Sunday, April 9, 2017

April 9, 2017-A Thousand Words A Day In April

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. 

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