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| Dig The Hair Momma Use To Pin Curl It & Torture Me Cause I Was Tender Headed |
By the time I got to the forth grade I would only sleep three or four hours a night. I would go to school and fall asleep in class. Mrs. Routs was my teacher and she was not kind at all or understanding of anything more or less a sleeping kid in her class. She would walk up behind me and pop me on the head with a ruler. If that was not good enough, she would make me stand in front of the class and she would take my hand and hold my fingers and bend them back and hit my palm with the ruler about (it seemed like) twenty or thirty times, it hurt so bad. She just assumed that I was lazy and worthless. She was the meanest teacher I ever had while I went to school. Instead of seeing there were some problems in my life and find out why I slept in class she just snapped and whipped up on me. I had to grow up and move back to Hartsville to find out she was a mental case herself. She ended up in a mental hospital . . .
The fifth grade teacher was Mrs.Taylor. She had a son that was in our grade but in another room. She saw that there was something different from me and all the other kids. She must have had a talk with someone about me sleeping and they called me to the office on the intercom, that scared the crap out of me. She also helped me get caught up where I was behind in my work. They gave me a test (mental) and it showed that I needed counseling. Who Me? No, I don't, I am OK. This is the first time I had an opportunity to get help, but worked my way out of it and it was not the last time . . .
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| Is That A Smile Or A Smirk |
The sixth grade was worse than anyone could ever dream of yet it also was a good year. No one knew that was the year that I had a major incident in my life. Momma and daddy had calmed down a bit on the fighting and drinking and I was glad because if I had to referee them, I would have not been able to deal with my own pain. I had made friends with a boy my age just because he was nice to me. He asked me one day if I wanted to see his special hiding place? Well sure I do. I trusted him as a friend and when we got to the hiding place he reached over and whispered to me; "do you like me?" Why do you ask me that? Well if you like me you will let me kiss you. I said OK and he reached over and put a big sloppy wet one on me, the first time I was kissed. Then he pushed me down! OK That's enough! I stop here! It affected my whole life because from that point on I didn't want to be Debbie Dailey anymore. He told people ( from here you have to guess what he did ) and made me a laughing stock of school. My sister knew about it and never tried to help me. I think you have already used your mines to figure out what happened. I placed it back in the back of my soul so far that I didn't ever say anything to anyone about it. My mom passed away in 2010 and because of that, I sought therapy. I reached a point where I trusted the therapist and it just came out. Too many years to keep that locked up. I sometimes wonder, did that really happen. I know it did, its just been held in way to long . . .
This is the same year that I fell off the monkey bars and broke my right arm in seven places. They took me to the local hospital and they sent me straight to Vanderbilt. I was rushed there in the back of a long black hearse because the town was so small that they didn't have an ambulance. I spent eight months in a cast with seven pins in my arm and a mental plate as an elbow . . .
That was the year daddy's boss acted like he was interested in how I was doing and was calling momma to ask if I was all right. He followed us home one night from town and it scared momma ( it took a lot to scare momma ) The next day momma told daddy that he needed to take care of the mater or she would. Daddy went to work and confronted the boss man and he fired daddy. Momma got mad and called the home office and reported the man and asked for daddy's job back. They told her we have already heard about the incident and we find that Jacks boss did nothing wrong. Momma like I said was a flirt so it might have been true. The drinking and fighting started again with a vengeance . . .
Later in the school year all the girls were getting interested in boys and I was no different. The only difference was I had beat up almost all the boys in our school. They picked on me so bad. I was not good at taking the kidding that kids did to me all the time. There was one boy I liked and he was invited to the house with his mother for lunch one day. His mom and my mom got together and decided that we could be friends. After we had lunch momma said "Debbie, take him down to the creek and play." We went down there and we walked the length of the creek up to the lake that it feeds into and he made fun of me and told me he hated me and so I pushed him in the lake and that was the last time momma tried to set me up with a boy. Thank Goodness!
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| Look Close You Can See The Ring Around My Neck |
My social skills were far from being my strong point. I was a strange one and why not with what I had been through in my short life. One day I went to school and there was a boy I didn't know sitting in my desk and I ask him why you in my seat? Oh is this your desk? Yep, you are new? Yes, I moved here last week. I came from California. Wow that is cool. Well the teacher came in and we got into our seats. She introduced him to the class. All the little girls were google eyed over him. Not me I was gonna just be his friend. Come to find out, he began to like me. OH BOY! I have a boy that likes me. His name was Mark Humes. He was a clean cut looking boy. Before too long he ask me if I wanted to go to the movies. I have to ask my momma. She said OK. We went that Saturday afternoon. It was Old Yellow and I will never forget it. We got some popcorn and coke and sat in the balcony. It was about half way through the movie and he asked me if I wanted some gum. Yes I'll take one. He put one side in his mouth and said,"OK come get it." That was how he got his first kiss. My first real kiss because I didn't count the one that the other boy gave me. WOW I have a boy who likes me. He gave me a ring about four weeks into our friendship. I wore it on a chain around my neck. He got a lot of guff from all the boys that hated me. He would tell them she is a queen! They laughed at him all the time. He told me," their loss, is my gain." I thought to myself what a guy. I wish sometimes I could find him and tell him what an impact he had in my life . . .
Remember me telling you about daddy being out of a job? Well, he got one! It was in Jamestown, Tenn. NO! I am not gonna go. I fought tooth and nail but they made me go. I had to leave him to all the other girls. Mark and I had only been dating about a month. Uncle Leon gave daddy the job and I hated him and daddy for taking me away from Mark. I had no choice I had to go to Jamestown. Lee Ann on the other hand went to uncle Leon’s. WHY? She isn’t even kin to him. Why did I have to go with momma and daddy? I now know that grandpa and grandma had requested them to let her stay at uncle Leon’s . . .
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| Lee Ann Strawberry Festival Queen Runner Up In Linden |
I cried all day the day we left. I just knew that my life was over. You know, my young first love. But when we got to Jamestown daddy had found an apartment at some lady’s house. She just happened to have three grandsons about my age. Like I said earlier I didn’t have any social skills and was scared to death that they would make fun of me and I would have to beat the crap out of them, here we go again. They were really nice to me right off the bat. They were well like in school so they walked me to school and introduced me around, that was great. I had friends for the first time and it was like nothing that I had ever had before . . .
Next chapter is about the heartache of young love . . .