April 9th, 2017
Exciting News!!! For me anyway. I’m starting to brainstorm
for my next book!!! The title will be: Places I’ve Had Car Trouble. It’s a
prequel to Yoga Mama’s Buddha Sandals, and will be a series of stories about
some of my wackiest adventures that have been brought my way compliments of
some form of unusual automobile experience. For some of you who were biting
your nails that you were going to be in YMBS, starting biting. If you were
involved or possibly even near, during any of my many hairy automobile
experiences, now is the time to mention whether or not you want your name
changed. Off the top of my head, I don’t think anyone should be worried about
appearing in any unflattering light as every single one of those experiences I
remember fondly. But then I haven’t started full delving yet. I plan to use a
lot of the Thousand Words A Day in April to start rebuilding the bone fragments.
I am grateful for those experiences. This may come as an
immense shock to anyone who knows anything about me, but I’m grateful for ALL
of my past and every challenge. I Love who I am and I wouldn’t be me if not for
every pebble in the brook shaping who I’ve become. I’m grateful for being on my
own at an early age and being forced to carve out a life using tools I picked
up along the way. I’m grateful for doing that poor. I’ve had so many amazing
adventures, so many spiritual affirmations, all because I didn’t have any
money.
Poor people who decide to take up traveling have incredible
adventures that those with money may never tap. They have to try so much harder
to test themselves. On any given trip, how many nights do they spend under the
stars, how many meals eaten quietly around a campfire, listening to the
crackling flames and watching the coals pulsate with color. Because they can't afford a hotel. Sure they might go
camping, on occasion, with all the best gear, their friends, their credit
cards. But they will never know the feeling of being raw out there. To be “out
there” with no safety net. I got to do it. As if contained by some invisible
force, I’d felt tethered not only to a town, but to an existence. Blockaded
mentally, physically, and financially to a life I didn’t want so much I finally
concluded I’d rather die than stay the course. I’m not recommending this path
for anyone. Not advocating one single foot in the direction. Not even a little
bit. I should have died. Many, many times I should have died. Strange to think
of it, but Death plays such a role in shaping my Life.
And it all started with cars. Fast cars actually. My father,
may-he-rest-in-peace-and-I-sure-do-mean-it, had a sense of honor I still don’t
fully comprehend but one of his life’s principles was that if he told me he was
going to do something, he kept his word, at what cost to him, I may never know.
If you already know the story about him telling me he was going to kill me, you
know that that could also be a very bad thing. That’s actually the worst thing
he ever told me he was going to do and he hasn’t done it yet and I’m pretty
sure he’s dead himself now. Anyway, he made two promises to me that he kept
despite, well, a great many things. Number One: Until my parents divorce when I
was twelve, I’d been a Southern parent’s dream. I was quiet, meek, and scared
of them and God almighty. To keep it short I’ll just tell you that their
divorce was such a crazy affair that it caused me to change completely in a
matter of months. I went from a shivering chihuahua to a rebellious tween who
ended up getting arrested six times in six months and having Juvenile Court
decide that I had to spend a year in a Catholic, ahem, boarding school. My
father told me the day he dropped me off with the stern-faced, habit-wearing
Mother Stephens, that he would get me out in a year. Mother Stephens was
recommending two years in order to more fully…banish my rebellious nature. He was
good to his word. A year to the day, we were loading my suitcase into his pickup
truck and heading away for the last time. I would have been more grateful to my
father for this act of heroism, which it was, except that he was such a very
bad father in so many other ways. No time for details about that and I pretty
much never want to spend much time on those kind of details anyway. Let’s just
say that I was removed from his custody several times by social services
because neighbors or friend’s parents turned him in for child abuse. Even in
Tennessee you can’t actually beat your children enough to leave marks. I was
sixteen the night he told me he was going to kill me. The night I crawled out
my window and ran away with a friend, then turned myself in to my probation
officer the next morning telling her to lock me up, I couldn’t go back. Cliff
notes: I got immancipated, made an adult in charge of my own affairs. After
awhile, I kept in touch with my father because…well, this probably won’t make
much sense, but he was the only father I had. While I moved from friends house
to friends house, sometimes after only a week, over the next two years, I still
managed to make it to school most days of the week. I just barely managed to
make high enough grades to graduate from High School. Here’s the other promise.
My father had a 1979 Camaro that he had promised to give me if I could pull off
graduating high school. True to his word he gave me, he gave a feral teenager
suffering from PTSD brought about by him, the keys to a 1979 Camaro with
power-steering and an eight cylinder 350 engine. Again, his sense of honor was
commendable. His judgment? What do you think?
To be Continued.
To be Continued.
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