Do you remember me??

I sat here earlier looking for a certain book and ended up coming across a yearbook from my high school years. It was 1973, the year my sister Amber graduated. I was a seventh grader myself. Going back through the pages gives me a sense of familiarity, of belonging. The pictures are funny to look at: the hairstyles and clothing, seeing some of the cars, etc. Almost 40 years ago now. Then I started reading some of the quotes. "To a real great fuzzy haired bug. Hope to see ya in the future yrs. Lots of love and luck, your pal. Laurie Tulip, '73 sci room, ". It just made me smile reading it. I wonder if Laurie Tulip even remembers me or if she would know who I am if she saw me. I still have that same fuzzy hair, but I don't think I resemble myself in any way. Then there's the note from Kathy Trivilino )(the name I remember her by) When you get married and have twins don't come to me for safety pins. Kathy Kelley-Good luck in the future (bubbles). "bubbles???" I don't have a clue what that reference is to. From Sue Bradley "to a good kid lots of luck in the future. (toe). "Toe?"" I will have to email her and ask if she remembers. So looking back gave me an idea, I wonder how many of these people I remember, or what my memories of them are. I'm going to look for my senior yearbook and then start going through it and I want to go over the names one, by one and see just how many people I actually remember and if there is a specific memory I do have. when I find the yearbook, I'll start writing :)

For the love of the Tenderhearted

As I sit here to write, I have two men in mind. There's almost a 20 year difference in age, but they are so amazingly alike.

The first is a man, almost fifty, who I knew back when we were just young twenty year old's. He was a promising young military officer, brought up by loving, educated, decent parents. Very handsome, athletic, and extremely intelligent. One of the nicest people I had ever met; always with a smile on his face. We worked together for a few years and I don't ever remember him not being happy go lucky. He would tell me about his latest girlfriend, about the trips across Europe he would take, and all of the weekend's social events going on around the base. He always managed to put a smile on my face. Over the years, we kept in contact sporadically.

I knew he married not too long after we returned from Germany. He'd written to me about getting married and the excitement of buying his first house and having his first child "on the way." I'd contact his mom every now and then to get an update on his address to send Christmas cards or drop him a line. I knew he was living in Florida, so when I moved there in 2000, I tried to look him up, to no avail. His mom had moved so I was unable to pinpoint exactly where he was at.

About 18 months ago, I was finally able to reach him through his brother and mother, finding out he was living in North Carolina. We started emailing each other and had a few phone conversations, where I found out things had not turned out too well. His wife turned out to be a serious drug addict who was on a path of destruction very early in their marriage, not caring what happened to her husband and her two young sons.

He told me the whole, heartbreaking story. The drug addiction, the cocaine addiction, the crack addition and everything that goes along with that: financial nightmares, never knowing when she would be home or gone, and when she was gone, never knowing if she were dead or alive. Having to deal with two little boys who wanted to know where their mommy was at and not knowing what to tell them. Having to work to support them, but not being able to be there with them, making sure they were safe. And not wanting to give up on a marriage, because thats not the way he was raised. His parents were married over 40 some years when his father passed away. He loved his wife and didn't want his sons to be raised without a mother.

His son's would call him at work and tell him "mommy is gone" and he'd have to hurriedly leave work to go take care of them. Sometimes it would be a night or two, sometimes weeks would go by and he would never know. When she was there, money would be missing, household items, even cars would disappear-sold to buy crack.

Along with the drug addiction came adultery, he could only imagine and fear what she was doing. When her boyfriends got tired of her, she'd come back home and "promise" it wouldnt' happen again. But it happened, again, and again, and again, and again.

Over the years, he kept telling himself it would get better, she'll stop. He tried everything he could to try to get her stop. Changing himself, trying to change the surroundings, trying one option after another, hoping and praying that something would trigger inside of her to get her to stop. But you can't stop a person like that who doesn't want to stop. You can't make someone change just because you want to, you have to accept they are who they are. You can't make someone treat you with respect. You can't make someone else be a good parent. You can't make someone else turn into someone they never were to begin with.

She finally left him for good, deciding drugs were more important than her family, more valuable to her than anything else.

so what did she leave behind? A trail of disaster. Two sons who are so emotionally scarred that they don't leave the house. They have very little communication with the outside world. Two sons who have built a coat of armor around themselves, around their hearts that virtually enslaves them. They don't have friends. Neither finished school-both dropped out. Neither has learned a trade or attended college. Neither have girlfriends, or best friends that they are involved with. Some online friends-but thats the extent of it. But they do have their dad, what's left of him.

The happy go lucky friend I had? He's a broken shell of a man. The former military officer with the promising future ended up losing a succession of jobs because of his wife. He works two small part time menial jobs. He's been to jail twice because of some things she did and she was responsible for, but he was held accountable.

He's a good dad and he loves his sons, but he's afraid to hurt his sons. Therefore, he can't force them to go to school-they won't go. As much as he won't admit it, he's afraid of the repercussions from forcing them to do anything-they'll hate him, they'll leave and go live with their mother, they'll reject him, they'll abandon him, etc.

He doesn't have any real friends himself. He doesn't have a "real" life either. He can't afford to much more than house and feed his sons, so he hasn't been out of his house for years except to go to work. I've lived here in North Carolina for less than 12 weeks and I already know the area better, because I have gone out and looked around. He doesn't go look around, because he can't afford the gas.

When he comes around, if we have a disagreement, he goes running. He can't stay and discuss anything, he just runs. All that he has heard for the past twenty years is the negative stuff his wife had said to him, and the negative comments from others about being divorced, or being arrested, or losing his job. He hasn't had any positive comments in years. No one has paid any attention to him, so he has just convinced himself he's the bad guy. He's the one with the shortfalls. He's somehow responsible for all of the bad things that have happened to his children. He alone. There are smiles, but it's a game. He smiles because its polite and friendly to smile at others, and thats how he was brought up. You don't people your problems, you keep them to yourself, and you don't tell others. You don't ask for help-real people don't ask for help, any losers do. You get my point. It's been breaking my heart just to see him.

So how does he deal with it. Well he drinks his cares away. He doesn't go out to bars and unless you caught him pouring alcohol into a cup, you'd never know it. You don't really smell it. He doesn't act crazy or violent, or fall down. He just sits on his couch and has a drink every night until he falls asleep. It started off as a way to just drown out the bad times, but then it became a habit. I think he has just numbed his heart from all of the pain and sorrow he has been feeling over the years.

Then the other guy. The young guy. He too was a happy go lucky young man, as a teenager. Had friends, was going to college, played sports, had his whole life ahead of him. But like the first guy, he got married young. Too young. Like the first guy, "had" to get married. Thats what you do when you get a girl pregnant, you marry her. Even if its a great possibility the baby isn't yours. Thats not how you were raised. You marry whether you really love the person or not. Thats the "right" thing to do.

So he gets married, and while his wife isn't into drugs immediately, they are on the way. Her initial "drug" is power. Power over him. Using the children as weapons to maintain that power. "Do this or I will take the kids." "Do this or you will never see the kids again." "Quit this job, or I am leaving and taking the kids." He quits college because now he has a family to take care of. He gets jobs pretty easy, but quits as his wife demands, (she doesn't like it when there are other women in the workplace).

He goes in the army at her demand, and then he gets out as soon as he can at her demand. They move across the country for a new start, but move back to her mother's at her demand. Always with the, "do this or I will take the kids and you will never see them again, ever."

He's no longer the happy go lucky kid he used to be. He doesn't go out much in public anymore. He's got nervous twitches, "tics". He talks to himself. He's convinced himself that he is the bad guy. He loves her. He won't leave her no matter what his behavior is, because he doesn't want to be that guy who leaves a wife and kids. He won't leave with the kids, because he doesn't want to be the dad that took his kids away from their mother.

And she has progressed with her addiction, to real drugs. Initially it was just marijuana, but has grown to pills, alcohol, "oxy" parties, and occasionally cocaine. He too has been arrested. He too has made poor decisions. He too has tried to justify her behavior, change her behavior, try to change the surroundings so maybe her behavior will change, all to no avail. Because he also doesn't get: you can't make people change. You can't make people be who they aren't. They are either going to do the right thing, or the wrong thing, but it's their choice and no matter how hard you try, it has to be their decision, their action, it has to be a part of their "being" to be what they are.

As I look at the younger guy, I realize, he is just the younger version of my older friend. This is how the destruction of a life happens. I've watched it from the beginning and I've watched how his personality has changed. I've watched as he has made bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, all because he doesn't want to give up on a marriage, doesn't want to be away from his children, and doesn't want to accept that his life with his wife is never going to be what he wants it to be, ever.

He's now sitting in jail. He hasn't turned to alcohol to drown out his sorrow-at least not yet. He's in the "I don't know how to fix this but I will do 100 stupid things to try and fix it" stage. And he's going to end up paying for it. He's an army war veteran with a college degree with years of work experience who has been fired, been arrested, and believes he is the cause of all of the problems in his family and his life. His self esteem is also completely shattered. While he was not perfect beforehand, he is not even a shell of who and what he used to be.

so what do these two guys have in common? What is it about them, that they have taken the paths they have taken?

They are both tender hearted.

They have the kind of hearts that will forgive over, and over and over. they will accept blame and responsibility because they are willing to "understand and forgive" the other person, over and over and over again, no matter how destructive it is to themselves. They don't want to stop loving. They don't want to give up hope. They just believe in love and that love will fix everything. They've loved the people in their lives so much more than they loved themselves, that they both now believe they are unlovable.

Many people don't understand people with a tender heart. I understand. I've been there. I made the same mistakes they made. I've lost jobs. I've been to a jail cell. I've blamed myself for "causing" my husband to leave me. I've convinced myself that I don't deserve to be loved and that its easier to just close out the world. I got to the point where I literally begged on my knees.

I shudder now at the thought of what I allowed to happen. I understand now that my intentions were good, they were right. My intention was to hold my family together. My intention was thinking that it really could be fixed if I just gave a little more, did a little more, said a little less, complained a little less. You do that long enough and you really do convince yourself that you do not matter. Thats its okay not to matter. You do everything you can to try and protect your heart, not realizing that you are giving another person the ability to destroy your heart.

Over the past couple years, I've had people tell me I am "heartless". That I am "mean," or "callous" or whatever they want to call me. I am not heartless. i still have a heart. I feel it pounding inside of me every day. I see and think about some things and I do my best to hide my tears. I figured I cried enough in the past 14 years that I don't need to cry anymore. I stand up for myself now and refuse to take any crap from anyone. Anyone wants to ignore my feelings or step all over me, I no longer tolerate it. And I speak up. I don't bite my tongue anymore. I don't cower away afraid of being rejected because of having my own opinion. I am no longer afraid of being me and standing up for what I believe in.

I am not closed off to love. I have found that out a couple times over the past year. I'm not closed off to trust, I do have some trust, I just don't blindly trust by nature anymore. I'll trust you while holding one eye a little more open than the other.

I wish I could do something to protect these two men. I too, wish I could change them into being how I want them to be. but I have learned, you can't make someone be who you want them to be. They have to want to be that person themselves. they have to take action on their own and it has to be a part of their being.

I hope they both know that I love them with all of my heart. That they are lovable, that they did not deserve what happened to them, and that they do deserve to be loved.

And I hope they both learn to love themselves.

the Kennedys

I finally got to use my barnes and nobles gift card and went looking for books. I found a wonderful book of quotes by the Kennedy brothers. Only thing is, I really don't care what Ted Kennedy had to say. So I skipped over his words and finished it up today.

ten months later.............. :)

I didn't intend on abandoning my blog. Sometimes life just gets too busy. So I made a promise to myself, I will try to get back in the habit of writing daily.

The last time I posted, I was living in Orlando, Florida in my own home, with three teenagers, and two dogs. I am now living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with one teenager, two dogs and a cat. Amazing how much can change in such a short amount of time.

It seems as though my string of bad luck has continued, but I am trying to keep the words of Robert Kennedy in mind as I go through this life. "Good luck is something you make, and bad luck is something you endure."

I got here to NC a couple months ago, and right around my second week, I asked for permission to leave a little early so I could go to my son's football game. I got about two blocks from the parking garage and was following a careless teenage girl who was driving some mammoth vehicle. She was flying down the street and I could see she was on her cell phone, just talking away. I tried to stay 3-4 car lengths behind her, keeping a close eye, as it was rush hour traffic in Durham. Suddenly I noticed that she was not paying attention and was going to smash into the car in front of her. I honked my horn and slammed on my brakes. She hit the other car as soon as I honked my horn and I skidded into her bumper. My car came to a complete halt once it hit her bumper, barely scratching the rubber on her car, but mangling my front end of my Tucson, arghhhhhhh. I got out to make sure every one was okay. The girl in front was a young girl, who seemed okay, thankfully, as her car was sent flying. The teenager with the phone addiction didn't put down her cell phone to check on anyone and seemed to ignore what happened. We were lucky no one was injured as there were a bunch of people walking right there who had just stepped off the bus.

I call my insurance company, which is still in Florida, and after a small run around, get my car towed and get a ride home. The next day, the rental car agency delivers a car to me at my rental house. I get in the car with my son and my niece, and driving less than a mile away, a rock pops up and cracks the windshield of the rental car. Double arghhhhhhhhhhh!! I have to trade out the rental car for a new car. I have that car a couple days and that windshield gets a crack in it from a rock. I think get a van to take to orlando to try and pack up my stuff to return to NC.

Everything in Orlando went fairly well (another long story) and I returned to Chapel Hill. I turn in the van and pick up my car, after it being in the repair shop for almost a month. Driving home from the repair shop, a rock is pitched from the truck driving in front of me and sure enough, I now have a crack in my windshield. Thats sort of how my life has been. I can be driving a long, and someone throws a rock at me, slows me down. I get up and start fixing things and start picking up the pieces. While I am still there picking up the pieces, someone else throws a rock. before to long, I am being burdened down picking rocks up off from being tossed in different directions. I say it is now someone elses turn.

Christmas memories

With Christmas less than a week away, I've been thinking about memories of Christmas past. Growing up, even though we were pretty poor, I always got what I asked for. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite Christmas present was and for me, it was a doll named Swingy. She was a blond doll who danced. She just kind of moved all around in a circle. At one point I had broken her, I think I actually threw her across the room for some reason. I remember picking up her head and crying because she was broke. What felt like months later, my mom called me into her bedroom and there she was, all fixed and dancing across the floor. I don't know if she fixed her or if she bought a new one, but I was happy as can be.

One year, I wanted a vanity. I came down the stairs and there it was, right in front of the tree. I ran to it and just knew it was mine. It was one of those antique white plastic vanity's with the pink top and little drawers to put things in. I sat there looking in the mirror not wanting to get up, but Mom and Dad made me sit at the table to eat breakfast before I could play with it.

I remember the year my sister Judy got four barbie dolls in one case. One of them was called Casey and she had short brown hair and had modern clothes. There was a black doll in the case, and I think her name may have been Teresa. The barbie I got that year was a Skipper doll with bendable arms. She had long long blond hair, just like Jan Brady. I loved that doll. I remember having a scooter doll with her and I looked more like Scooter than Skipper.

A few years, I had to laugh at my gifts. I was surprised one Christmas to receive a guitar. I didn't ask for one, but my brother John did. My mother couldnt' remember who asked for it, and she thought it was me. I don't know why I didn't just give it to John. I had no interest in learning the guitar. I played the drums. I wanted to play the flute, but I wasn't any good at sound instruments.

Then one year, my sister Tisha and I were snooping in Mom's room to see what she was hiding. She used to hide things under the clothes in her closet. This was right around 1968-1969 and I had never owned a pair of jeans or pants, other than an occasional stretch pants that I could only wear at home. We didn't wear pants to school or really outside. We wore snow pants with our dresses. Tisha and I found this bag and there was this ugly pair of pants in it, it was sort of brown and green patchwork. They looked sort of like camouflage. We laughed and talked about how ugly the pair of pants mom got for John was. They were hideous. Well on Christmas morning, much to my surprise, I opened one gift and there were the ugly pants, for me. Here I wanted the cool big bottom blue jeans like Amber had, and I had the ugliest pants in the world.

When we were married, my ex husband was never very good at buying christmas presents. For the first few years, I didn't really receive anything. Then one year, he bought me a pink sweatshirt. It was cute. And then my mom sent me a pink sweatshirt. I thanked both of them for the gift. This was around 1982 or so when sweatshirts were "in". Then for at least the next ten years, both of them bought me pink shirts, sweatshirts or sweaters. I quickly learned to despise pink shirts of any kind. But oh, those were the days.

My most favorite gift I received as an adult was a book by Jimmy Stewart. He used to come on Johnny Carson and read his poems and I just loved them. One poem, he wrote about his dog named Beau. We had a dog named Lobo and it just reminded me of him. I still have that book :)

I wish I could recreate the excitement of the holidays that we felt as kids. Every year Tisha and I were going to stay up all night and just catch Santa Claus (no, we never did). One year me, Tisha and brother John were looking out the window trying to see if we could see Santa and it must have been a falling star, because we saw this sparkle in the sky. John assured me it was Santa Claus. Even though we would all do our own thing throughout the year, every year on christmas morning the five of us would race down the stairs to scramble under the tree and pick out the packages with our names on them.

As we got older, Tisha and I realized that the one's who stopped writing to Santa Claus received less and less each year. So we continued to write Santa Claus well into our early teens, to the point that our mother told us, "No, there is no such thing as Santa Claus. It's just us." We argued and pleaded that no, we still believed, we still believed :)

I don't know what the holiday is going to be like around here next week, but at least I have the wonderful memories of a house full of giggling kids watching their dreams come true.

Merry Christmas :)

So six months later ......................

I can't believe six months has passed by since my last blog.

I just finished reading a blog from a former christian discussing why he doesn't pray anymore. He decided that this many years later, he just doesn't believe in "the big guy." So sad, for him anyway.

I think I have probably prayed more this year than any other year in my life, active prayer that is. I've prayed for the election. I've prayed for a close friend whose marriage has come to an end. I've prayed for my children: for the oldest to mature and be more responsible with his family, for my middle one who plans on seeking out her birth mother in less than a year, and then there is the prayer for my youngest. He is the one I pray for the most.

I imagine being 13 is a lot more complicated these days than it was in 1973. Our lives were so much easier. We went to school, came home and did chores, ate as a family at the dinner table, watched a TV show and went to bed. We didn't have 100's of TV channels to captivate us until the wee hours of the morning. We didn't have computers or IPODS and we damn sure didn't have cell phones. We went to school with the same kids from kindergarten until we graduated. Every once in awhile we would get a new student and everyone wanted to be the first one to make friends.

My 13 year old wrote a paper for his English class this week in which the theme was "Memoir". He wrote about the "worst years of his life". He talked about how many times he has changed schools, how many times he has had to start over making friends, trying out for teams, trying to fit in-somewhere. As I sat there reading it, was it any wonder he has progressively gotten into trouble at school and having problems fitting in? I never had to worry about being the new kid in school. I grew up with Ellen and Freddie and then added several other friends along the way. My best friend now is the same best friend I had in junior high school. We may not live near each other, but I know that, if I need her, she'll come.

As a former army wife, I moved just about every other year, and have left a "best friend" in just about every community I have ever lived in. Gabby in Thatcher, Arizona; Erma and Ann in Killeen; Denise, Gabby, Teri, Tina, Cindy, Pat and a bunch of others in Dallas; Kathy up in Maryland; Bill P who is now in NC. Since I've been here in Orlando, I've been able to make several close friends who I love dearly: Doreen, Pat, Lenny, Pam, Lisa, Kesha, Nesha, Isabel, and Beth. Then I have my internet friends: Linda in CA, Carol, Mia, Dani, Sandra, Diana, and Dale :)

And then there is Johnny :) He actually used to be my ex-husbands best friend. Man, for the first couple years, he used to drive me nuts. I would get so mad at him, I couldn't stand him. We are like night and day, polar opposites. At several points, we lived in the same house and actually got along. Before I knew it, Johnny grew on me, so much so, that I don't know how I would have made it over the years. He can always make me laugh. He knows how to comfort me when I need it. He knows how to calm me when I am in a rage. I think out of all of the friends I have had over the years, he is the one who truly "gets me". Who'd a thought :)

When I read about the man who stopped praying and didn't believe in God anymore, it just made me think about all of the friends God has givenme over the years. I don't believe that the people I have as friends were just coincidentally living in the same place as me. They are all angels in my eyes, heaven sent. Each one of them just seemed to be there when I needed someone. They showed up right on time in my life. I think they are all answered prayer. On so many nights when I didn't know what to pray for, I would pray to God for comfort, for love. Just to know that someone out there cared about me. And so he sent a friend.

At home, as a young teenager thrown away by my closest friends, God sent Debbie to pick me up off the ground. I don't even remember how it happened that we became such good friends, she just showed up when I needed a friend. When I got to Arizona, away from home for the first time, and feeling lonely, and definitely not fitting in with anyone, Gabby showed up out of nowhere. When I went to Germany, God sent Erma my way. We ended up buying houses together down the street from each other, and having kids at the same time.

When I think back now, when I lived in Dallas, I had so many wonderful friends, I was so lucky. I don't think it was mere coincidence that I had so many "best" friends all at one time, because little did I know, but I ended losing my marriage there. I fell so completely apart and lost my will to live, that it took a village of friends to bring me back to life.

God has continued his pattern of sending me the friends I need as I go along in life. How can I doubt the existence of God? How can I not pray? I think so many times we ask God for things and then we don't see them when He sends them. I didn't realize at the time, but every time I asked for comfort or asked for a sign that someone loved me, He sent his troops in in the guise of these wonderful angels. All I had to do was open my eyes to see answered prayer.

Its taken me these 48 years to realize the power of prayer. To all of my friends out there in the world, thanks for coming into my life and lifting me up. Thank you God, for sending them.

Okay, enough already, here's a story :)

(This is Thatcher, Arizona, where the sign says on both sides "Eastern Arizona College". It is the only stop light in town.)

Eastern Arizona College

Joy Duncan - wearing my bathing suit

Since I have been nagged by a few friends to write some more, here goes, this one's for you Lenny:

A long time ago, in a galaxy, far far away, in a land called Arizona, I went to college. I picked Arizona because the family that I used to babysit for were planning on relocating there and I figured heck, if I couldn't get to Hawaii, Arizona could be the next best thing. Eastern Arizona College. The brochure the school sent was wonderful, obviously meant to paint a fraudulent picture of life in Thatcher, Arizona. It showed pictures of the ocean, pictures of beautiful mountains, rivers etc. Very picturesque. For those of you who may not know anything about eastern arizona, there is no water, no rivers, and it is not near an ocean. There are mountains though, rocky mountains. Picture a desolate desert town, with a few buildings and one stop light.

I was visiting an older brother in Arkansas who put me on a greyhound bus to my destination in Arizona. The "kind" greyhound bus driver told me he was dropping me off in the front of the registration building, such a nice, caring man. I grabbed my two little bags and hopped on off and was a little slow in noticing that I was dropped off in front of a crowd of about 100 big muscular guys. Just happened it turned out to be the boy's dormitory. Keep in mind, I had only seen maybe two or three minorities tops, in my entire life (seeing that St Lawrence County in NY is made up of only white, french, catholic, short people).

Two guys walked up to me and told me that I shouldn't be headed in that direction, that it was indeed the boy's dorm and they offered to walk me to the Registration building. I remember thinking how kind they were. On a side note, I ended up marrying and later divorcing one of them (thats a whole volume of stories).

I was assigned a room in Nellie Lee Dormitory, being the third female to arrive on campus that semester. I could take my pick of rooms. I unpacked my belongings which included some sports jerseys and trophies from high school. (Proud soccer, basketball and softball player for the OFA Blue Devils). I had one picture I made in shop class out of copper, where I engraved the face of the devil on it and painted the perimeter blue, in keeping with our theme.

As the dorm is filling up, I was assigned a roommate, Sydney. Beautiful girl, blond haired, pretty enough to be an actress. We was rather quiet those first two nights, didn't talk much and I figured she was shy. On Day three, when I got back from lunch, she was gone, bags and all. She had moved to a private room. Her reason? She believed me to be a devil worshipper because of my copper blue devil. She was only the second person in my life I had ever met who wasn't a Catholic. She was a member of the Mormon church, which most of the campus was.

After that, the dorm was filling up rapidly, but no one wanted to be my roommate, because I was a New Yorker. I had girls ask me, "so what is it like to shoot heroin? and have you ever worked as a hooker?" I couldn't believe it. They thought I was some big city tramp with a drug problem, just because I was from NY. I tried in vain to explain that where I am from in NY, its just a little tiny town on the border of Canada and the worst crime reported in the newspaper back then was "Dog found running at large.". Needless to say, I was without a roommate until a week before classes started.

The dorm mother, the wonderful Martha Winkler, comes to me and asks me if I would consider this girl, Joy, to be my roommate. She was also from New York. I was like, "sure, no problem, why wouldn't I?" Well, I was told, "well Joy is a 'colored' girl". Everyone else refused her as a roommate. I couldn't believe it. And come to find out, she was from Auburn, New York, which wasn't far from my hometown.

Joy Duncan. Her mom came with her to school and her mom stayed for the first two weeks. Joy was such a nice quiet girl. The mother was so nice, too. At the end of the two week period, Joy's mom headed on back to Auburn. That night, the first night her mom was gone, Joy went to dinner and didn't come home. I was scared to death. I remember thinking that someone kidnapped the black girl because they didn't want a minority in our building. I had visions of all these horrible things happening to her. Poor little Joy. The security guard just kind of laughed at me when I told him at midnight, that Joy was nowhere to be found.

I went to breakfast the next morning, and who shows up? Well, Joy, with about a thousand hickies all over her. She was a lighter skinned black girl, but do you know how hard it is to have that many hickies on that kind of complexion? I told her I was worried sick about her and where in hell did she go. Well she told me, she spent the night with Randy "mad dog" Jackson, this little scrawny white guy from Georgia. I look around and Randy is sitting with the rest of the football team and showing all of them his "hickies", including the ones that were below the belt line, if you catch my drift. Ah, to be so young and so naive. (translation - stupid). And I worried about her nasty ass.
Over the next semester, she would come back to the room every few days and finally take a bath. She never brushed her teeth. One day, a few other friends and I grab her and drag her to the bathroom and hold her down on the floor and take a toothbrush and toothpaste and brush her teeth, telling her that her breath smelled like shit and we couldnt' take it anymore.

Next thing, she starts wearing my clothes. Not just my clothes like jeans or shirts, but my underwear. Now I grew up in a house full of girls, but I would never wear any of my sisters underwear, still gross just thinking about it. So I would take my clothes from the bottom of her closet and wash them, and toss the underpants in the trash. At this point, we started arguing on a daily basis. "Don't wear my shit, especially with your nasty whorish ass, and your stinky no teeth brushing breath." She kept it up. And she kept up her late night escapades in the boys dormitory.

So much so, she ends up getting kicked out of school. So for a few weeks, she was trying to get up enough nerve to tell her mother she had to come home and made up some story. I gave her an ultimatum, get out of my room and don't touch my stuff.

I am off with another weird friend one day, looking at the accident site where a fellow student, Greg Morales died (thats another story) We had to ride bicycles to get to that place, because it was a few miles out on the highway to Safford, Arizona. This friend comes by in his car and tells me that he just took Joy to the greyhound station and she was gone. I remember feeling such relief.

Then he tells me. "She packed all your shit, all your clothes, your blankets, everything, your shoes, underwear, everything. She took it all." WHAT?????? So he tells me again, "yup, she took your suitcases, and packed everything of yours and took it all with her home to NY. I told her not to, not to be like that, but she said too bad." ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I thought it had to be a friggin joke. He gives me a ride in his car and I am in tears, still not sure whether to believe him or not. Well he wasn't lying. I get back to the dorm, and back to my room, and it was all gone, everything. Absolutely everything. Well she left me the hotplate and a hairdryer. But everything else I owned was gone. The clothes, the linens, even my hairbrush, all gone.

All I could think about was how naive I was, once again, "will you let this poor girl be your roommate? no one else will. And her mother is such a nice lady, she is here with her and her mother approves of you." hhmmphhh.

One of the first people who came to console me, was my original roommate of two days, Sydney the Mormon. We had become friends afterall over the months of that first college year. She decided about three weeks into school that she no longer wanted to be a member of the Mormon church and plotted ways to get ex-communicated. I think her final action which worked was she slept with the local bishop. She got ex communicated all right. Then she threw this wild ex-communication party. It was one of the best parties I ever went to in college.

Is there a moral to this story? Not really. It just taught me a thing or two about first impressions. The crazy Mormon chick might be your best friend a year from now, and the familiar voice from home may be your worst nightmare. Oh yeah, and never have a roommate.

to be continued.............