life

So my mom was desperate and lonely. She was a corrections officer approaching her sixties. She had me when she was 41, barely an adult herself. Anyway, it was the start of the tenth grade for me. That year she had put me in a small family run Christian school. There I was surrounded by bible thumpers. More to the point, she had been on a couple of dates with a man and she was “head over heels in love,” her words not mine. Anyway, her being so desperate and all, a few dates was serious territory. The guy had a home in a good school district and we lived in a trailer.
One day, as I was walking out of school, I was informed by the principle/teacher/nurse guidance counselor that I was indefinitely expelled. At the time I had no idea why. Apparently the state police (or someone claiming to be the state police) called the school and said that I had made bomb threats.
Anyway, this event gives my mother the divine inspiration to move in with the man she had been on a few dates with. So, with the promise of turning the 2 car garage into an apartment for me, the old lady, my cat, my dog, and me all packed up our crap and moved into this complete stranger/her one true love’s house.
My cat was thrown out onto the lawn; my dog was locked in a cage and stuck in the laundry room next to the washing machine, and I was shoved into the small second bedroom and informed the garage was staying a garage.
Having started the year off in Christian school, I had no regular school clothes. Being the OCD packrat/archivist that I am, I had kept all my old clothes back to the fourth grade. This stranger/lover of my mom insisted that in fact I did not need clothes because I had a closet full of them. He then proceeded to plop his rank ass down on my bed, cross his legs and ask for a fashion show. At the time, I was not going to strip down to my underwear and give him a peep show. He whined and whimpered and insisted that I had on underwear and should try on my clearly way too small high-water jeans and midriff bearing sweatshirts to prove to him that they didn’t fit, because he knew they did.
Anyway, fast forward a few hellish depressing weeks, and it was now Friday, December 20th. My mother was going to walk down the aisle that night in a white wedding gown with a giant white bow strapped to her ass. My mom was called into the school and asked to meet with my guidance counselor and I. At that point there was no way I was ever going to return home again, and it was agreed that I would go stay with her ex-boyfriend for the holidays until thing could be figured out. My mom then ran home with her tail between her legs and informed her betrothed of the outcome of her little meeting. He flew off the handle, calling the school and informing them that if I left school grounds with anyone but them, that they would sue the school and have anyone that took me arrested for kidnapping. So instead of leaving the school in the passenger seat of the car of my mother’s ex boyfriend that day, I left in the assistant principals purple Chevy cavalier. I was handed twenty bucks and dropped off at a homeless shelter.
My mother married the love of her life that night and was sweet enough to drop off a suitcase full of the cropped jeans and midriff bearing sweatshirts after just a few days into her fairytale marriage.