A post, but not good prose**

When I was about 14, we lived in this shitty little trailer- not even a double wide. You know the ones, they have the closets and drawers built into the room soon as you open the door. You can get a twin bed in there, maybe a night stand. Anyhoo, My sister had this POS car that my father had painted with freakin' house paint one evening (can you say dew? the next morning the chocolate top of the car had run into the vanilla bottom. All we managed to do was make it look worse after scraping it with razor blades). We lived in poor, trashy part of town. Let's just say we were the minorities. My parents, being the kind of people they were, were not about to let me go to an all black school, so my sister had to drive me to my old bus stop and pick me up. It was only about 10 miles away, so it wasn't time that was a factor. This was about the time that gas went sky high too. So, my father sits me down one evening and tells me it's too hard for me to get to school anymore, what with gas, and time, and my parents have to get to work, and you see dontcha, girl? So, you just take the rest of the year off, work hanging insulation with us, we'll make more money, things will get better, you'll see, what do you say?
Now, school was awesome for me, sure I missed a lot, wasn't popular (by any means!) was the butt of many jokes, ate lunch by myself a lot. But I really liked it when I was there. I was smart, always making A's, my teachers liked me. There's the key- my teachers. They never made me feel stupid, (OK, two did). I felt liked they cared about me. I was good at school. I liked the anonymity (spell check on aisle 3 please) of the halls. I liked that people there knew I dated older men, not some silly high schools boys.
When Daddy asked me to quit, what did I say? I said , OK, and that was that. I turned my back on school. Went to work, hanging insulation. Partyed like I meant it. Did money get better? Hell, no. I ended up moving in a with a lady watching her kid for her while she tended bar. I learned a lot from her, both good and bad.

Here's the thing. I used to be so proud that I was a Shining Example of what people could do with their lives. If I had to list important events in my life, Getting Out was always 1st. Well, hell, I'm pushing 40 (say it ain't so, Joe) and I'm tired of that being The Big Event in my life. It's just not so important any more. I am not that girl, that woman, I was 25, 15, 5 years ago. I'm ready for a new Big Event. Any one want to go to Disney World? Or Key West?

** This lady could have said this much better than me, and much funnier.