That Reminds Me

Seeing Lil Sis' blog tonight reminded me of all sorts of things: why the judge still fears our mother, why I missed Homecoming one year (I'll have to try to figure out which one), having a flat tire on a car I wasn't supposed to be driving and wrecking one I was supposed to be driving but not that fast on a dirt road with my Lil Bro and Lil Sis in the back seat.

The thing with the judge was this: I didn't see any harm leaving the house with him even though I was only 14, he was only 15 (and driving), and we had two other female friends with us. It seemed so innocent. Mom was gone for the weekend, or so I thought. We had been out having a grand old time (probably went to get an ice cream or something equally dangerous) and actually got back home pretty early. The judge and I came skipping up to the house with an arm around each other, laughing until we saw Mom standing in the doorway. (You see, the car wasn't there because my brother Bo had just left in it!) The two girlfriends had already gone inside and were shaking in their boots. I will never forget the look on the judge's face as Mom questioned him. She asked how old he was and when he told her he was 15 she said, "Don't you lie to me." He was tall and stocky, a football player, and he was driving a car. (A lot of the boys around there did that at that time. I don't know why, but their parents allowed it. I thought it was cool.) Anyway, she told him to leave and never come back or call me again. Another boy (who later became my first husband and the father of my only child) told me that the judge came directly to where a bunch of guys were gathered and was still so upset that the car in which he was sitting was shaking. The next day at school the judge had a new girlfriend. And to think . . . I could be happily married to a judge now.

And the flat tire . . . well, that was just stupid. However, I was just 15 and did a great many stupid things. (Oh, wait, I never stopped doing stupid things!) Anyway, we lived in a trailer park which at that time was top of the line as trailer parks go. A classmate who lived about a mile away--out the "back" of the trailer park on a dirt road--wound up at our house, and I decided it would be a good idea for me to give him a ride home. It was about to rain after all, and I couldn't let the poor guy walk a whole mile in the rain, could I? The car was just sitting there, doing nothing. It was a 60-something Volkswagen Bug, and I had been practicing driving in it since it had a manual transmission and all girls needs to learn to drive a manual transmission. Anyway, on the one-mile-each-way trip, wouldn't you know I would somehow pick up a nail in the tire and it would go flat? Fortunately it went flat at my classmate's house, and he was able to change it. Then I was on my way again with the flat in the trunk, and it was time for me to leave to spend the weekend at a friend's house. What was I thinking? That Mom would never see that the spare had been put on the car? She called me later at my friend's house and reamed me out. She must have had plans for the weekend, because she didn't drive up there, beat me half to death and bring me home kicking and screaming.

The wreck will be for a later post. There are still some powerful bad memories of that one. Ditto the missed Homecoming.