School Story:
I started wearing glasses when I was four years old...I got a new pair every year with a new and stronger prescription and my eye doctor told my parents that I would be legally blind by the time I was 30 years old...well in the 6th grade at Derita Elementary School we were in the Multi-Purpose Room (for those of you who don't know what that is, its a fancy name for a gym, lol)...anyway, we were playing Indian Dodge Ball in which teams line up on each side and balls are place down the middle in a line and you run up and grab a ball and throw it at the opposing team and hit them with it to get them out and those with the most people remaining at the end win. Well it just so happened that I got tripped up and fell and about 5 other people fell on top of me...during this I broke my right arm, hit my head pretty hard and bent my new glasses up that I had just gotten (they were gold-rimmed john denver lookin octagon shaped ones)...when I got home it took me 3 hours to convince my Mama that my arm was broken, she took me to the doctor and sure enough it was broken so I got a cast (so kewl)...Me, Mama, and Wayne (my little brother) went to see a movie about a week later during which I had been trying to convince my Mama that I could not see through my glasses, well I could not see the screen at all, so blurry, so Mama made me wash my glasses, she said I had butter on them from the popcorn, so I washed my glasses atleast 12 times, finally I just dropped my head down, stuck out my lower lip and pouted...As I sat there pouting my glasses kind of slid down my little nose and low and behold as peered over the top of them it was as if I could see, see clearly for the first time, for the first time in my life....Again as it always seem to be I tried to convince my Mama that I could see so clearly without those glasses, well she thought that I just didn't want to wear them..She fussed that she has just spent $300 on those glasses and I was gonna wear them come hell or high water...a few more weeks passed by and I just kept on refusing to wear those glasses and finally I wore her down and she made an appointment to take me back to eye doctor...Eye doctor did so many tests on me, even the Glucose Tolerance Test (which is a fancy name for the Diabetic Test)...it turned out that I had better than 20/20 vision and the doctor could not figure out why other than when I fell I must have hit my head and it jarred my vision back to normal, better than normal even...his name was Dr. Smith and he was writing a paper on me because he found it so interesting what happened, well he died in a rafting accident, so his partner, and I cant remember his name finished the paper and it got published in the JAMA journal in 1970 something...until about 2 years ago I have great vision, but as fate would have it I became diabetic about 4 years ago and my vision is getting really bad now so in a few weeks I will be going back to that same group of doctors, I doubt the one that finished the article is still there, probably long retired, but still I will remind them of my story, maybe some of them will have heard of it who knows???....I just realized this probably should have been a story from high school but most everyone I went to high school with I also went to elementary and junior high school with...the only thing in high school that happened to me that was really big news was when my parents got separated and then divorced...it is still really hard for me to talk about as I am sure most any child of divorce has hurtful memories of it...coz lets face it, there are no happy memories of a family breaking up...so my high school years were spent trying to appear to be normal and happy but inside I was such a sad person...my family was falling apart...my sense of security was blown apart when my father left...then my parents tried to get back together and we were uprooted and moved to Georgia for six months and things got worse there...my father started drinking more and was very angry and violent so we left and came back to NC...by this time my Mother was lost and deeply depressed so I sort of became the mother to her and my little brother...I would help my Mother get ready in the mornings and I mean put her outfit together, dry and fix her hair and makeup, pack her a lunch along with one for my brother and basically push her out the door, she would pull it together enough to take my brother to school and go to work, I would go to school, come home, wash clothes, dishes, vacuum, and cook dinner and help my brother with his homework, after dinner I would clean up, give him a bath, herd them both to bed, and then I would do my homework and pass out and I did this for a year until my Mother met my soon to be stepdad...I hated him, he tried to be superdad and I was used to a dad who was not around and I was used to basically being an adult with no one telling me what to do, and I was a good girl, I did what I was supposed to do, never got into trouble...I fought with this guy and I just never did like him until years later for about 10 minutes and right after he died we really found out what a shit he was because he owed thousands upon thousands of dollars to creditors for his business and most of it was in my Mothers name so it ruined her and she was left holding the bag...she lost her home, her beloved year round campsite, her car...she lost her everything...then she bought a condo and lost her butt when she sold it because of the economy being so bad...it was a nightmare....I felt like if I could just hurry up and get out of high school and get married and start my own life and have my own home that things would settle down and things would be so much better...so two weeks after I graduated I got married to my high school sweetheart, most might remember him, I dated him from 9th grade all the way through the 12th, we broke up a few times and I dated a few other guys but we always got back together...I loved him and I adored his family...they were so happy, they loved each other, they went to church and they loved me too...for 13 years, unlucky 13...well all good things must come to an end I guess...but I was so depressed, a lot of people would be happy to be free of the person they divorced I am sure...me, not so much....I grieved so a long, long time...waves of depression over and over and over again, nothing could console me...I hurt him so badly and in turn he quickly hooked up with a younger version of me....I thought I would die, more fodder for me to grieve over...my life was worse without him and he was happy without me, how could he be happy without me????....finally I met someone, someone that made me happy, someone who made me laugh, someone that cared about the bad dream that I had and sat up with me until I would fall asleep again...someone who accepted me flaws and all (does this sound familiar, lol)...someone I could see myself sitting in our rocking chairs on our front porch growing old together...so we got a little house, made it into our home and a month later I almost died in that wreck...so I guess I have almost come full circle...it is the writer in me, once I get going I cant stop...today I am a much happier person...I think I am happier because I have learned to love- and accept myself with my flaws and all...I tried to be perfect when I was young and when I was young I don't even think I knew what perfect even was exactly...but maybe I equated that perfect would bring happiness...I don't know but I do know this though my journey has been a bumpy one it has been filled with many lessons, many good times and many bad times and there have been many close calls (almost like a cat with nine lives as I have left out quite a few of the near death events that only by the grace of God I pulled through them just like the wreck)...but I think that the good times especially the past 14 years have definitely been the best years of my life, car wreck included because it showed me that there was someone in this world who stood by my side in the worst of times knowing that I may not make it through another day but had the faith that I would make it so that we could have this wonderful life together and that my friends is my life in a nutshell...
