about.....



It's a story about a girl who feels alone in her small town until she met HIM.

The one who took her breathe away...the one who made her weak in the knees when he whispered in her ear....the one who could make her lose her train of thought as fast as she found it....the one who would never let her down. She could look deep into his eyes and see her future and she knew it would be him who would protect her and hold her and shelter her from her fears..... the one who she could not stop thinking about.. the one who read her thoughts as she thought she knew his... the one who she woke up every morning wishing for and dreaming of every night.... EDWARD



Edward was the boy your mother warned you about... He drove too fast, didn't like school, broke the rules and couldn't live without you..... he tried to play it off for his boys, but when night fell it was you he called and you he thought of. His partner for dances, his escape from the pain. You made everything better for Edward and Edward definitely made everything better for you. In the book he is a vampire but to her/you he is the knight in shining armor.



I love this book...



And everyday after he left she would grieve and await his return... sometimes scaring herself into danger just because she thought her knight in shining armor would come rescue her. And I remember "MY Edward" would make me want to do the same... throw yourself into danger to be rescued by him. Sounds smart right? If you are a girl...



I had an "Edward".... My parents forbid me from seeing him. I ran away with him, gave him my heart, soul, and virginity all wrapped in one box and it was his for the next decade... never to be seen or heard from...


When I was 15, I dated a boy that was rough and tough and a complete turn on! A Bad Boy! (My favorite kind at the time).. he smoked, drank, rocked out to Guns and Roses, and was older... two years older and he ... to me.. was the world. Everyone remembers that first time you knew you loved someone.... everyone remembers "the one". He was the first person that showed me I didn't have to do what my parents said.... a corrupter.... He was the first person that I fought for. That I put my foot down for and said, "U will not tell me no.. and if you do, I'll lie and go anyway"... I would of risked grounding and a convent school just to be with "My Edward"....



When my Mom's leash had gotten too tight and my rebellious days were just starting to take over, as I mentioned before... I ran away with "My Edward". We were on the run for two days. The first night we slept in a car, in the backseat, while friends slept in the front. I remember my friend Jen using a tape case to scrape the window of frost from the INSIDE of the car! It was cold that night but that's the only cold part I remember... "My Edward" kept me warm all night long in that backseat. I remember being afraid to fall asleep and wake up and he not be there....When we were finally brought back by to our parents I remember the last conversation I had with him... "I'll come back for you... wait for me..."

those were the last words I saw him speak...... And at that point, I was more worried about losing him than my consequences....






that my friends............................. is Young LOVE................






As I read the books I remembered being in her shoes... I had lots of friends at school but no one like "my Edward".... nothing and no one could take his place... At 15, that 17 year old boy hung the moon and stars for me.. and whatever else he wanted to hang for that matter. When he would hold me in his arms nothing and no one else mattered...when he would make me mad my heart would yearn deeper for him... he was my safe haven and he made all evil things good... he knew me like no one does... still to this day, my heart skips a beat and races when I think about it... after all he was the one.


He was the one from the Pretty Woman movie who rode up in the white limo on the worst of possible days and stuck his head out the window with flowers and said "I'm here to rescue you" and as you climbed down by the fire escape ladder and your heart pounded thru your chest... he was the one who whisked you away to happiness.... and in the background instead.........





"it must of been love.... but it's over now.... " played.....


for this dream, for me, never happened...





throughout my entire life on ALL of those worst days when I was at my lowest and in my deepest darkest hole... I sobbed and I waited.. for "my Edward" to come rescue me.........





and he never came....





It's been twenty years since I last put my hands on him. Twenty years since I felt his touch, twenty years since I felt the warmth of his breathe as he whispered into my ear.... I still remember it... like it was yesterday. I searched for him for years and always waited for the rescue but like the story, time marches on, and I lived thru my share of winners and losers



but "My Edward" is still out there.... somewhere...

A Girl Named Cam.....

People always ask me "why did I move to Kentucky?" Of all places??? An Iowa girl who was so naive and protected, an Iowa girl who was so rebellious and independent, an Iowa girl who had NO family in Kentucky and always thought people in Kentucky lived a simple life of bootlegging and bare footing... Like I said "naive". So why you ask? Well aside from the fact that I needed a break from reality that I knew as Iowa, the true reason I moved to Kentucky is because of a girl named Cameron, or Cam as I call her. Get your drink of tea and popcorn and sit back because this story is a good one.......

It was the summer of 98, my husband had just left me and my son with our new house and no way to afford it. And when I mean left, I mean left... with no notice, no phone call, no warning of any problems, just left. I already lived far away from family, six hours away, and the closest relative I called family was an ex boyfriends mom who had taken me under her wing and helped me become the independent person I am today. I was the part time worker and full time mom in our home, and now stuck with all the bills and responsibilities of holding a half family together. My husband was the drunk, whose mother lived half a mile away from the town we lived in where everybody knew everybody and was in everybody's business. It was a place I would later tell my friends "a town where you came to die". For example: The Gundersons lived on our street, their parents lived two streets over, their grandparents lived down the first gravel road out of town next to their parents The Gundersons. This was no place for a girl like me from a big city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa where your family is spread out all over town to be. In our small town, I was the outsider who had drove my husband away. I was the one they whispered about in the one tiny store/gas station they had. I was the shunned one who had little for friends or a support system.

The friends I did have became my family. In every sense of the word. I gained a best friend in Millie, a mother in Shirley, brothers in Paco, Michael, Daryl and Jason and good friends like Robert and Dlisha and Molly, Som and his brother C. This, in short, was our circle. Our click. We were not a bad click. We did not do bad things. In our small town, there was nothing to do and I mean NOTHING! We would all get together at my house on Monday nights to watch wrestling. The guys all did bike tricks in my basement, we even built a ramp down there. On Saturday afternoons, Paco and C would watch Lifetime movies with me (although they probably wouldn't admit to it) and I would make us all hot dogs in crescent rolls or "pigs in a blanket" as you would say in Iowa. We played darts in my basement and drank beer and even smoked occasionally but this was what we did to forget about our pains. We never stole, mistreated or vandalised anything (except we did graffiti on my basement wall), but we were a good group of kids and with what I had just been though, they were it for me.

To tell you the story of Cam, I first need to tell you the short story of Jason.... an only child to Shirley, spoiled, crazy, reckless, wild child who always tried to be younger than he was. A hit with the ladies, they always wanted Jason, and he never knew how to say "no". This made it hard for any of his girlfriends. I say girlfriends because, he had many. I met Jason in my home town and he was one of those "bad boys" you always think you can fix, but little did I know there was no fixing him. I left my big city and moved to his small town to do just that, but a jail and prison sentence later, I knew we were better off friends... and a "brother" he then became. After his four day failed marriage to MaryAnn, (who I couldn't stand) he decided to stay with friends in Nashville for awhile, and this is where he met Cam. He was crazy about Cam, and I was excited he was with anyone other than MaryAnn.

Cam was obviously just as crazy about him, because she couldn't stand the fact that he had moved back to our small town in Iowa, and she decided to spread her wings and move too. To IOWA! The first time I met her.....I knew we would be friends. She was this cute little southern girl, with a cute little southern accent, and tons of ambition. Not the southern belles you see on TV with there umbrellas and big dresses, but a southern belle nonetheless. She had shoulder length brown all curly hair and the biggest brown eyes and the biggest smile to match. The one thing I knew from Jason about Cam, was that she was all about family and loved kids. Her and my son, Austin, seemed to bond on site. And she was a perfect addition to our "family click" indeed. We were like two bookends, Cam and I. We fought for the main character of our crazy life, and supported each other as well as the best supporting actress would. We laughed together, played together, even worked together on occasion and although the plan was for her and Jason to move into his mom's house, it wasn't long before she had moved into mine. She cracked me up with a thing called sweet tea. I had never heard of that. We had SUN tea, made in a big pitcher with tea bags and the good ol' sun. She had sweet tea, boiled on the stove with lots of sugar. She didn't carry things, she packed them, She had a whole family back home in Kentucky of "and dems" Mama and who? She had a Granddaddy who was the grandest of them all, literally. I had always had a Grandma and Grandpa and had never heard or met a granddaddy until I met Cam's. She was nutty like me and always had something silly to say with my something crazy! She helped me with my son and with my house and I was grateful she was in my life.

As with all Jason's girlfriends, time was running up for he and Cam and I dreaded this for she and I had bonded. Cameron had taken Jason, Daryl, my son and I with her for Labor Day weekend to Kentucky. She showed us the sights of Nashville, Tennessee and introduced us to her little sisters, Ash and Katherine and family. Her mother was a gracious host allowing all of us to crash at their home, and her father was also a good guy. You could tell they cared a lot about Cameron and her well being, and I assured them no matter what, with me, Cam was safe. Little did I know Cameron was already arranging to move back home. Jason was breaking her heart and she had suffered enough. The lies, the manipulation, the heartbreak and pain, you really don't want to hear the bad stuff... When she moved away she just had to get out. She had seen the man for who he was and there was no way she could raise their child with him. Not around him, she needed her family....

A few months passed, the dust settled, and I wrote to Cam and asked her if she was okay. Could we patch things up? To me our friendship was bigger than her relationship, and to her the relationship had caused her to become pregnant and now a baby was her future. At first she wondered if she had done the right thing by moving back home, but when she had seen he had already moved on, she knew she had made the right decision. It was at this moment that our friendship was no longer about "them" or "him" but about "us". Me and Cam. Friends... soul sisters as she would say....

Her pregnancy was not easy. She was referred to specialist, who inturn said the baby wasn't growing right, she was ordered to bed rest. The Cam that drove states away, that ran with my son in the parks and drove aimlessly on the country roads with me in Iowa, was bedridden. This was killing her but she was willed to do anything for this baby growing inside her. It was her one last connection to "him", and now instead of love she had spite to do something good. To raise a child of his not to become the loser that his Dad was to her. She was having a boy, and this really got to Jason. He wanted her to come back, but by now she was determined, like I was before her, to be independent, and Iowa was the last thing on her mind. I talked to her by phone on a daily basis. I was trying to sell my house and move away from this small town that haunted me and to get as far away as possible. When she called me in tears in a panic on that hot summer day in June, I will never forget the scared little girl on the other end of that phone.......

Her baby was born and rushed to Vanderbilt Medical Center. He had heart problems and they were unsure if he would make it. I needed to be there for my friend and she needed me. I had already had my house on the market and my mind was made up. Whatever the outcome of this I was moving to Kentucky... to be with Cam and her baby boy, Dylan Hill Thomas ( named after her granddaddy).

Our wish came true and on October 1st 1999 Austin and I said goodbye to one family and headed to Kentucky to be with another. Cameron and Dylan, who was now 3 months old, were waiting for us in our new apartment and we quickly settled in. Kentucky was different in a lot of ways than Iowa. In Iowa if you have a problem with your neighbor you just quit talking to them, in Kentucky you confront them, call them out, and let them know they better not come back, sometimes with a frying pan depending on how serious you were. My best friend Millie joined us in Kentucky a month later but eventually ventured onto bigger and better cities and jobs in Atlanta. Cameron and I lived together for awhile but she quickly found a place for her and her new boyfriend, and left Austin and I in the apartment to settle into Kentucky.

As the years went by and I continued to meet new people and experience new things in Kentucky, we slowly drifted apart. Though never to still be more than a phone call away, our closeness and frequent visits became less and less. Cameron found a husband and father in Bergen and the two were married in a beautiful ceremony that I could not attend due to my pregnancy, and again it was a day I knew she needed me, and I needed her. When my daughter was born, Cameron was the first to say, "let me help" and her and Dylan became babysitters at times when I worked and had no one to watch her. We always had an unspoken word between us... a bond that said "no matter what, I'm there for you". When her granddaddy fell ill Cameron packed up her son and husband and moved them to her grandparent's home to help take care of him. The southern girl I had met in Iowa was once again taking care of her family. It was at this time we lost touch......

I had gotten busy and overwhelmed with taking care of two children as a single mom and I knew she couldn't handle my burdens as well as her own. She was becoming the backbone of her family and with both grandparents passing she did just that. She rose above it all and found strength to tend to them when they were ill and at their lowest. From her granddaddy to her grandma, to her mother and sisters, Cameron was the glue holding her family together.

Little did I know, she was also going through pain herself.....

Years went by and I wondered what Cameron was doing and how her and that beautiful baby Dylan were. I wondered if they were even still in Kentucky, if her Mom still lived in the same place. I had not seen her around. Even though I had moved to this state for her and her son, to help them, mentally, financially, and physically, I had let her slip away, and wasn't sure how I would find her again. I had moved all this way, only to lose track of her..... Mission Not Accomplished.

The happy ending my friends is that I recently found my Cam. She is living the good life in a little town of Blackshear, Georgia where the main mode of transportation is the golf cart. She is still married to that wonderful Bergman who wakes up everyday and lives to make her happy. Her son Dylan is a smart, strong little man who is growing up with a great father and incredible surroundings. Cameron is well. Cameron has lived and loved and Cameron has even lost but in the end Cameron has become someone to admire. The way she makes it look so easy... life that is... the accomplishments and obstacles she has overcome. She is someone I am proud, so proud to call a friend. A true friend. A loving mother to her children, a great sister to Ash and Kat, an incredible daughter to Bonita, and an all around genuine soul sister to me. I am in awe of her and her abilities. I thought I was the strong one yet she is stronger, I thought I had the courage and stability, yet once again it is her. If you ever meet her make sure you take it all in..... because she is the true meaning of southern hospitality and a true soldier in the name of sisterhood.
I love ya Cam!

Living in the Country... Pt.1

When I was in second grade we moved to the country. However, because my Grandma owned the best daycare in town that I happen to frequent while Mom was at work, I didn't have to change school districts, nor did I lose my friends because of the move. I went to Cleveland Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from Kindergarten to Sixth grade. During these years I was completely care free. No worries, no bills, no stress, no complications. The Younger Years. Those were the days........

In sixth grade, we as a class, did the whole chicken hatching in the incubator experience and even opened some of the eggs on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days to see the process of growth and drew pictures of what we saw. It was the first time I had ever dealt with any kind of dissection. It wasn't gross to me, which as a sixth grade girl it should of been. Instead, in my head, it was all chalked up to science. The circle of life. How we learn about birth and death. When the chicks hatched they were ADORABLE! All cute and yellow, and fluffy, and just precious little chicks all a chirping. They stayed in our classroom for the remainder of the week, and my friends and I quickly picked our favorites. I had told my parents all about them and on Friday, my Mom and Dad came to the school to pick me up and offered to take the chicks off my teacher's hands! I was ecstatic! All these little chicks I had patiently watched over for 32 days were now coming home with me. It was the first time I was grateful we lived in the country. Mom and Dad boxed them up and off we went. When we got home I saw Dad had created a chicken coop with chicken wire all around the outside and a small house for the chickens to reside while they grew to become egg producers. I loved my new little pets. I had names for some of them, and I kept tabs and updates on all of them for my friends at school.

As the weeks turned into months, my cute yellow chicks lost their little yellow fluff and started turning into white, black, and brown chickens. We had roosters and hens now, big ones and small ones, not the cute little fluffy yellow chicks I had loved. As they grew, they would start to fly a little too. They could not yet get out of their chicken wire pen but they were trying. My Dad started a compost out by their coop so they had our leftover veggies to eat and they got bigger and bigger. By the end of the school year, they were full grown.

That summer, I spent some time at my Grandma's daycare realizing I was about to go into junior high. This would be my last summer at daycare and I would no longer be coming into town to go to school. I would start junior high at the school in the country and have all new friends. I had one friend at this new school, Sam, who lived a road over but she was also a grade younger. Even so, I would now ride the bus to school and back and the driveway, was my new walk to school, instead of the three blocks to Cleveland Elementary from Grandma's house.

On my first day of seventh grade, my Mom drove me to the end of the driveway, and like Forrest Gump, she introduced herself to Phil, the bus driver, and proceeded to snap pictures as I took my first bus ride. This DID NOT happen in Kindergarten or first grade because I walked from Grandma's. This moment which would seem fun and cute at age 5 or 6 was completely embarrassing at the age of 12 or 13 and I think Phil was blushing. My Mom was a hottie!

During the fall, the chickens were still trying to get over that chicken wire but to no avail.... Every now and then on the weekends, Dad would let them out of the pen to wander the yard. It was fun watching him and my little brother trying to chase them all back in when the sun was starting to fall. I remember it would take hours sometimes....

Winter was a cold one, like it always is in Iowa. Those chickens stayed bundled up in that coop and during winter they definitely became Dad's pets, because it was too cold to go check on them. Even the cats were on their own and I just prayed they were warm.

By spring I had gotten pretty good at getting up and down this quarter mile driveway we lived at the end of. From the house there was a hill, a big hill that I ventured up and then down, to a long leveled off part and at the end was the gravel road. If Phil saw me get over the hill, and if he was going slow enough to look, he would stop and wait for me. If he was rolling, I would miss the bus and have to walk back up and down the hill, to the house to call Mom at work and have her come get me and take me to school. This frustrated Mom because she worked in town and had to take off of work and drive 23 minutes to get me, take me to school and then head back to work. As a working mother now, this would piss me off. I don't know how she put up with me. Later in high school, I remember not even trying to catch the bus, just so I could go late and she would have to come get me. What a non appreciative kid I was. Spoiled! But anyway, back to the story......

Most mornings I had to be at the bus stop by 6:15 A.M. That's early! I was the first person Phil picked up in the morning. Also the first one in the country off the bus. Phil usually let his bus warm up in the bus garage at school, which gave me ten or more extra minutes. If I was there by 6:25 I usually beat him, and didn't have to wait long. The morning walk was cold at that hour, but after school on those first spring afternoons, the walk home was refreshing. My driveway was surrounded by cornfields on both sides. Once you got to the top of my hill, walking home, you could see our garage, our pretty green front yard in front of our beautiful country home, and the chicken coop. The chickens had reached their full growth by now and were able to fly out of the coop, much to my surprise. They eventually as the days went by, would wander all around the yard making themselves at home. Every night, Dad would have to round them up into their house. Every afternoon, they were back out. As they started to get more comfortable around the yard, they started to make me more uncomfortable.

When the bus would drop me off at 2:45P.M. I would start my walk up the long quarter mile drive. The first long straightaway I would reflect on the day, think about what I would do when I got home, remind myself of homework, who I would call, if I had chores.... it was a long walk. Once I got to the top of the hill, I was usually anxious to get to the house, maybe I had to pee from the long walk, maybe I just wanted to sit and drink something cool and refreshing... I would start down the hill carrying my heavy bag and the roosters would spot me coming, and like guard dogs they would head my way. They would get close, but not too close, and by the time I reached my porch they were on my heels in attack mode! This started to scare me and I asked my Mom for help. She suggested a baseball bat. The next morning I took the baseball bat down to the end of the driveway and put it by the fence before Phil got to my stop. It was a plastic bat my brother used to hit corn cobs with in the yard. He had a good arm. After school that afternoon, I waited for Phil to drive away and then grabbed the bat and started the trek home. As I reached the hill, I played in my mind how I was gonna swing at these roosters and scare them away once and for all and as I started quietly down the hill, again, like guard dogs here they came.... slowly making their way nonchalantly towards me, so as to claw my eyes out and leave me for dead... or so I thought. When I reached the bottom of the hill, they started to get close and I hadn't really considered my heavy bag and the effect it would have on my swing. When one got close I took aim and let him have it! WHAM! I hit him hard!!!!! And I saw it- in slow motion- I swung........................................... and connected.......................................and the rooster's head flipped to the side and then stood straight back up in pure rage! He was now out for blood and I had made my move! As the shock in what had just happened wore off for both of us... I CUT OUT! Running... as fast as I could...running...feeling my life flash before me... running... because death of a rooster would not be cool... running... he's getting closer... I quickly thought fast and threw my bag in his direction by the garage and bolted for the house. As I reached the door, he reached the porch. I was ALIVE!!!

Moments later I had no choice..... I looked out the window to see if the coast was clear to go and fetch my bag.... he was waiting. I called Mom.

"Mom, I need your help..."

"Joy, I'm at work, what is it?"

"Can you pick my bag up out of the driveway on your way home?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I had to throw it at the rooster to save my own life! And now I can't do my homework until you get here with my bag."

"Okay, we'll talk about this when I get home. I'll get your bag."

my hero....

That night, we had a talk. I told Mom and Dad about the rooster and how I hit him with the bat and my bag and still to no avail, he was on my heels. I told then he was some kind of mutant rooster that didn't even flinch when I struck bat to his head, and he is now probably out to destroy me. I was scared of them all not just the one, and I didn't want them anymore. How can we keep them confined? I had asked.... Dad clipped their wings so they couldn't fly out of the coop. It didn't help.....

For the next week Mom stopped everyday and picked up the bat and my bag from the driveway, and everyday after school I went through the traumatic experience of risking my life to get home and not be maimed by the ferocious rooster that now ruled our home. The following weekend my brother was outside playing and the rooster jumped on his back and rode my brother around the yard, who was screaming for Dad the whole time to come rescue him from the rooster. When Dad went to save my brother, an altercation occurred between my Dad and the rooster, and although Dad says he won the rooster bit him and almost took a toe!

When Sunday of that weekend came, I woke up to my Mom busy on the phone with relatives and Dad outside digging a hole. I went out to see what was going on. "You'll see" He said with a smile. My Dad and my brother went and got a tree stump from the back yard and put two nails in it and set it by the hole. Then my Grandma and both of my aunts showed up. My aunt Barb asked if I was going to help... I wasn't even really sure what was going on. Then Dad grabbed a rooster and headed to the stump. He put the rooster's head in between the nails, my Grandpa held on to the bird and my Dad chopped that rooster's head off and threw the head in the hole. I was in shock! My Grandpa let it go and it ran through the yard with it's head cut off in no certain direction, making no noise, blood squirting, and my brother chasing it and laughing at such a funny sight. After it would stop, he would pick it up and take it in the house where four women in aprons with big boiling pots would boil, defeather, cook, freeze and disperse of every rooster and chicken we had. At times the whole kitchen would smell and then there were feathers everywhere as Grandma showed all the other ladies the ropes on how to tend to a fresh bird.

It was a gratifying moment for me. Those birds got their day and I never felt scared walking home after that. My brother played freely in the yard, and Dad's toe eventually got better. We ate chicken every Sunday for a lot of Sundays and had homemade chicken nuggets too. Those cute fluffy yellow chicks turned out to be some juicy chicken nuggets. Our family never got any more chicken, or any other barnyard animals for that matter after that... We just stuck to our cats and dogs and a pond full of fish.

The End

Midnight in the Cut

This story takes place in a small town in Iowa... You are thinking all towns in Iowa are small but this is not true.. there are big towns and little towns. I know what you're thinking but people actually do live in Iowa.. This is not, I repeat, NOT a state that you drive thru to get somewhere west/east. Iowa- where the corn side is crispy..... Iowa- if you build it... they will come. IOWA! I have lived in both a big town in Iowa, Cedar Rapids, and a few smaller towns, Swisher, Spirit Lake, Okoboji, and Lake Park. This story takes part somewhere around these parts...


Growing up, I lived in the country on a 13 acre farm surrounded by cornfields with a quarter mile driveway that I would have to walk up and back to catch the school bus. Everyone who went to my school rode a school bus... everybody! 1st rule of the school bus- if a bus couldn't make it down just one gravel road to pick up a kid for school in the winter- we weren't going! As kids we loved being home extra days for snow, but we also hated going to school til June 13th! We wanted ALL of the three months it was hot in Iowa to enjoy, and not to be stuck in a classroom.

I had lots of friends who also lived in the country and we would often convince our parents to drop, or pick us up, so we could all hang out at someones house together. When this didn't happen my friend Sam lived a blacktop road away, and I could call her and she would walk her long driveway, as I would mine, and we would meet halfway so to speak ( all though I may have walked a little farther, depending on where we met.) We got good at this, me and Sam, always meeting and then going to wreak havoc in the countryside. We explored for fun! We would find cricks and creeks which, depending who you ask, are probably the same thing. Sometimes her brother would sneak up on us and scare us but most times it was just us! When we were younger we would explore and get away to gossip in the middle of the woods where no one could eavesdrop. As we got older this ritual became more of "what time were we meeting in the middle of the night" at the corner.

Sam and I both convinced our parents to let us get a job to keep us out of trouble... however it very well may be what started getting us into trouble looking back. Most of my mischief was with Sam, but we sure did have fun. We got really good at going to work at the same restaurant together, in a neighboring town, and our parents picking us up and bringing us home. We would always be so tired after work and ready to head off to bed, only to really go to our own rooms, at our own houses, and start getting ready for the evening. We were 15 and 14, young and ambitious, and at least three times a week sometimes more we were sneaking out and hanging at the corner.....

It sounds bad when I say it like that but that IS what we would do! We rarely left the corner... and to some it didn't even look like a corner, just a place where a gravel road came to a blacktop and to this day I bet no one else has ever met at that corner, it was our spot! And we, as conniving girls who think of everything had marked our territory. We had a Bud Light case box of beer at this corner, buried in the high grass of the 7 foot ditch, and every night before venturing to the spot to hang with my girl, I would get dressed in my baggiest, yet cutest jeans and stuff the legs of my jeans with beer bottles that Sam and I had took from our place of employment and snuck home with us that day. If my parents, or her parents for that matter, knew that we stole beer from that restaurant we worked at we would of been grounded, maimed, and never allowed to go back but they never caught on. I could fit three bottles down each leg and sometimes a couple in the front. Eight, that was what I was responsible for, and I'm sure Sam could do the same. At the stroke of midnight or sometimes a few minutes earlier or later, I would slowly venture downstairs to the front door... quietly, not stepping on the third step that creaked and missing the sixth step on the left because it made a noise too sometimes. Slowly to the front porch door, which was a screen door. I would detach the spring so it wouldn't slam shut and be on my way using moonlight and the shine of it off the gravel to make my trek. I would be so slow and cautious, not to stir up a rock or any dust until I got over that first hill in our driveway and also not to mention trying to walk without bending my knees the whole time because the beer bottles in my jeans would not allow this. The adrenaline from the risk always allowed me to sneak away quietly, so as not to get caught and leave my friend waiting. From the end of the driveway, I ventured down the gravel road our driveway met to the blacktop, where I would meet Sam. I always tried to hurry once I got to this point because I worried about Sam walking on the blacktop from her long driveway to meet me, and I also worried that a car may come barrelling down this gravel road at any minute and I, who is trying her best to make it down this gravel road by moonlight with beer bottle lids cutting into my legs, may have to roll for the ditch so as not to be seen OR get run over..... and what if it was my parents! Worse fear but it never happened... at least not on my nights sneaking out with Sam. Once over the final hill of the gravel to where I could see the blacktop road and our corner I would get excited! Looking back I'm not sure why. It's not like there were 50 people waiting and music playing, never happened, we were meeting in the middle of the night in the middle of no where, where a gravel road met the blacktop road we both lived off of. Once there, we would quickly unload all of our party favors into the case box we had waiting. Then we would count... almost to determine how long we had and how many we would each get. We would sit on the side of the gravel road and drink. Two young girls, under the stars, drinking beer bottles one after another, laughing and giggling and all the while not caring about rules or where we should have been or what we should have been doing. We would talk about work that night, or customers, or the boys at school that we liked to flirt with. We were in our own little worlds at that corner and no one ever knew about it but us! It was our spot.

Sometimes after about 3 or 4 bottles each, we would wander (Sam may say we stumbled) on down to the Brown residence. You could see their house from the corner and I guess as two young girls do once they get a few in them and then decide to wreck havoc, off we went. At the Brown's, we would tap on their boy Nick's window to awake and invite him into our party. Nick was a grade older than me and two grades older than Sam. Nick also worked with us, as did his older brother, at the restaurant we got the beer from. They had flower boxes below their windows and we would lean on them and sometimes leave beer bottles in them while we woke Nick and got him to come outside. They had a brown picnic table outside of their brown and white house and we would lay our drunk selves on the picnic table and watch the stars spin around. Most nights we wandered down to the Brown's, we woke Nick or his brother up, but some nights we just used the picnic table as a place to brace ourselves from the spinning that always took place. I apologize now for any damage we may have done to the outside of the Brown residence. Litter, with the beer bottles we left, (but sometimes we threw them in their outside trash), and that flower box we were leaning on one night, it kinda hung lower than the other after that. Most times, the boys would come out and drink a beer and laugh at us but we never stayed long and we never offered more than one beer a piece, for it was that many more we would have to replenish. The picnic table and the walk, would bring on the drunkenness, which would bring on the spinning stars, and later the wooziness to where we would both get a little combo of tired/scared/ready to pass out syndrome, and would decide to return home. It all depended on how much talk we needed to talk, or how much fun and laughter we needed to get out, and how tired we would end up, before we went home each going our separate ways, until morning when one would ride with the other's parents to work, where the cycle would continue. Sometimes I'd be home by 2am other times 4am but never after the sun, I always beat it home.

We both now would never let our children do such a thing and can't believe how stupid we were and how dangerous and unsafe it was. We could of ended up like those missing paperboys, but we were only there to get away from parents, to do what WE wanted to do and to not get caught. We never left with the few truck drivers that stopped, we knew better, and we never did anything wrong except drink a few beers in the middle of the country in the middle of the night and we had never gotten caught!

After months of doing this cycle and sliding out in the middle of the night, we decided to push the envelope a bit, and Sam and I arranged for boys we knew with a car to pick us up and take us into the big town to "cruise the avenue". Once again, thru the house like a mouse and out the door to the moonlit path of the driveway, to the gravel road, to the blacktop. By now I was a professional. On this night we brought few replacements for the box because we knew we weren't staying. The boys picked us up in a big Monte Carlo I think, I wasn't big on cars, and off we went on our first adventure. Up and down the avenue we drove, screaming out the window and singing to lyrics of our favorite heavy metal bands. Yelling at people parked along the side of the avenue in various parking lots. We would even talk to cars we pulled up next to at red lights. Enjoying the freedom, enjoying the music, at this point the boys we were with really didn't matter much either, it was the moment and we were living in it. Two teenage girls, partying like rock stars! We had loud music, boys, and beer and when they stopped cruising the avenue and pulled up into the peep show parking lot we were like "WHAT???" We had no idea what went on behind these doors in this building but we knew our parents would not approve and it was this moment I wished we hadn't of left our little corner in the middle of nowhere.

One of the boys went inside the building, and as we waited in the car it started to rain. I told Sam if we were on our corner right now, we would of been heading home so as not to get wet, and she agreed. When he came back to the car we would have him drop us back off at the place he picked us up. A 20 minute drive back to our blacktop. As I said before, as teen aged girls, we had no clue about what went on at a peep show, only that our parents wouldn't of allowed us there, and when he got back into the car and had a tiny bottle that had liquid and a little ball inside and said to Sam, "here sniff this", we both said we should probably get home. I found out later what that bottle was and it probably wouldn't of killed us, but still we were all ready freaking out about the rain, and if our parents caught us on the avenue, in cars with boys, we were surely dead. As he drove us home I was getting nervous, we had stayed out later than this many of nights, but never had we left the corner. He stopped along the blacktop and Sam jumped out and I told her I would see her in the morning for work, and then he dropped me off at the corner and I ran up the gravel road, trying to avoid any puddles. Slowing to catch my breathe once I reached the driveway and nervous as all get out. The rain had slowed to a drizzle by now and I wasn't much worried about being out in it, rather just leaving the corner. We had struck out on an adventure and all I could think about now was getting into my warm bed and knowing I was safe from grounding. As I headed over the last hill on my driveway, I noticed the house looked as still as I had left it. No lights on.... relief... once again I had successfully snuck out and not gotten caught, and the adventure was fun. I stepped onto the porch and reattached the spring to the screen door and avoided the third and sixth step on the way up. First, I headed into the bathroom and washed my hands and face and then quietly tip-toed to my room so as not to wake my parents whose bedroom happened to be below. Once I had made it to my room, I turned on the light and started to take my shoes off. I looked over at my bed and thought to myself how I sure did do a good job with those pillows because it actually looks like someone was in my bed. When I pulled the covers back, there he was! Sound asleep in my bed! My FATHER! I had no choice but to wake him and when I did it was over.....

Apparently, dear old Dad was awoken to the rain and decided to be a sweetheart and go throughout the house and shut all of the windows. When he got to my room he thought I must be sweating to death with my face all hidden under the blanket, and when he went to pull the blanket back so I could breathe he noticed it was a pillow and not his daughter. So because he didn't know the first place to search in the countryside, and also didn't want to awaken my mother, who would have panicked and had the national guard out searching before the sun broke, he climbed into position and waited for Joy to arrive. I was in trouble and no longer safe from grounding.

It was the last night Sam and I would ever sneak out to the corner. I fessed up after four previous excuses they didn't buy mostly, and told how we met at the corner and when it started to rain we headed home. I could not explain why I was home so late, nor did I mention the adventure we had taken. For all I know my father searched gravel roads for us, but I was betting he didn't. The next morning my parents took me to Sam's and I had to tell her parents what we had done and she was mad at me. She too, also ended up grounded. I know I was a snitch, but I knew my parents would be more pissed and not believe me if I had told them I was sneaking out to be alone. They were not stupid.

Months later after we had gotten ungrounded and earned back our parents trust, Sam and I ran into those same boys at a Whitesnake/Great White concert. We sat way up in the top section and I think by the end of the night we realized those boys weren't for us. We did not go to their car with them and we did not get their phone numbers to stay in touch. We never saw those crazy boys again but Sam and I continued on our many adventures,this time staying in the countryside, and avoiding nights at the corner.....