I'll give both of you merit badges for growing up and living in California. It doesn't sound at all nice. But then, nothing can compete with my childhood home-a picturesque, historic Southern town of six or eight thousand nestled in the Blue Ridge, but with two colleges to provide "culture" (and both all-male schools which made it even more idyllic) We roamed the countryside on our bikes, played in the dark with no fear, and knew everyone around us-bad and good, although I had no knowledge of really bad. Even the drunks who stood on Main Street were familiar to us, and when twenty years later, I came home to work in Social Services, many of them were my clients, while their children now stood drunk on Main Street and nodded politely to me as I passed. Two high school classmates died before graduation, one during a football practice, and one when a tractor rolled on him. Drugs? Well-in sixth grade a girl named Brenda was accused of being addicted to ---aspirin. we spoke of her in hushed, shocked tones. Her parents were called. She left class. Many years later Brenda gave birth to a mentally retarded child. Do you think?...
The most threatening thing that ever happened to me was walking to school one day with my friend Mary Mana Deaver (real southern girls always had two first names) and we were passing Mrs. Zollman's big old house (Rooms for Rent)and we heard a banging from a third floor window. When we looked up, a young man, stark naked, was plastered against the window-like one of those stuffed Garfield kitties you see on the rear windows of cars. He was grinning and waving. We pretended not to see him and then we started to giggle and ran all the way to school. For a while, our friends would walk down that street with us and slyly glance up ("Is that the window?") He never did it again, although we always hoped. |
