Sin and Repentance

Through some weird fluke, my blog about being kidnapped, raped, tortured and nearly sold into human trafficking has become a hugely popular post on Pinterest.  It's everywhere, earmarked with the same $20 you see here.  Almost anywhere you see this scan on Pinterest, it will point you straight back to my blog.  

That story is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  It's also NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN OR CHURCH.

It's a dark story about a horrible past filled with hideous monsters and forgotten children.  If you're interested, I'll post a link at the bottom.  Be warned, it's not for the weak.

The standard description I've found from people blindly sharing this blog on Pinterest like mindless sheep is as follows:

Such a good object lesson about repentance and sin - 20 dollar bill still has the same value even when wrinkled or marked on...our value never changes in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. The atonement allows us to repair damage and become clean. We must trust in the Lord and see ourselves as our Heavenly Father does.

My own standard response is simple enough:

I was glad to have readers, but I felt it was severely false advertising. Now that I know you had not read it before hand it makes more sense. I believe the original pin-er used the $20 from part one as the object lesson somehow but I was entirely lost on that idea. The $20 was not symbolic, it was just a catalyst. Try reading the story. It's about rape and human trafficking.

But I got this in response.

I pinned this days before reading it, as I do with a lot of things. I thought there were some significance between the $20 bill and forgiveness. I had absolutely no idea it would be a story of rape and torture. So therefore you are wrong! I am not part of the problem. Ignorance is what I'm thinking you are part of.

Now, I'm fairly new to Pinterest.  In fact, I only joined the site in order to try to stop the spread of this particular story before too many children got their hands on it.  I'm left with two HUGE questions...

• #1.  Is it standard practice for people to post things WITHOUT reading them or even looking at them first?  I put a disclaimer on that particular blog in order to END the trend.
• #2.  Is she blind, or did she not see that mirror standing in front of her face when she started pointing fingers at me?  I'm the ignorant one, while she's perfectly innocent as she sends children and church attendees to a blog post about rape, having them believe it's about sin and repentance?

So, as is my usual fashion, I responded.

Point one finger at me, you have three pointed back at you. You actually share stuff without even bothering to LOOK at it. You point KIDS to a story of rape and torture and human trafficking. And call me what you will. If I can live through that, I promise your words will have ZERO impact on me.

It's MY blog. I enjoy having readers. What I do NOT enjoy is having THOUSANDS of hateful emails sent to me over the course of a couple DAYS because someone (like you) thinks this is a CHURCH story. I've gotten more hate mail than Merle Dixon! That's far more of a pain than you pretending to NOT point in the mirror.

And since it's finally down (6:05pm on 11-12-14) I'd say this blog post was a success.  Thank you!

To read the original story,  Visit This Link

Weight of My World

I am mentally exhausted and yet I can not sleep.

It's amazing how quickly life can change. I once heard it said that life is what happens when something else is planned. Boy, is that ever true.

I've seen changes in many directions since the spring of 2009, but never in my life has it had such an impact on my mental state or emotions. I find myself drained - lacking all motivation or drive, wondering what's going to happen, knowing that my entire life hangs in the balance, resting comfortably in the hands of someone other than me.

I have nobody to blame but myself. I put myself in this situation. But I can't hang in the balance too much longer. I MUST do something about this, and I will.

I've always been a strong person, even when I didn't know it. It took a precious friend to point that out to me recently, and I can't thank her enough for that. I always find that I have that fire in my belly when I need it most ,and I know when the time comes it will return full force. I've done and seen enough in this life to know how to survive with nothing but the clothes on my back, and though I really wouldn't want to ever be there again, I know I would pull through it just fine as I always have before.

I often wonder if I was ever really meant to be happy. While I often screw things up for myself and I have a long history of poor choices, I've also been known to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've had it all, only to have it pulled out from under me like a Persian rug. I've given up so very, very much, only to get very little in return. I've been promised the world and denied everything but food and shelter in the same breath.

I've been too trusting, too patient, too loving and too generous. Well, I just don't seem to learn. Time and time again I find myself wondering what I've done wrong and what I've done so bad in my life to end up feeling like this, feeling like my whole world is crumbling around me, crushing me under the weight of the world. It's not the first time I've found myself wondering what's going to happen to me.

I have an enormous weight on my shoulders right now and I can NOT lift it on my own - YET. I can feel that strength bubbling up, but right now it hasn't even gotten past my calf muscles. I know, without a doubt, that by the time the fire bubbles to my finger tips, I will have all the strength I need to hurl that weight off my shoulders and straight to the moon.

It's not here yet, but it's not long in coming. When it gets here - look out world - THE REDHEAD WILL BE BACK IN ACTION.

Revenge on Miller

I told a story once on my blog about how I got revenge on a kid for giving another girl a ring on Valentines day. I was in the 5th grade at the time. At the end of that story, I stated that I never sought revenge again. I would have to admit here and now that I blocked out this moment in time from my memory when I made that statement and would like to retract it now. I did seek revenge once more, and it's something I've regretted every day I take a breath.

After the Miller Miles, after I spent my time in Phoenix with Jodie and her family (story not yet written but will be next), after I went home, life returned to normal. I had nothing in my room. I had one change of clothes, I was forced to take medications I knew I didn't need. I went back to school as usual and was told every day that if I didn't come home after school, I would end up being put into Juvenile Detention. It was about the only threat they could make that still scared me. They had found my weakness.

I was so angry at Byron for having abandoned us on the side of the road. I had trusted him with my life and he just left us there. He made sure he was ok by going to his father, but in the end, the rest of us had nowhere to go. It was pure luck that I happened to know someone in the area and had a place I could go to. Without the kind people I knew in my childhood, I would have ended up on the streets, or worse. He never even pretended to care. When he got back to school and I ran into him in the hallway one day, he didn't even say he was sorry. Nothing. He didn't even smile at me. He ignored me like he didn't even know who I was.

I was outraged.

Byron got another girlfriend soon after the school year started. She had at one time been a close friend to me, but thanks to Byron sharing false stories with her, she never spoke to me again. I grew more and more angry. He spread rumors about me in every class I had through people he barely knew. Pretty soon, my head was about to burst. One day I was running across the street to catch the bus before it took off and Byron happened to be driving by. Instead of ignoring me or staying at the speed limit and in his own lane, Byron swerved directly at me and sped up. I ran harder as I watched him through the windshield shifting gears in his car. He lowered his chin and looked at me with a stare of pure evil. I stopped dead in my tracks and spun on my heels. I got out of the way of his car barely in time, and the drivers side rear view mirror clipped the back of my arm. The force spun me around completely.

The bus went on, oblivious to what had just happened in their blind spot. The driver of a truck pulled over to check on me.

"Are you OK?" The voice sounded familiar. "You need to call the cops." I looked up to discover Steve, my childhood crush, sitting behind the wheel of the truck.

"No, I'm fine." He smiled that old familiar smile.

"Hop in, I'll give you a ride." It was a well kept secret on my part that my parents wouldn't let me get a ride home with anyone, especially anyone my age. It had something to do with my mother having a wild ride in the back of a pick up as a teenager and thinking she was going to die. While all of my friends were carpooling to school or driving themselves, I was still stuck riding the bus since I wasn't allowed to do either. Still, I had missed the bus because of Byron and I didn't want to end up in Juvenile Detention because of it, so I climbed into Steve's truck.

It was a big, broad old 1963 Chevy pick up truck in a rust and off-white color. The rust wasn't actually paint though, but Steve couldn't have been more proud of that thing. He had even changed the transmission himself the month before, he said. I hadn't seen him in a while and there was a lot of catching up to do. We talked the whole way to my house. Before I knew what we were doing, he pulled up into my driveway.

I jumped out, still chattering away like a chipmunk. I told him all about my adventure over the summer and why it was Byron had tried to run me over. Steve was going 90 to nothing right along with me when my mother walked out of the house.

"Young lady, get in the house right now." Whenever she called me Young Lady, I knew I was in trouble. I trudged towards the door with her holding it open. She shewed Steve off like a fly, something I'd never seen her do to Steve before. He had always been a welcome addition to the family. "What have I told you about taking rides from people," she said, loud enough for Steve to hear.

Steve found me a couple of days later. There were a few things he still wanted to get straight about Byron. He wanted as many details as I was willing to give him, and I didn't spare anything. He agreed that Jason was disgusting and Bryon "wasn't a man" for not taking better care of his sister. He was so disgusted in the end that he told me under no uncertain terms that he and his 'friends' would take care of Byron. He said I wouldn't have to worry about Byron trying to hit me with his car ever again.

My parents went out for dinner one night and Steve came by to pick me up. Before I knew it, we had pulled into the driveway of one of his friends. We jumped out of the truck and Steve told me to get into the back of a small 4 door car. I did as instructed.

A big guy by the name of Martin Davis got into the drivers seat, and his brother Hub, even bigger, got into the back with me. Both of them looked as big as linebackers on a pro football team. Both wore snakeskin boots and ball caps. Both looked like guys I wouldn't want to run into wandering down a dark alley.

We made another stop on our way out to Clearfield. One more guy climbed into the back seat, nearly as big as Hub Davis. I was squashed up against the door and felt like a mafia squealer being taken for a ride. Something in the world wasn't right. I wasn't scared, but yet I was. Tension was heavy in the air. Nobody said a word.

When we pulled up in front of Stephanie's old house, I knew life was about to get really complicated. The last time I had seen the place was early in the morning the day we started the long drive to Arizona. The guy next to Hub got out and went to knock on the door. I watched out of the tinted window as much to my amazement, Byron emerged from the house. The guy put his arm around Byron and started walking him towards the car, both laughing and smiling the whole way. They acted like old buddies. Astounded, embarrassed and finally worried, I tried to slide down into the floorboards of the car. Hub pulled me back up.

"No you don't," he said. "You have no reason to hide. You're here to see this."

I sat back up, and Hub told me to squeeze over a bit. There was nowhere for me to go, but I tried. I ended up sitting on my hip, my butt up against the door. Hub scooted over next to me. The door opened and the strange guy with Byron grabbed him by the back of the neck. He pushed his head down towards the car door, and at first Byron had a pleasant smile on his face.

Byron's face went from a smile to an astonished look of fear. He looked at Hub and then at me. His face melted, his eyes popped and he started muttering 'no, no, no' to nobody in particular. He tried to back out, but the force behind him was too great. Hub reached forward and grabbed Byron's shirt. As he pulled Byron into the car, the guy behind him pushed. Byron ended up sprawled over Hub's lap, looking me in the eyes. The fear behind them was unmistakable. I was more than certain that it was the same look I had in my eyes when he nearly hit me with his car.

The stranger got back into the car, lifting Byron's legs enough to fit under them. He slammed the door shut behind him and Martin drove calmly away from the run down little house. Nobody came outside to see what was going on. Nobody stopped us. Nobody questioned us. I prayed they would.

"Is this him," Hub asked Steve.

"Yeah, that's him."

"You sure?" His deep voice was masterful and deadly. It sent shivers to my soul.

"Yeah." Steve turned around in his seat to get a good look. "That's him."

"I don't even know you," Byron wailed.

"Shut up," Martin said from the drivers seat.

"Yeah, you ain't here to talk," Hub finished.

The stranger spoke then. "Byron, we believe you owe this young lady an apology," he said sternly, but with a slight smile.

"Sorry," Byron said out of obvious fear.

"That's not good enough," he said. Suddenly things went from bad to ugly. The stranger, the person Byron seemed to know when they met at the door, suddenly swung wildly at Byron's face. His fist landed squarely on Byron's jaw and he instantly pulled back and swung again. I screamed and turned my face towards the window, closing my eyes. Hub grabbed my head and turned it back towards Byron's face.

"You're going to watch this," he said to me.

"I'm sorry!" Byron screamed out, his voice reaching octaves I didn't know were possible. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm SORRY!" He began to cry deep, sobbing tears. His sobs began to get in the way of his words. The swings came again and again, more brutal with every swing.

Martin kept driving and turned calmly into a back alleyway. Steve turned in his seat and began swinging then too. I used to beat Steve up in a fun way at school when we were just 12 years old. I couldn't picture him ever hurting anyone. He was always so sweet. Suddenly he was a monster.

Steve and the stranger continued punching Byron until he couldn't do anything but curl up and cry. I felt bad for Byron. I wanted to help him, but there was nothing I could do. I cried right along side him. Finally Hub spoke up.

"That's enough," he said. For a moment I was relieved, but Hub wasn't done. "It's my turn."

Steve and the stranger stopped. Hub looked down at Byron and smiled and evil, wicked smile. I turned my head and covered my ears with my hands.

From there I've blocked out the memory. I only remember Martin pulling over and the door of the car swinging open. The stranger stood up and grabbed Byron by the feet. With one mighty tug, there was one less person in the car. Byron landed on his face and hands, but that wasn't the end of it. The stranger drug him across the ground by his feet. Finally, in the middle of a mud puddle, he released Byron's feet and they fell with a splash into the water. The stranger knelt down and spoke to Byron as calmly as a teacher giving a homework assignment.

"You'll never talk to her again. You'll never look at her again. If you go anywhere near her ever again, they will never find your body." He smiled. "Clear?"

"Yeah," Byron said.

"Same goes if you ever say a word about any of this to anyone."

The stranger got back into the car and I watched as Byron got to his feet and ran as hard as he could as Martin put the car in drive and we pulled slowly away.

The guys laughed the entire way back to my street. As I got out of the car and headed toward the house, I heard them laughing and talking about the entire incident. I had a serious night of rethinking the direction my life was taking that night. It wasn't my parents I needed to get away from, but rather the corruption, danger and insanity of everyone around me. I needed to get out of that life, and there was no way out but to get away from it all. That was when I decided I would be going back to Arizona and making a life for myself anywhere but Utah.

The cops came by the house a few days later. Fear gripped my guts.

"Manda," my mom said as I walked up to the house, "the police have some questions for you."

"Yes Sir?" I asked in my most polite manner. My heart was racing and I knew exactly what it was about.

"We had a strange complaint the other day. Do you know someone named Byron Miller?"

"Yes I do. Or, rather, I did."

"Do you know about what happened to him?" My mind raced. I knew a lot about Byron. I knew more about what happened to him than I wanted to, and I really wished it never happened in the first place. At that second, more than anything I wished I could turn back time and never tell Steve about anything.

"I know his Dad sent him home again from Arizona. Is that what you mean?"

"No, I'm talking about Friday night."

"Byron and I don't talk anymore. He even has a new girlfriend now. What happened to him?"

"He was beaten up pretty badly. He's got a few broken bones and needed some stitches. He's still in the hospital."

"Oh my gosh! Is he ok?!"

"He'll be fine." He looked closely at my eyes. "Do you know anything about it?"

"No! Oh no, I hope he's ok. Which hospital?"

"He's at Ogden Memorial. You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. We don't get along anymore, but I wouldn't want to ever hurt him." That part was the truth.

"Someone said he tried to hit you with his car the other day. Is that true?"

"Well, yeah, but I think he just didn't see me."

"Ok." He looked at me another moment. "Byron told us that you were there when it happened."

"He said that?!"

"Yeah. You're sure you don't know anything about it?"

"Positive, Sir. I hope you find the guys that did it to him though."

The officer then turned back to my mother, who stood just out of hearing range on the porch. He tipped his hat to her, bid her a good afternoon, and left.

"He tried to hit you with his car?" Mom looked concerned.

"Yeah, but it's no big deal."

"When was that?"

"It was the day Steve gave me a ride home. I missed the bus because of Byron and I didn't want to get in trouble so he gave me a ride."

"You didn't hurt Byron, did you?"

"NO!" I lied.

"Ok." She paused a moment. "Why didn't you tell me that was why Steve gave you a ride home?"

"Because you wouldn't have believed me."

"Probably not."

I've lived with the regret of that day every day of my life, each time it's brought back to my conscious thoughts. I wished I could have changed things. Byron had more than broken bones and stitches. He had internal bleeding and some major trauma to his core. He was in the hospital for two weeks. When he got out, he changed schools and I never saw him again.

I also never talked to Steve or any of his 'friends' ever again.

The story you just read was true, the names of people were changed in order to protect myself more than them. It's a chapter of my life I'm not proud of, and a story that only the people in the car that night ever knew until now. I swore to never tell anyone, and this story didn't exist even in my original book. I have managed to contact Steve again, and he's a completely different person. He left Utah and moved to Wyoming where he finally found the father figure he desperately needed. He finished off his teen years working on a horse ranch earning his keep and learning respect for all living things. He now drives a truck cross country.

Montezuma's Revenge

Through a Google Search, I've discovered that Montezuma's Revenge is either Travelers Diarrhea or an Indiana Jones video game. Well, my story of Montezuma's Revenge is neither, but could possibly be the inspiration for both. It's also listed as a Bluegrass music group, a 24 hour ultra-endurance mountain bike wilderness race, and Wikipedia states that the term comes from...

Moctezuma (c. 1466 – June 1520), also known by a number of variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin and similar, was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520. It was during Moctezuma's reign that the episode known as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began.

Well wherever the term came from, it's Hell on wheels.

Knotts Berry Farm was the first place in the world I ever tried Chili Cheese Fries, now a staple in my weekly diet it seems. Mom had never heard of them before we moved to California, so we decided to try them out when we saw them on the menu. They were wonderful!! We ate every last bite. Shortly afterward, any fond memories I may have had of Knotts Berry Farm were quickly wiped out with the simple motions of one very nasty roller coaster and the harness that failed to do its job.

We all hear the horror stories around the world about something going wrong on a roller coaster. Some kid falls out of a Ferris wheel because he's screwing around, another teen gets his arm ripped off because he didn't listen when they said to keep hands and arms inside the car at all times. It happens. That's a fact. But we never think it will happen to someone we know, or to someone we're riding with, or even worse, to us.

Montezuma's Revenge, or at least the one I'm talking about, is a roller coaster at Knott's Berry Farm. We went there back when I was about 8 or 9 years old, so it was in the late 80's, about the time we first moved to California. Mom liked the looks of it, and I was still young enough to not be afraid of anything but Lima Beans, which I still don't like. She wanted to go on the ride, and she wanted me to go with her. Instantly I agreed.

It looked simple enough. It had a loop in the middle and two dead ends on either side. We watched as the roller coaster would back up one of the dead ends, then get a fast start at the loop. It would go up and over the loop, all the way to the other dead end, and then stop. It would then go backwards through the loop, all the way back to the first dead end, then coast back to its starting position. It even paused a little in the center of the loop. It looked like a lot of fun to us. We got in line and couldn't wait to get on board.

We climbed on and took our seats. Clearly I remember my mother being to my left. We were both so excited. The harnesses came down over us and locked in place. The coaster started to back up. My heart was racing. I was thrilled to be going on such an adventure ride with my own mother. There was a lot of room in my harness, but I didn't think much of it. I was always a really skinny kid. I met the height requirements, so they let me on. That was all that mattered.

The coaster backed up to the dead end and we hung there in silence waiting for it to release. I grabbed the handles on the outside of my harness, waiting for that weightless, silent release of the coaster surging forward. I looked at Mom by poking my head out of my harness and looking around at her. She grinned ear to ear. Suddenly the world began to move forward in slow motion.

The coaster released and I hung in mid-air for a moment, weightless and excited. It raced past the platform of waiting riders and reached for the sky. It flipped over and slowed down just at the top of the loop. All of this happened in seconds, but it felt like an eternity to me. Suddenly I started to slide in my seat. I looked up and saw the ground below us from my upside down position. I slid further, grabbing at my harness with every ounce of strength I could, screaming out for my mother to help me as I felt my shoulders slide right between the shoulder pieces of the harness. There was nothing holding me in but my weak childhood forearms. I remember screaming bloody murder for my Mom to help. She turned and looked at me. She knew from my voice instantly that something was wrong. She reached over for me and pulled with all her might. She's a terribly strong woman when angry or filled with adrenaline.

My body slid back between the shoulder harness pieces, though my butt was still far from the seat of the coaster. I brought my arms back inside the harness and pushed up on the shoulder pieces with every ounce of strength I had, though I still could feel myself sliding. The coaster moved forward again and I slammed forward into the harness on the way down. It screamed past the platform on its way to the other dead end, my mother screaming as loudly as we could for them to stop the ride. They didn't hear us.

We flew upward toward the other dead end, my mother openly praying to God to save her only daughter. I don't know if she remembers doing that. I remember her crying out and holding on to me, screaming as loud as she could "God, please save my child," as I clutched her with all my might. She never loosened her grip on me for even a second. In vain, she screamed out to stop the ride again and again. Tears streamed down both of our faces as I sat there in horror, knowing what was coming. As that weightless feeling came over us again, there were no smiles between us this time. There was nothing but pure horror written over both of our faces as we plunged backwards towards what could have easily been my death.

I've never had much upper body strength, even when I was in the best shape of my life. I've never been able to do a pull up, and to this day I don't know where my strength came from. I braced my knees under the bottom of the harness as we plummeted back towards the Earth. By the time we screamed bloody murder to stop the ride past the waiting crowds, I had braced my arms inside the harness, pushing hard on the shoulder catch to hold my body to the seat. I hunched over and gripped the heels of my feet under the tiny lip of the seat I was on. Mom grabbed my shoulder as much as she could and pushed down with every bit of strength she could manage.

We screamed backward up into the loop, slowing just as before near the top. Then the coaster came to a complete stop once more. Silence filled the air around us. My back began to slide down the seat.

My ankles throbbed from gripping the seat under me so tightly on the very small lip I could hook them to. Mom couldn't get a good grip on me and had to let go. She grabbed my shirt instead and pulled towards her with all her might. She screamed at me to hold on. My arms didn't have the strength they needed to keep me inside the harness. My legs slipped and my knees were no longer braced against the bottom of the harness. I began to slide more. My shoulders reached the harness and started to slip through. I bent at the waist, dangling my legs in front of me over the shoulder harness. I hung like a rag doll upside down in a roller coaster I was supposed to be tall enough to ride. My body swung, a pendulum in the breeze, any second capable of finding death.

"HANG ON, MANDA!" My mothers words echoed in my ears every time I saw a roller coaster for years after that. I hung on for dear life.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the coaster started to move again. My body slammed to the back of the seat and slid slowly down the hard plastic surface. My feet let gravity take them to the floor once again. Mom didn't loosen her grip on my shirt, but I was OK with that.

We reached the dead end behind us at long last, and Montezuma's Revenge coasted to the bottom. I was weak from fear and could barely stand up to get out, while my mother was so pumped up with adrenaline that she practically dragged me out of the coaster and towards the ride operator. She screamed and yelled in his face, though I have no idea what she said. That could have been the relief in me blocking out whatever she was saying, but something tells me he really didn't understand her words either. She was completely hysterical, screaming and crying.

She told me later on that the second I shouted out to her, she got an instant migraine. It was instinctive for her to grab on to me, knowing something was wrong. She and I both thought I was going to die that day. As far as we know, nothing was done with the harnesses on that ride for several years, until a teen in the 90's slipped through the harness and died.

For years I was terrified of roller coasters. Then it became coasters that went upside down. Eventually I got over that and have only been afraid of slow moving heights, like a Glass Elevator, or the slow incline of a roller coaster in the beginning. Now that I remember the story of Montezuma's Revenge clearly, I believe this is and always has been the source of my Glass Elevator fear.

The Bronson File

Eventually I was taken out of my High School and enrolled in the school for "troubled" kids because of my running away as a teenager. I was in the second semester of the 11th grade when this took place. My attendance was terrible, my grades were even worse. I had given up on school, friends, grades and everything in general other than taking care of myself. Some would say I was depressed - but in a secret reality, I was going through withdrawals.



I was put on ritalin against the Doctors orders at the age of four and a half. By the time I was fifteen, I knew that I didn't like how it made me feel. I stopped taking them all together. Mom started counting the pills every day, so I started flushing them down the toilet. I didn't know what withdrawals were, but I felt like wearing black every day. I went through terrible mood swings where I would lash out for no apparent reason. I would often get angry and scream at my parents for the smallest things. I never got away with that, though.



Convinced I was on drugs (when really I had taken myself off of drugs) my parents started taking me to shrinks on the military base. They prescribed Klonopin, Paxil, Prozac and a myriad of other mind and emotion numbing drugs. I refused to take those, too. I flushed them down the toilet every day, right along side the Ritalin.



One night I got into trouble for something. I don't even remember what it was. I was told to go down to my room while my parents discussed the punishment. Wanting desperately to show them exactly what the drugs would do to me if I ever actually took them, I took only one tablet of Klonopin. Even I didn't know what the effects would be. By the time I was to report upstairs for the punishment, my eyes were fully dialated. The suspicions only grew. They had me pegged as being a dope fiend and searched my bedroom that night for any illegal narcotics. The only things they found were the things they were trying to force me into taking. It worked just as I had wanted to. They got off of my case about drugs. They still wanted me to take my prescriptions just before bedtime so nobody saw my dialated eyes, but I still refused. I continued to flush them down each day, or grind them into dust and sprinkle them in the yard. There were a few happy birds flitting around for a while when I did that.



At the alternative school I started to run into people I hadn't seen in a few years. I had gone to school with some kids in Jr High that suddenly disappeared, much the way I did in the 11th grade. Of course I had few friends the entire time I lived in Utah, so I was used to spending my time alone. That suddenly changed at my new school. All of the Social Outcast kids banned together. We didn't pick on one another no matter what our ailments were. The kid with Coke Bottle glasses was treated with equal dignity as the girl with head gear (me) and the former Football player, kicked out of his school for trying Steroids. We were all equals, standing on equal turf. Nobody was better than anyone else. I was in heaven.



At Washington High, I was voted "Sweetest Girl" in the school, and my dear friend Trent Heckman was voted "Sweetest Guy" so our photo was taken for the year book. I had friends who talked to me in each class. I had teachers that would treat me like an equal instead of like a plague. I didn't realize for a long time what the core difference was between Washington and Bonneville, but when it dawned on me, it hit like a ton of bricks. We weren't Mormon.



We came from all walks of life. We were a collection of Catholics, Methodist, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and a variety of other religions. The teachers were as well. We were Military kids, mostly - brought together in the middle of Ogden, Utah because of the simple reason that we were of a different religion.



I've always been a part of the Majority. To have suddenly been thrust into a Minority group because of the church my family went to (or rather, didn't go to) didn't make sense to me. I learned how to cope with it quickly enough though. I made friends all over my school and became one of the most popular kids there. Nobody made fun of me anymore, people asked me for help on English assignments, teachers praised me and my attendance became legendary.



I ended up making friends with a Bronson Babbit after a couple of months. I had known Bronson for a little while in the 7th grade, but like so many I knew, he suddenly disappeared. It turned out that they had moved, and later on was forced to go to Washington like all the rest. He had been a bit of a nerd boy when I knew him before, but I didn't even know who he was when he called out my name in the hallway one day.



"Amanda," he said, "is that you?"



"Yeah, do I know you?"



"It's me. Bronson."



"Bronson who?"



"Bronson Babbit. 7th grade."



He brushed his long hair out of his face, curled his upper lip into a snarling smile, and squinted slightly. Instantly I knew who he was, even with the eye liner and sweat band bracelets.



The very next time I ran away from home after being violently attacked by my mother in the parking lot of the school, I went to Bronson's house. That time I had decided to take my dog Cookie with me. She was such a lovely dog, I couldn't just leave her behind. My parents had threatened to get rid of her if I ran away again. I refused to let anything happen to her. I smuggled her on the city bus by sticking her inside a duffle bag and carrying her like I would a suitcase full of clothes. She never made a sound.



Bronson's family were kind to me. They lived in a small trailer in a Mobile Home court and were fine with me bringing Cookie with me. She got along with Bronson's mother very well and becamse a member of the family very quickly.



The family lived off of Hamburger Helper at almost every meal. They were all fairly heavy set, including Bronson, but their hearts were good and they took care of me. I was free to come and go as I pleased and continued going to school each day. My attendance remained steady, never missing a class.



Finally, and quite suddenly, Bronson's family had to move and I was forced to move on alone. Without anywhere else to go, I finally made the long trek home to my mother and father. I hated no having options.



Cookie was happy to see my mother, but I certainly wasn't. They had cleaned out my room, getting rid of everything I owned except for a mattress on the floor and the clothes I was wearing. I didn't even have a door on my bedroom anymore.



That started another jouney for me - one that would take me over a state border and over 600 miles from home... but that's another story. That's the story of Byron Miller, a story I've never told to another living soul. I'm not proud of it and I did a terrible thing, but I'm ready to tell the truth.



Stay tuned.

Lost in Prague

For many, many years I had a terrible sense of direction. I would get lost walking from my house to the bus stop. It didn't help that the house was situated at an odd angle on the corner of a 5 way intersection. I wouldn't know my North from the West if my life had depended on it. I knew how to get home and how to get to school, but for all else, I depended on others around me. In the middle of the night, in a foreign country where English was barely spoken, I had a rude wake-up-call at 23 years old and to this day I have a hard time realizing how lucky I am to be alive.

Bill and I had gone to Germany for Stefan and Barbara's wedding. It was the first time I had been back to Germany since we moved away in 1982. I hadn't remembered anything about the beautiful Country in which I was born except for the briefest of flashes during that moment I found myself reminiscing over my life with my grandfather while stuck in that layer between death and life. Even then it was too limited to really know anything about where I had been born. All I could tell anyone was that I was born in Kaiserslautern.

I had dreamed of going back to Germany for many years. For my 16th birthday my parents bought a VHS tape about tourism in Germany and took me to the only German restaurant in Ogden. It was a birthday worth remembering. So when I found out that there was a chance to go see where I was born, I jumped at it, eager to see the world.

We flew into New York City with the aspirations of seeing a Broadway show with some other people who were also headed to the wedding over seas. I couldn't believe it - this trip was going to give me two of my greatest dreams! Next to Germany, my other top item on my 'bucket list' was to go to a Broadway show!

Unfortunately things happen and my dreams of seeing the show were dashed upon the rocks like a ship lost in a storm. With Richard and Gloria, things often "came up" at the last minute, so that trip we never made it to Broadway. We had a quiet dinner in a restaurant with a 2 hour wait for a table. All I kept thinking was that we could have spent that 2 hours at Broadway, Damn the meal. The next day we were boarding a flight to Germany though, so I didn't let it dampen my spirits.

We flew into Frankfurt on a 14 hour flight with me stuck in a broken seat that wouldn't recline. Gloria's snide condescension drove me up the proverbial wall. I'd never truly liked her very much anyway, but I had always been good at being 'pleasant' to her in social situations. I grabbed out my ear buds and popped them in when the movie started with the intention of drowning her out. My in-flight head set didn't work right for the movie though, and by the time we got there I was so bored with word search puzzles that I never wanted to see another for as long as I lived and it was all I could do to restrain myself from knocking Gloria unconscious - but we were THERE. We had made it to Germany!

My nerves were a bit frayed at this point from lack of sleep and the occasional condescending blast from Gloria. Society cant pin that many people into a cramped space with screaming kids and falling hat boxes without expecting those who know one another to be cranky with one another. We're constricted by social graces to be kind to strangers, but with people we know, we can be our cranky selves. By the time we loaded up in the rented diesel station wagon, the four of us were snapping like bears in the salmon run. We were each out for blood and we knew it.

Even the ever-patient Richard grew testy. I was ready to claw Gloria's eyes out with just one more snide comment about how I was too young to know about this or that, or that I didn't know about a particular social grace because I didn't "grow up with money" as she put it. I couldn't help but think to myself that she most likely didn't either. Due to the way she spoke to those around her, I guessed that I had more class, dignity and grace in my little finger nail than she possessed in her entire body. There were certain things I'd never understand according to her because she was a nurse and I wasn't. There was something about Gloria that I truly despised. Later on I discovered what the underlying reason was for her condescension and knew that I was justified in my dislike of the woman. I'll save that story for another day.

Gloria had been rude each time she thought even for a second that it couldn't be overheard by the men. I wasn't the type of person to complain, so when some of her remarks were overheard inside the car, Bill started to realize there was something going on. He knew me well and could tell when I didn't like someone, but he didn't say anything to me about it. He thought it was all in my mind, most likely. She proved that it wasn't all in my mind, Gloria really did NOT like me. She made that trip almost unbearable for me, but vindicated me at the same time.

We drove from Frankfurt through East Germany and straight in to Prague, only getting lost once or twice on the way. We got there late at night and settled in to a Bed and Breakfast where we would be staying for the next few days. Before even 10 minutes passed, we were settled into bed for the night, exhausted from the long journey. Each of us felt as though we either had a plane or a car growing out of our buts.

The next day we found ourselves wandering Prague. We visited the famous sights, took tours of castles far removed from the city and purchased typical "tourist" items like watercolor paintings of the famous clock tower. We watched the fire eaters and sword jugglers on the Charles bridge, we peered in awe at the blue glass in the shop windows along every street. The church was stunning. Prague was one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever seen in my life. By the time we stopped into the bar for a quick meal though, we were starving and tensions were high once more.

We drank fresh Pilsner beer, marveling at the massive difference between that and what we get in the States. With the beer, lips became loose and we all began to have words. Gloria had pushed me to the limit, and when Bill said something to me, I took in a negative way. Honestly I don't even remember what he said, but tempers were flared and I was more frustrated than I let on.

Without warning, I snapped. I walked out of the bar leaving the three of them sitting there. Gloria huffed behind me, complained about my being so immature because of my age, and sighed in complete impatience and ignorance.

Bill thought I would be right back. My own stubborn pride refused to allow me. I stayed outside for a few minutes, but Bill came out and I couldn't handle a discussion right then. He strode out with purpose and told me that he wanted to talk to me. He didn't sound happy and I really didn't want to start screaming at him in the middle of the crowded street. I walked away into the crowd and didn't look back.

If I were to guess, I would estimate the time was around 5 in the evening. I was hungry and angry, a dangerous combination for a redhead. Had anyone messed with me right then, they would have had the fight of a lifetime on their hands. I didn't stop walking. I walked past familiar shop windows, my face steaming. I practically sped across the Charles Bridge, striding with purpose past the stunt performers and street dancers. I blazed past the musicians with open guitar cases. When I passed the station, I dug into my pockets. I had no money so I couldn't take the train anywhere - I just kept walking. By the time the sun went down, I strongly wished I hadn't left my jacket at the table. It had been hours since I walked away from the table and my hunger was getting the better of me. I told myself to remember the Saltine crackers, and I just kept walking.

Dark, shady cars filled with dark, shady faces slowed down to look at me. Taxi's offered me a ride, but with no currency there wasn't much I could do. I ignored the young men making eyes at me. When the three men carrying hand guns down the middle of the road with the large, scary guy carrying an assault rifle walked past me, I refused to make eye contact. Prague turned out to be a little frightening at night.

I tried to tell myself that I was going the right direction, but I wasn't really sure. Some of the streets I wandered down started to look familiar, like I had seen them once or twice before. I walked past the Prague clock tower at least three times. I walked back across the Charles bridge no less than three times, too.

The smiling faces of the flame throwers became the grimacing mugs of tattooed fire eaters as the sun set. The sword jugglers became the night's assassins, out for my blood. The shops with the lovely blue glasses were suddenly dark and empty recesses filled with sinister shadows. Around every turn I found something waiting to swallow me into this strange world.

When finally I found the main street leading out of Prague, it was nearing 11 at night. I was all alone on the streets of a foreign country where I didn't even speak the polite words like please and thank you in the native tongue. Even if someone were to attack me, I couldn't beg for my life properly. Not that I would do something like that. I couldn't cry out for help. I didn't know the streets, so I couldn't even run away. I had no allies. I was stranded and alone in the dark night of a dangerous land.

In the year 2003 the Czech Republic had some of the highest crime rates for several of the surrounding nations. When the sun goes down in Prague, girls get kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. I couldn't believe as I wandered the frightening streets of Prague at midnight that I had once again put myself into that position.

I was certain that by now Bill had gotten Gloria and Richard to agree to look for me. I was lost, cold, alone and frightened. I was hungry and tired. But I knew that since I was finally on the main road, it was only another 2 hour walk back to the Bed and Breakfast just outside of town. I could see a possible shortcut in front of me to cut about an hour off of my travel. The scariest part would be having to walk parallel to the railroad tracks, trying to avoid eye contact with the street bums. I was no stranger to that tactic, so I decided to go for it.

The industrial section of Prague spewed black smoke into the air, making the dark night even darker, enveloping the stars in a thick soot that settled on everthing around me. Flames spat into the air from the chimneys, allowing brief glimpses of my surroundings. I stumbled once and fell on my hands and knees. When I stood up to dust myself off, I looked to see what it was I had stumbled over. There behind me was a leg poking out from under a blanket. It was cold to the touch, like ice. The blanket wasn't wrapped around the body at all, but rather just tossed on top. I wondered if the body was even alive. The chimney vomited more flames and black soot, and under one corner of the blanket I saw the face.

His eyes were dark, hollow shells. He stared off into nothing, vacantly resting on a pile of broken wood and shattered bricks. Even staring straight into his face I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but I strongly assumed he wasn't.

I bolted. I ran for all I was worth, tearing up the ground beneath me with each foot fall. I clinched my teeth together to avoid screaming. Bones were littered here and there; I couldn't help but wonder if they were human or not. The chimney kept belching out black, ominous clouds over bright flashes of evil flames. The world had never seemed so dark.

I shivered, partially from cold but mostly from fear. I stumbled my way down the tracks. Dogs howled and barked in the distance and I suddenly had flashes in my mind of running from a pack of German Shepherds as they tracked me down and ate me for trespassing. I splashed through an open sewer and up the side of the embankment, scrambling and clawing at the hill side for something to pull myself up. The dogs sounded closer with every second. I grappled my way over the chain link fence and fell in a heap on the other side.

An hour later, I realized I was damn lucky I made it all the way back.

Bill was rightfully angry at me when he found me at 3:30 in the morning snuggled up in bed after a hot shower, sound asleep, I don't remember what was said or for how long he said it, but looking back on that frightening night, I'm sure I deserved every moment of it. What I had done was incredibly impulsive and ridiculously dangerous. I don't know exactly what I was thinking that day, if I was thinking at all.

I had been so scared and cold that night wandering around in a strange city thousands of miles from home that I didn't care how long he yelled at me, I was just happy to be back.

Until now I never told a soul about the train yard of Prague. Not even Bill.

 

.

The Sea Doo

Mom liked to brag about me when I was a teen, telling her friends at the Post Office about what a daredevil I was. I obviously got it from her, and I think that's why she enjoyed it so much. Her Utah co-workers enjoyed the days she would stop in at work on her day off to pick something up and she would happen to bring me with her. We would stop and chat a while at each of the carrier cases and I would watch them laugh together like the old friends they were. Wendy and Jo Ann were my favorite carriers other than Lynn, otherwise known as "Pee Wee" at 6'5" tall, and Dale. They weren't just my mothers friends. When I went in there, they were MY friends too.

They all decided to have an office picnic one year out at the lake. Mom and Dad had a boat that they brought out with them and we spent a day eating hot dogs over an open fire, going for boat rides, slathering up with the sun block and playing in the water. When my mother found out that Dale would be bringing his SeaDoo though, she told him ahead of time that I was her little daredevil.

"Scare her, Dale. Scare the $hit out of her," she said to him without my knowledge.

"Really," he asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, scare her as much as you can. She doesn't get scared of anything. Just have fun out there and abuse her a bit."

"You're sure?"

"Dale, just do it."

"Ok, Beth - you asked for it." He thought for a moment. "Just don't be mad at me for it."

Dale saw me coming up the beach and asked me if I'd like to go for a ride on the back of his Seadoo. I had never been on one so I jumped at the chance. It sounded like a lot of fun to me! For a few years I had been the only one in my family able to get up on the knee board. I had jumped many waves in the inner tube. I'd mastered the art of getting up on the water skis. I loved water sports in any form and this was one I'd never had the chance to try but always wanted to.

"When are we going," I asked Dale, ready to spring into action like a dog eager to go for a walk. I nearly pranced with excitement.

"Let me finish my burger," he mumbled through a very full mouth. Bits of honey oat hamburger bun fell out onto the sand only to be quickly snatched up by the Utah State Bird, the California Sea Gull. I always have laughed at that fact, the Utah State bird being from another state entirely.

He finished eating and it was all I could do not to drag him to the water monster waiting on the sandy strip below. We climbed on board with my mother shouting "Hang on, 'Manda," over behind me. I barely heard her. I hooked my hands into the back of Dale's life jacket and away we went.

Dale took it easy at first. He asked if I was ok, and I would shout back that I was fine and that so far it was fun. Each time that exchange of words took place, I could feel the gas revving a bit more. Pretty soon I felt like we were doing a whole 15 miles and hour. It was a very mild ride.

My Dad went screaming past in the boat and I shouted to Dale that I just knew we could catch up to him. Suddenly the challenge was on. Dale slowly started to increase speed and within a minute, we were doing around 30 miles an hour. I was squealing with delight, fully ready to go faster and overtake my Dad.

Dad killed the motor to the boat ahead as one of Mom's coworkers climbed over the side and prepared to try water skiing. Dale and I went speeding past and kept on going. We turned around just in time to see Dad taking off, creating a wake behind him. Dale goosed it, I held tight to his life jacket, and we hit the wake at around 35 miles an hour. The jet ski soared into the air higher than I thought was possible. We sailed with nothing under us but air, finally landing with an abrupt sputter and jerk as we took off through the water once more. I squealed with delight, screaming at Dale about how much fun that was and that I wanted to do it again.

He took wave after wave, increasing speed each time I squealed with delight. Finally we wiped out and both of us tumbled in a syncronized cartwheel formation over the surface. We splashed into the water and I came up laughing. The jet ski was close by and we both swam over to where it rested.

"Ok," Dale said to me when we managed to climb back onto it, "I think I'm going to let you take it out on your own for a while."

We cruised at a low speed back to the shore where Dale made a direct line to my mother. Talking with animated hand movements, I knew he was telling her the stories of our hour long ride. He asked her if it was ok for me to take it on my own for a bit, then walked over to show me how it worked. I couldn't wait to get it out in the open.

What I didn't know was exatly what they had talked about.

"I tried, Beth. I really tried," he said to my mother. "I even scared myself a few times, but I couldn't seem to scare her at all. When we wiped out, she came up laughing and I came up thankful to be alive! She's a tough kid, Beth. I don't think you have to worry about her."

"That's what worries me," she said to him. "Without being afraid, how far will she push it?"

I took the jet ski out for hours that day. I went all over that lake on a motorized vehicle - the first time in my life I had ever had something with power completely to myself. I didn't have to answer to anyone or listen to directions. There was no "Go here" or "head there" or "you're going too fast" that I expected to hear the first time I ever drove anything with a motor. I didn't have a back seat driver - it was just me and the open water of Pine View Dam. What glory!

I flirted with boys, I cruised into the docks, I wandered from finger to finger among the many that made up all of Pine View. I coasted through reeds, watched for fish, jumped boat wakes and had a glorious day.

"Hey," one of the boys of a passing boat shouted out. "Can I have a ride?" I looked around. I didn't see anyone from my group close by, so I told him to go for it. He lept over the side of his family boat and dove with grace and ease into the murky, dark water. When he surfaced, I told him that I wouldn't take him anywhere unless he was wearing a life vest. His brother tossed one in the water beside him and he pulled it on. He was very fit and was probably a basketball player in High School, tall and lean. He pulled himself onto the jet ski with ease. He wrapped his arms around my mid section and we took off like a rocket. I felt him as he smashed his face against the back of my shoulder and hung on for dear life.

"You ok," I shouted back to him after a little way out.

"Yeah," he said quietly. I slowed down.

"Seriously, are you ok," I said, turning to look at him. His face was white.

"I've never been on one of these things before," he admitted sheepishly. "I didn't know they would go that fast." I didn't dare tell him I'd never been on one before that day, too.

I took him around at a lower speed for a while, jumping wakes and exploring the lake. After about an hour I took him back to the boat and he thanked me with a kiss on the cheek.

I never really thought of myself as a tough kid before that. I was certainly adventurous, but to have scared a High School jock when I was only 15 years old by driving a Sea Doo over water - water! That substance that gives when you land on it! - really drove home a point to me. I guess most people just can't handle the adrenaline rush of it all.

I never stopped looking for that adrenaline rush. I love Zombie movies and haunted houses. I love pretending to be the toughest person in a group no matter how frightened I really am.

Mark Twain once said "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

My story is not to say that I didn't feel fear. I wasn't numb to being afraid - but the fear made the ride more fun for me. In certain moments of extreme danger I'm smart enough to get away when needed, wise enough to protect others when that's more urgent, and determined enough to stay until I see it through to the very end whenever possible.

I wondered for the briefest of seconds if I would break my neck as I tumbled end over end, turning somersaults and cartwheels over the water beside Dale. As my feet dipped into the wave and my body twisted its fall to follow, I knew that fear had no real meaning. I would be fine, even though I had bruises on my body for weeks.

The fun outweighed the fear. The adventure outweighed the pain. The determination outweighed the danger.

That's how I live my life, one wave at a time.



.

Uneven Bars

On my way to work this morning I heard a song that reminded me of my childhood. The singer mentioned something about calloused hands and I looked at my own now dainty and feminine hands. They weren't always that way. My nails weren't always long and could never keep a coat of red on their surface. They were once the hands of a tom boy, and then the hands of a gymnast, and finally the hands of a roofer before they became the gentle hands they are today.


Callouses used to line the edges of my palm, just at the base of my fingers. I would spend hours climbing trees as a kid. I thought I was half monkey in all honesty. I wanted to be half horse, graceful and beautiful, but I was never a graceful child, and I couldn't have been farther from beautiful. I would play in the mud and always have mud caked under my nails. Mom would spend long periods of time trying to clean under them with a brush. When I was around 5 years old, she painted my nails pink after my begging her for what seemed like forever. All the other little girls in the neighborhood had their fingers painted pretty colors, I wanted pretty hands too. The first thing I did when she finished was go dig up worms with the boys out in the pumpkin patch.

I used these hands to punch a hole in a glass window once. I've used them many times to defend myself, to place shingles on the roof of many houses, to build towers with blocks and to escape miraculously from impossible situations. They were damaged, worn and bruised most of my life, up until just recently.

I used to play on the uneven bars at school when I was in the 5th grade. The playground was a lonely place for me back then. I didn't have many friends. When I discovered the uneven bars, I saw the things other kids were doing on them and wanted to learn how. Instantly I jumped onto an empty one and tried to swing around it by my legs. I fell, landed in a heap on the ground, brushed the sand out of my hair and tried again. The first time I made it all the way around the bar by hooking one leg over and one leg under I was amazed. I learned how to swing my momentum to get me around more often at at a faster pace. I learned how to stop swinging around and swap legs. Then I learned how to swing around the bar with both legs over the bar and using my knees and hands. The callouses ripped open on my hands and I would be in pain trying to write in class, but it was worth it. The adrenaline pumped in my veins and I felt like I was learning something I could be good at.

It took weeks and months to get to where I could transition my hands from one side of my body to the other. I eventually tried swapping legs in mid swing on a continuous cycle and got quite good at that. Another kid dared me to do the Cherry Drop, so I tried. I fell on my head and again brushed the sand out of my hair with my dry, calloused hands. Then I jumped back up and tried it again. I learned which bars were too close to the ground by smacking my skull a few times on the dirt, but I never forgot those lessons.

The Cherry Drop was a challenge. I would hang upside down on the bar from my knees and swing back and forth. When I felt that I was swinging out widely enough, I would unhook my knees from the bar and flip around. I was supposed to land on my feet, but that took a while to get. Most of the time I landed on my butt. Finally one day I got it. I landed on my feet and felt like I was on top of the world!

I had gotten so good on the uneven bars that other kids began asking me how I did it and what my secret was. Feeling proud of myself for having mastered something so well, I started to push myself harder. I wanted to not only be good at it, but I wanted to be the BEST at it! I worked harder and harder. One day, as I swung around the bars with both knees hooked on, I swapped hands in mid swing. I would put both on my left, then both on my right, then both in the middle. Again I heard a dare. Someone dared me to take both hands off of the bar.

The world whizzed by in a blur as I swung wildly by just my knees. I saw the sky race past, the swings behind me, the sand below me, the brick wall before me, the crowd of kids beyond that, and then the school off in the distance. I grabbed the bar again with both hands and went around once more before stopping. My heart raced. I had done it!

Kids everywhere were asking me how I had done it. I didn't know what to say, other than I had just tried and somehow it worked. Others began trying and several were sent to the Nurses office for head injuries. I just kept on.

Each day I would practice at recess. Kids would come from all over the soccer field, the 4 square and tether ball areas and kick ball practice area way off in the distance just to watch me. I felt like I was on stage. Each day I grew more brave. I would start to swing around and do a complete show, always changing things for the 'performance' and always wanting to push myself just a little farther.

One day I decided to incorporate the Cherry Drop with my routine. The kids all knew not to stand too close to the bars in case I lost hold and went flying out in front. Knowing there was a clear space in front of me, I began flipping backwards around the bar and let go with my hands. I rolled around backwards on the bar using nothing but my knees for a full 12 rotations before I picked up the courage, and when the timing was right, I let go. I launched out in front, soared up into the air, and landed squarely on my feet. The other kids applauded and ooohed and ahhed. I had done something nobody else had been able to do and it was coined the Death Drop.

The Death Drop became my signature move. Other kids wanted to copy it, but they were too afraid. One day a boy came and asked me to teach him the basics on the bars, and so I began to mentor the 6th grader. He was a year older than me in school, but he wanted to learn so I started to teach him. In no time he grew to be quite good and we would give dual performances at school during lunch. Within a few months, he landed a Death Drop and amazed everyone. I couldn't be more proud - my Student had gotten to be as good as I was. In due time, kids started asking him to teach them. Pretty soon we were teaching side by side. We would have anywhere from 5 to 20 kids a day we would work with together. We worked as spotters, making sure they didn't fall. After having learned the hard way myself, I made sure none of them ever got on a bar that was too low to the ground so that they didn't skid to a halt grinding their heads through the sand.

Once or twice we had a kid fall off the bars, but with the other kid there to help me, nobody was hurt. The kids that refused help and wanted to do it all themselves often ended up in the Nurses office by the end of recess. The audience grew, and the school threatened to either add more uneven bars or to remove the ones out there due to the danger and attraction they provided.

I was still the best at what I did. My first student and then co-teacher was very good, but there were certain things I wouldn't teach him. I was selfish. I wanted to be the best at what I did. To some degree there's still that competitive side to me, I want to be the best.

Mom came out to the school one day for Parent - Teacher conferences. I told her there was something I wanted to show her on the playground, so she followed me out there. She was thinking I was going to swing across the jungle gym or go really high in the swings. She was unprepared for what followed.


I went through my very best routine, and she stood back in awe. She had no idea I was able to do all of those tricks on the bars. Finally, in my moment of grandeur, I performed my Grand Finale with the Death Drop.


She screamed.

She yelled and screamed at me. She made me swear I'd never do it again. She threatened to go to the office and ask what they were thinking by allowing me to perform such stunts at recess.

That was the end of my pseudo-career on the bars at school. In two years I transitioned to 7th grade soon and didn't have the bars at recess, or even a recess at all. Lunches were spent from then on eating food alone until we moved to Utah. I had no friends in Jr. High and had a hard time for the first time in my life forming new bonds with total strangers. Nobody liked the little nerd girl with too many freckles, a stick figure for a body and crooked teeth. The other girls had begun to blossom into young ladies and I was still just a kid. I became a wall flower. It was a hard transition to go from being a Bar Celebrity to being nobody in an eager sea of strangers.


As I sat on the grass alone eating my lunch one day, I looked out into the lawn between buildings and saw a kid off in the distance. A crowd gathered around him in a long line. There was a ton of room behind and in front of him, so I watched. I was curious to know what was going on.


The young man suddenly sprang into the air and did a series of back flips and front flips and amazing stunts I'd only ever seen performed on television. He had a full Olympic routine memorized from the looks of it. I completely forgot about my sandwich and went over to watch...


When he finished, the crowd clapped for him. I looked close and knew he was familiar...


The Student had surpassed the Teacher.



.

Shack in the Woods

WARNING - THIS STORY IS NOT
FOR THE WEAK OF STOMACH.


By far I think some of the most unusual friends I had in my youth were brothers, Steve and Dan Stakely. For years I had an incurable crush on Steve, who was my age and grade. I was always boy-crazy, but my mother was convinced I would someday marry this crush. Steve and Dan’s mother was convinced equally that Dan would one day marry his crush as well. His crush just happened to me me. It made for many interesting stories involving the bus ride to and from school. At the time, I wasn’t being a very good role model, but I also didn’t realize that Dan looked up to me as much as he did.

I was a rather poor student at the time one particular adventure took place. Well, I wasn’t exactly a bad student. I was actually quite a good student, when I was at school. I had started skipping classes the year before, and eventually it elevated to entire weeks the next year. At this point, it was just a day here, a day there. I suppose I must have been about sixteen at the time, or almost that age. Dan was most likely somewhere around the age of fourteen.

In the beginning, Dan and I would just decide not get on the bus in the mornings. Instead, we would walk down to the park and meet at one particular place. From there we would decide on where to go and what to do. Sometimes we walked to Sheplers and filled out job applications. Other days we would go browsing through Media Play or Walmart. Nobody ever said anything to us about not being in school. He and I had quite a few adventures, but none so memorable as the day we decided to stay at the park on a snowy, cold, frozen day and tried to find some shelter.

Dan and I had explored the woods behind the Cinedome at the park many times. We knew the trees and the paths through them almost as well as we know our own back yards. We headed up the winding sewage creek towards the top of the hill. We climbed and scrambles our way up the muddy embankment past where the sewage pipe submerged from the sheer mud cliff. We emerged in a clearing and could see nothing around but trees, a wrecked, stripped, and rusted old mail van, and a tiny old wooden shack off in the distance.

For a moment, we lingered in the old van, neither of us wanting to do what was coming next. At this point, it was already clear to me that Dan thought I was the toughest girl he had ever known, and had taken liberty to tell me as much on several occasions. To one person, I stood out in a crowd. I was finally important to someone. I didn’t want that to change in his eyes, or my own. I’m not entirely sure if it was ego or pure stupidity that made me do what came next, but one thing that will never change is that I did something I had thought I would never do.

Dan and I picked our way across the snow dusted field, being sure to only step on the tufts of grass on alternating sides all the way up the path. With each tip toe step on the grass we tried to leave footprints indistinguishable from the grass itself. We continued this way until we reached the old wooden shack. One window looked into the building but was too high and too dirty to see into. I pulled my brand new gloves out of my pockets with frozen hands, and slipped my fingers into the leather extremities. My body heat had warmed the gloves as they snuggled deeply in my jacket pockets, and the warmth felt wonderful on my Popsicle fingertips. I clenched and unclenched my fist a couple of times in order to stretch the leather to my hand just so. When I was ready, I struck. The sixteen inch high, one foot wide pane of glass shattered.

Dan stood back in awe. His mouth hung slightly ajar, and his eyes were wide with surprise. I opened my fist inside the window and with a flat palm, pulled more of the glass out through the fresh opening. I picked the broken glass out of the back of my now serrated brand new leather glove and tossed it into a nearby bush. In my heart I knew that what I had just done went against everything I had ever been taught, but at that moment, it just didn’t matter to me. I wanted to hang on to that feeling of being important and needed. I suppose then that it was my ego getting the better of me. I wanted to remain someone who stood out in a crowd. I suppose that was the turning point. I’ve stood out now nearly every day since.

I drug an unearthed tree stump under the broken window and pulled the loose glass from the sill. Making sure I was properly covered everywhere first, I grabbed the rotten wood lining the window and shimmied into it up to my waist and looked around. The opening was so small that I would have to turn sideways to get my hips through. I was much skinnier in my youth, and looking back on this incident, I know now that I wouldn’t have been able to make this same move only a year later.

An old workbench lined the tiny wooden floored room to my left, it’s edge nearly under the window. All the way on the opposite wall on the right, an old glass-handled door remained closed. I couldn’t imagine what treasures lay just beyond that door, just beyond what I could see. Even the room I was in was filled with treasures. Old rusted tools with fifty years of dust or more were scattered across the workbench. An antique tin tool box sat on the wooden floor under me, it’s lid slightly warped to remain forever open. This was a child’s paradise, a teenager’s fantasy come true, and a history fanatic's paradise.

I tested the workbench with my left hand for stability and found it mostly trustworthy, so I slowly pulled my twisted hips through the opening and turned to my left in order to put one knee on the workbench as I pulled the other leg through the window. I felt like a gymnast performing for the circus, but somehow I made it all look graceful.

Once through and on my feet, I turned to help Dan climb inside. The wooden floor was elevated about a foot off the ground, so the window didn’t seem nearly as high from my vantage point. I peeked out and could still see the short boys blond locks poking out in every direction under his knit cap. He elevated himself on his toes, and his blue eyes came into view.

"Step up on the wood," I whispered to him. Hi hands gingerly reached for the windowsill, cautious as he should be with no gloves on.

"I’m already on it," he said with a bit of a sneer, thinking I was poking fun at his short stature. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I pulled on his arms as he braced his feet against the wall of the shack. Somehow, he got turned around and ended up looking at the ceiling.

"Eww! What’s that," he asked, completely disgusted. I followed his gaze to the corner of the ceiling nearest the two of us. From a distance and in the natural dark, they looked like chicken drumsticks hanging on wire hooks from the ceiling. It seems like not only a weird thing to hang in a workshop or shed, but a rather gross thing to leave around anywhere until slightly molded and covered in cobwebs. I told Dan not to worry about it, as was my usual answer, and pulled him the rest of the way inside. I was never an extremely graceful person myself, but Dan’s entrance made me look like a prima ballerina. He was all arms and legs, getting tangled crazily. He landed on the floor in a pile.

As Dan looked around, I became curious about the drumsticks in the corner. I crawled cautiously onto the workbench, still not fully trusting the rotten wooden blanks. They held my weight though, and I inched closer to the dangling pieces.

I nearly screamed. I bit my tongue to avoid shouting out loud. Those weren’t just old chicken legs. They were bats that had been tied upside down from wires around their feet so long ago that the flesh was rotting off the bones. Part of the skull was protruding in the area of the mouth and the eyes were mere empty sockets of complete nightmare. They seemed to stare straight through me with complete nothingness. Just about the time I was going to jump down from the workbench and onto the floor, I saw one more hanging only inches above the window, It also happened to be only inches from my nose. The stench rolling off the rotted corpse gave away its location long before I saw it. I gulped and scrambled down from the table, not letting a syllable utter from my lips. Dan turned and looked at me.

"What’s the matter with you," he asked. "You’re white as a ghost. You feeling OK?" I didn’t say anything for a moment, but I guess the way his expression changed as he watched me that he could see the wheels turning in my head. An evil grin slowly spread across my face.
"I got us in here," I began. "Now it’s your turn." He looked puzzled at first. His eyes darted to the corner of the room and back to me again. Suddenly his face completely melted.
"No way!" he cried out. His shout echoed off the snow covered ground outside.

Much to his rejection at the thought, we searched around for something to help Dan to get what he still thought were chicken legs out of the old shack. The two of us finally decided a pair of pliers and some old wire cutters would do the trick, so I grabbed an old key chain flashlight out of my pocket and got back up on the workbench. Dan followed behind me, tools in hand.
Dan clutched the base of the mystery object with the pliers and something crunched under the pressure of his light grip. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the decaying smell something similar to that of road kill after it’s been in the sun a few days came wafting out, turning both our stomachs.
Dan couldn’t see the wire in order to cut it. I knew that would be the case, though I really resisted using my flashlight. Finally, I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I tried to catch only the thin line of wire in it’s beam, but the bony toes were caught in the light. Dan made lurching noises, and for a moment, I thought he was going to burst. He rocked back on his heels and I just barely caught him before he fell off the table. Unfortunately, the light jarred in my hand when I reached for him and the dim illumination fell squarely on the now crushed head of the bat. Something like oatmeal oozed out around the pliers. Every bit of color drained from Dan’s face, and I’m sure mine was a mirror image.

Dan flung the last of the bats out the window as I stood back ’supervising’ his task. I’ve since blocked out everything in between, though glimpses of the process to get the to the opening still haunt me at times.

Dan and I met at the old shack nearly daily for a while that winter. We’d have to meet outside and I would have to help Dan in since he was too short, but it quickly became one of our favorite places.

The same day we had given flight back to the long dead bats for a few seconds, we’d explored beyond the door at the end of the workbench. The room beyond had once been a carriage house. Dirt floors had long since been cluttered with various things, but faint wheel marks could still be seen from a history long past. A pedal powered knife-sharpening wheel sat by where the double doors once opened outward. Antique brass headboards and foot boards leaned against the wall. Rusted spring-loaded animal traps hung from nails in the framework. Ancient chains covered in grit and grime dangled next to machetes on the ceiling. An old mule-pulled plow sat heavily on the ground next to the door inside. It was truly a treasure chest.

I knew Dan was as tired as I was of climbing through the tiny window opening, if not more so. My mind, ever-devious back then, came up with a plan one day.

"Hey Dan, why don’t you check out the side doors from the outside, see what they’re locked with. Maybe we can find a key and use that as our door from now on," I explained after finding an old she box full of keys under a floorboard in the small room. Delighted at the idea, he hurried out the window as fast as his fat, short body would allowed, and ran around the building to the other side of the doors. After explaining to me what the lock looked like, I began to make guesses as to which key would be the right one. I slid the keys one by one under the door, and one by one Dan tried them all and passed them back.

"I got an idea," Dan said to me, after the last key was safely back in its box. I heard him run back around he building and I met him at the window in the next room "Hand me that saw," he said, pointing to the workbench. I handed him the wood saw, not knowing exactly what he was going to do with it, and went back to the inside of the double doors as he tossed his jacket inside along the wall.

First, Dan tried to saw a bracing board in two, and when that didn’t work, decided to try the metal chain and lock that held it in place. Finally fed up with the resistance, Dan grabbed a rock, determined to smash the lock apart. All the noise he was making should have raised the dead bats from their shallow, snowy grave. Just about the time I was going to tell him to stop, to be quiet, I heard a strange voice.

"Hey Kid," a deep, growling voice yelled. "Get away from there!" Heavy footsteps outside warned me that whoever it was decided walking wasn’t getting the m to Dan quite fast enough. I heard Dan’s rock drop to the ground and I knew he was gone, running like a mad man through the woods. I was trapped inside.

There were apparently two men who had come to investigate. I could over hear them talking as they made their was around the inspection of the shed. I crawled, silent as a mouse, into the smaller room and hid under the corner of the work bench closest to the window.

"Aw, shit. Look at this, Chuck," the one who had yelled at Dan said. I didn’t need to look in order to know what he was talking about. The man was standing right over me, looking in through the window. I held my breath. "That damn kid broke the window."

"I s’pose we should nail it up before it snows again tonight," the other replied. "Let’s get a board and some nails." I heard the two start walking back the way they came and my spirits lifted. They were just about back to the double doors when I heard them pause.
"Wait," the one named Chuck paused. "What if the brat comes back?" he asked. "I better wait here while you get the stuff."

My body sprang into action before my mind had time to think. I jumped up, my head glancing off the table above me, and stood before the window. I knew without a doubt that they heard my head hit, and I didn’t have much time.

I lept into the air and twisted my body miraculously like an Olympic diver would ff a high dive and instead of diving into water, I sailed through the open window. Just before passing all the way through, I saw Dan’s only winter jacket on the floor by the wall where he had left it. It was too late. I could only pray he didn’t have any identification in it.

I landed on my hands and rolled roughly onto my back, catching a sharp stone right in the kidney. An old branch tore at my leg. I heard shouting behind me and didn’t take the time to catch my breath after the landing knocked it out of me. I pulled my feet under my sore butt and fled down through the woods, I imagine much the same way Dan had.

It wasn’t long before I caught up to Dan and passed him. My legs were much longer.

Neither of us skipped a single class in school for a month. Eventually Dan’s mother began asking where his jacket had gone. Not knowing what else to tell her, finally he just said that I had it and would get it for him. The retrieval of his jacket was the last time I ever went back up that hill in the woods, but that’s another story.