It was the summer of '69

My sister and I were yakking away on our most recent early morning phone conversation, talking about e-mails from our Sainted Southern Mother and why Jill was currently chilling out to classic R&B on Pandora.

Jill: Mama sent me a link to find the number-one song in the country the week you were born. Mine was "Killing Me Softly" by Rebecca Frack. So I created a new station.

Me: Rebecca Frack?

Jill: Roberta Flack. What did I say?

Me: You totally said Rebecca Frack.

And we laughed and laughed and talked for a long time about how freaking awesome music from that genre still is.

Then I decided to find out which was the number-one song in the country the week I was born.

Jill for the cool points and the win.

Heaven can wait, we're only watching the stars

I'm heading home for Thanksgiving. Updated my Facebook status to ask if any of my hometown homies are up for a beer. Did this after thinking about saving time to hang out with Bernard, the friend I always met up with every time I went home after the summer of 1987. He's still the first person I want to see when I'm home after all these years.

I met Bernard for the first time in elementary school. He was a gawky, tow-headed kid who barely spoke English (his mom was German and his dad was in the Army). We had some classes together sporadically for the next few years and saw each other at the skating rink on weekends.

When we were in 8th grade we really bonded. We skipped school for the first time together. The details are murky, but I think he, our friend April and I hid out in the woods before school started, then walked back to my house. What a glorious day that was! I remember we watched a lot of daytime television, and at some point we had a water-throwing fight that culminated in the breaking of one of my mama's vases. We glued it back together. It took my mama weeks to notice, and I blamed it on my little sister. I fessed up years later when I was in college.

In 1983, we started high school. We were two dorky 14-year-olds desperate to appear cool. Duran Duran were our idols then, and we emulated them down to their footwear of choice: leather jazz shoes with no socks. I took mine off in Bernard's presence once and he told me to put them back on because my feet stank. Everyone's feet stank during those heady, heel-blistered, sockless days.

I think we were about 15 when Bernard and I got the lofty idea to have ourselves a fancy dinner. Somehow, we got the opportunity to go to Hills' and do our own shopping and cook it at my house with nobody else around. We bought frozen pizza bites, Pac-Man ravioli and a single frozen lobster. We put the lobster in the microwave for several minutes, then sat staring at it, as neither of us had ever eaten lobster and we weren't sure how to go about doing it.

Throughout high school, the two of us behaved like immature siblings. We were notorious for getting into fights, not speaking for several weeks, then getting right back together and never mentioning -- because we'd usually forgotten -- what we were fighting about.

Bernard and I went shopping for school clothes at Independence Mall in Wilmington when we were 16 and we both spent all of our babysitting money. Bernard bought Alexander Julian multicolored shirts and I bought Alphaville's "Forever Young" and made him play it over and over on the cassette deck for the next two years.

At the beginning of our senior year, after not speaking all summer, we went to a party on the beach at Ocean Isle with a bunch of our classmates. Bernard somehow managed to lose his class ring. We went up to the arcade to borrow a flashlight, but we couldn't find the ring. The next day, a few of us went back and there it was, plain as day, on top of the sand.

Right there on the sand. That's where we'd stare at the stars. That's where we dreamed about a world outside our hometown, where we could go and be anything we wanted to be.

Bernard and I continued our glory days through college. Even though I moved away and he stayed, we always hung out when I came home. We'd get a six pack and drive up and down the island. Then we'd lie on the hood of his car and watch the moon go by.

There's the story of us driving our summer friend home to Virginia with a missing gas cap in Bernard's Samurai, terrified to throw cigarettes out the window lest we blow up. And us getting pulled over by the Myrtle Beach police outside our favorite late-night breakfast house hours after we "accidentally" drove past the parking deck attendant at the Pavillion. Oh, and Bernard putting the gas nozzle into the tank, going in to pay, coming out and driving off and gas from the nozzle spewing everywhere. (I thought it would be absolutely hysterical to call him the next morning and say, "Dude, are you watching the news? The gas station blew up!" But he could see through me and said, "Yeah, that's really funny, Leigh Ann.")

Then there was the night we decided to sleep on the beach, got some pillows and blankets from Bernard's mama's house and set up camp, only to be awakened two hours later by a massive lightning storm. We spent the next few hours in the car waiting for the sun to come up, as I was staying with my parents and therefore restricted to girl rules and had "massaged" the truth about where I was spending that night.

Fast-forward a couple of years. Bernard was friends with my sister Jill because she and he both came to Raleigh to stay with me and go to bars and shows. Back home, he got to be friends with my youngest sister, Amy. They made the same trip to Virginia together Bernard and I had made together years before to see our friend graduate from college.

I remember clear as day sitting on the front steps of the house I grew up in stunned silence, feeling not much of anything as people came and went after Amy died in 1994. Then Bernard pulled up in his Jeep. We ran to meet each other halfway, threw our arms around each other and sunk to the ground crying on each others' shoulders. Bernard was an honorary pallbearer at Amy's funeral, and he was with Jill and me at sunset when we saw a double rainbow stretch across Ocean Isle Beach.

We continued to meet up either at home or in Raleigh for years, but grownup responsibilities caused those meetings to be further and further apart.

I got married in June 2006. It was a very small ceremony at Mordecai Chapel here in Raleigh. I ran my announcement in our hometown weekly a few weeks later. My mama called and left a message on my answering machine of Bernard's message on her answering machine. "Hey. I saw Leigh Ann's announcement in the paper. Please tell her I'm happy for her and I love her."

Four weeks later, my daddy called me before my alarm clock went off to tell me Bernard had gotten killed in a car accident a mile away from his mama's home, where he was living. He'd gone out for cigarettes and had both his beloved dachsunds with him. One died on impact with him, one was found wandering the road the next day.

April and I got together for the first time in years to go to Bernard's funeral. We alternately laughed and cried as we remembered the three of us chasing each other around under the pier, when Bernard cut quickly to the side and we smacked into each other, nearly knocking ourselves out cold. And Bernard ran off laughing.

April, my English husband she'd never met before and I had lunch at the Giggling Mackeral on the island, then went back to my parents' house to get ready. We stood in front of the vanity we'd stood in front of hundreds of times before when we were young, including the time Bernard and I decided to dye the ends of our blond hair black like the girl in Berlin, with April in charge of applying the can't-color-over-this, jet-black hair dye.

The emotions we couldn't control caused me to shake uncontrollably and April to sweat profusely. My mama came in the bathroom and asked, "Why are you shaking and why are you sweating?!" April and I started laughing hysterically. I couldn't speak, but April managed to gasp out the words, "Well, because we're burying our best friend who died tragically too young and I'm really sorry but this isn't something we've ever done before!" And we laughed until we couldn't catch our breath.

At the funeral, I greeted classmates I hadn't seen in nearly 20 years, viewed pictures of Bernard that included shots of the two of us together and him holding my baby nephew, and cried my heart out on my husband's shoulder mourning a friend he never got to meet.

Every now and then I think of something I need to tell Bernard. I can remember how he enunciated every syllable and hear the sound of his voice. I can't believe how much I still miss him.

But I'll always know and remember him like he was when we were young and the world was wide open to us, because I know he's re-experiencing that feeling in the great beyond. When I see him there someday, we'll be lying on our backs on the sand under the Ocean Isle moonlight, being together without saying a word. Just like we used to.

Alphaville - Forever Young

Things like this used to make me sick

But in a case like this, I hope I get away with it.

My Sainted Southern Mother has taken to worrying about the way my husband and I banter sarcastically. "You're too mean to each other!" she fusses, because she doesn't get why we insult each other, congratulate each other ("Good one!) and laugh.

"That's our love language," I assure her. Then I remind her that I have exactly the same sense of humor as the man she married 43 years ago, and it took me 35 years to find another human being with that same quick, self-deprecating wit who could dish it out and take it.

So she concedes. Needless to say, my Good Ol' Boy Daddy looooooves Mr. Sweetypants.

And who wouldn't?

For the better part of two decades, I dressed in black and cried to a particular Depeche Mode song. Then I found that somebody. So when we often disagree on issues, I thank my lucky stars that he hears me out -- though my views may be wrong, they may even be perverted -- and is not easily converted to my way of thinking.

At the end of it all, he understands me. Bless his heart.

Vive le Sweetypants! You don't look bad! xoxoxoxo

Some things just roll off my tongue

(Setup for non-Methodists: Pastors in the United Methodist Church spend an average of four years at their parishes before being reassigned.)

I only met my Sainted Southern Mother's pastor once, briefly, at the shindig my parents gave Steve and me three years ago. It was in honor of our wedding and my SSM got to get me back for our boozy reception in a dive bar up here in Raleigh. Her reception in Shallotte was alcohol-free and in their yard.

Pastor Rich came and hung out in the waiting room with My Good Ol' Boy Daddy and me at the hospital as my SSM was undergoing her emergency hip-replacement surgery Monday. Trying to make small talk, I asked him to tell me about the building project at the church. He told me about the new wing and I asked about the current sanctuary -- the one I went to many a service in growing up.

"Is the carpet still green?" I asked.

(Have you ever caught yourself in the middle of a sentence realizing you are saying the exact wrong thing, yet you can't stop yourself from finishing the sentence? My mind was saying, "Noooo!!! You're insulting the preacher and admitting you haven't stepped foot in his church decades!!!" But my mouth wouldn't stop short.)

My face turned 18 shades of red.

"You know, I couldn't really tell you what color the carpet is," he replied.

He goes there every day, so I don't feel bad. In fact, I love knowing that a "man of God" is still just a guy. I bet his wife has to point out when she's had her hair done or remind him to take out the trash. Just like I do with my godless scientist.

All men truly are created equal.

Buy him breakfast, at least

While my Sainted Southern Mother is in the hospital recovering from her hip-replacement surgery, Mr. Sweetypants and I have been staying with my Good Ol' Boy Daddy at their house. When we aren't at the hospital, Steve and I send updates to family and friends, man the phone lines and run errands.

Last night, Daddy, Steve and I were sitting outside and making our list of errands for today. The first was to drop my daddy's beloved kitten off at the vet to get his first shots and be neutered.

"No problem," I replied while writing on my sticky note. "What did you decide to name him?"

"Haven't decided, have we, little buddy?" Daddy said, encouraging the kitten on his lap to attack its own tail.

"They're going to ask so they can establish his records," I replied. "And I think the polite thing to do, if you're sending a family member off to lose his private parts, is to refer to him by name."

"That's the least you should do," Steve chimed in.

"I'll think about it," Daddy said, promising to leave me a note in the morning with the vet's name and number to call, since my mama was the one who made the appointment and we didn't know the time.

When I got up at 8 this morning, my Daddy had long since left to be at the hospital for opening visiting hours. I drank a cup of the coffee he'd left warming for me and read the sticky note he'd left me.

(Animal Hospital Name)
(Phone Number)
His name is Little Buddy

And my tired, stony, little heart grew three sizes.

Daddy picked Little Buddy up from his de-balling, as Daddy calls it, this afternoon, getting to be the little fella's hero after my bad guy role traumatizing him this morning.

And that's cool. My daddy has always been my hero, too.

We've got a landlubber!

Or: "Epiphany! I don't have to hate my job!"

When I wrote this old post about wanting to work at Trader Joe's, I wasn't really kidding. A new Trader Joe's is under construction one mile from my house...

"So, are you going to teach?" just about every single person I ever told I was an English major asked. Teaching was the farthest thing from my plans, which never really formed a career path. I majored in English because I didn't have to try very hard at it (one of these days when I overcome my math anxiety, I'll blog about how many math courses I failed) and I reveled in the glory of being praised for putting in very little effort at the last minute.

Over the years, I stumbled my way into a career in editing for a book publisher, an advertising agency and (after refusing to take Corporate Communications for my Communications minor because I had principles and would never sell them out, dammit!!) the Corporate Comm department of a multibillion-dollar corporation that operates nuclear plants. It wasn't easy or fun anymore in that last job. I made a lot of money as a contractor, but for all the effort I put in and for all the errors I corrected, there were always people whose work I made better waiting in the wings to bitch about any mistakes I made.

Further complicating my stay in ultra-corporate America was my complete inability to rein in my honesty if forced to respond to a question or to control my "nonverbals." I learned that term there, along with other meaningless phrases like, "opportunity," "diversity" and "team-building."

It was in a "team-building" exercise that I got seated next to a screechy-voiced, sour-faced middle manager (the same age as me) who never once thanked me for rewriting her work to make it read like she actually graduated from J-School and who gleefully pointed out every typo I zoomed over but spell check would have caught if she used it. The question, intended to help us get to know and love each other, was, "What is your dream job?"

"Retail," I responded, "I love retail."

(The answer they were looking for was management. Management. Thanks for playing and enjoy this case of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.)

"Ugh," she sneered at me. Then, as she was the moderator and had to follow up, she sighed, "Why?"

("Because I never, ever want to be like you," I thought.)

"Because I love meeting and talking to people," I replied.

("Because when I've ever encountered someone like you while helping them shop, I knew I wouldn't have to see them the next day, and the day after, and the day after...," I thought.)

Here's where the epiphany comes in: I really don't ever have to deal with people like her or crappy office jobs again. Steve and I live simply with our two cats in our small house and Steve LOVES his job. I pick up freelance here and there and enjoy it. But as for corporate America? I really don't ever have to do that again.

Say that aloud and think how worth the monetary sacrifice it is if you hate your job or if you left a job you hated: I really don't ever have to do that again. Feels good, doesn't it?

I want to go to Trader Joe's a few hours every morning, talk to people, ring the bell and get a discount.

A pirate's daughter looks at 40

I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't bad at all. I was a bit introspective, especially since my unexpected early retirement five months ago turned my life upside down before it settled into something calm and wonderful. I was so numbed to corporate helldom toward the end of my last position that I forgot who I was at heart:

Whatever else I am, I will always be a girl from a sleepy beach town in North Carolina (see here and here).

My daddy's life is a Jimmy Buffett song. From his first album in the 70s when Jimmy Buffett songs were about the water, not the liquor, colorful shirts and parties of the Parrot-Head Nation. I grew to hate this culture as I waited tables at his shows at the amphitheater in Raleigh when I was young and poor or when I go home and hang out at my old bar on the beach and listen to party-Buffett playing on a loop for the tourists.

No matter where I roam, from London to New York to Amsterdam, I will always be that girl from Shallotte, as will my sister, the former gutter punk-squatter and current Earth Mother, hippy, Vermont resident.

Jill and I were both home in Shallotte last week, a meet-up that only happens maybe once a year. My Sainted Southern Mother has retired from cooking, so my Good Old Boy Daddy does all of it now. And he prepared two entrees: Jill's request for shrimp Creole and my request for country-style steak.

Jill and I left her boys with their grandparents and went out riding around in Jill's car. We intentionally averted our eyes as we drove, with the windows down and an 80s radio station blaring, past the golf courses and McMansions for New York's and New Jersey's rudest retirees that have sprung up, consuming the woods where we'd ride our our mini-bike and the marsh ponds where we'd watch for alligators.

We ended up at Shallotte Point, on the intracoastal waterway, where our daddy used to set the boat out for our adventures. The marina wasn't like we remembered it; what used to be a divey local seafood restaurant had gone all upscale with waterfront deck seating, and it was around dinner time.

We walked out onto the floating docks together for the first time in well over a decade. Jill handed me her disposable camera and I took shots of her next to a seagull and crouching by the aft of a boat branded "Shallotte Point, NC."

Then Jill sat down on the dock and dangled her feet into the water. I was starting to get self-conscious about the dinner-people on the deck looking at us: Jill with her tattoos and dreadlocks and me with no makeup. "You have to come here and remember," she encouraged me, "No water in the world feels like this."

So I joined her. I put my feet in that warm, salt water and felt the safeness we felt as little girls when our daddy docked the boat, carried us out on his shoulders and taught us to swim.

Jill and I sat there for a good, long while with our feet in the water, taking in the brackish smell, feeling the intracoastal breeze on our faces and looking over at Mother Mother Ocean. And it helped us forget the word we'd heard earlier when our parents sat us down together to tell us about Daddy's most recent doctor appointment.

Cancer.







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My sister is trying to kill me

Granted, I did try to kill her in 1974 by making her drink a bottle of perfume and I did encourage her to run away from home two years later.

But she's a wily one. She sat on her revenge for three decades. Her first attempt to make my heart explode at my wedding failed. She wouldn't be stopped by that. Oh no. She's been saving up.

She sent this for Mr. Sweetypants to read in her absence at my birthday roast.

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Leigh Ann the Great

When I was a little girl I had a big sister.
She was 3.5 when I was born, and was naturally inclined to having the world revolve around her.
To me she was the sun. A huge shiny all knowing big kid that would help me get bigger faster. If I followed a few simple rules.

1.Say 3 times... Leigh Ann is the Queen of the universe.
2. Never sing "her songs" like "The Boys of Summer" or "Billy Jean".
3. Stay out of her room.

To really get her point across about the Queen thing, at one point she went through the entire house writing "L.A. is the greatest," on every plastic or otherwise writable surface in our mother's immaculate house.
There are still to this day remnants of her ego pasted to the sugar container, and a pitcher here and there.

I remember so clearly how cool LA was. Her purple hair and oversized Duran Duran sweatshirts. Headbands, and Boy George all the way. I can see her splayed out in the floor at our parent's house watching MTV all night, and memorizing all the words to the top 40 songs she loved.
I wasn't allowed in the room for this. I would sneak through the living room, and peek through the kitchen, or pretend to need water over and over. I was mesmerized by her obsession with pop culture. Why was this so important to my hero? Maybe I could rock the mic too.
But alas, my attempts were futile, and not only was I forcibly removed from the TV room, but if she heard me utter one breath of Cindy Lauper, there would be hell to pay.

One day LA wasn't home. I was playing with my hamster in the hallway outside her teenage lair. It was so alluring. The smells (probably cigarettes and incense) the mystery, the closed door, the knowing that I couldn't open it...
So this day, I decided that if my hamster went into her room, I would have to go and get it. I dumped the poor creature out of it's ball jar that we used for his nest, and slowly pushed the door open just enough to squeeze his fat little hamster butt in.
Then I announced "oh no, I have to go get him now!"
This was probably one of the most deflating moments of my childhood. Her room looked like any other room. There wasn't anything cool or shiny, some cool posters maybe, but nothing really, a little trashed, not even that stinky. Well not really stinky.
So I found my hamster and went back into my own room at the end of the hall. The mystery exploited, Leigh Ann eventually spiraled her way through her teenage years, and off to college, bringing with her the smell of cigarettes and incense.
I eventually took her place, and stunk up the house myself, but as a true pioneer of alternative behavior, no one has ever left a bigger a mark on me or my mother than my big sissy LA.

Today my sister writes beautiful stories about how life is now, and how it used to be. She creates beauty with words, and evokes feelings by tickling our own emotions tied to times we cherished. She is a voice for our most treasured childhood memories, and a storehouse of who's who in American Pop culture.
Today I carry the memory of a childhood filled with getting dragged through ditches, being forced to drink perfume, and LA's sweet tiny voice whispering "run away Jill run away!!".
I have to say thank you to LA for opening me up to what the world had to offer outside of Shallotte NC. Her words and actions fueled a fire that brought me here.
I couldn't ask for a better sister, mentor or friend.
But she can't be 40, I'm only 25!!!
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My heart exploded a little bit, but her sinister plan failed again. I fear the third time and its deadly charm.

I love my sister.

I wouldn't be flashing that around if I were you

There's a flasher on the loose in the Raleigh suburbs. Based on my personal experience, I'm surprised he hasn't made his way inside the Beltline and onto my street.

Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. I'm on the verge of a birthday a long way past 21-25, when I gave off the "show-me-what-you've-got, stranger" vibes.

I was flashed twice, in two different cities.

Incident 1, June 1991, Burlington, N.C.

Two weeks after I graduated from Elon College, home of the Fightin' Christians, I talked my friend Rex into moving to Raleigh with me. He came to my townhouse apartment to help me pack for our move.

After working for a good two hours and filling the den with my boxes of belongings, we decided to take a break from each other. Rex went upstairs to my room to work on his resume on my Brother word processor (Google it, kids).

I settled down on the couch in the living room to watch videos on MTV (Google it, kids). It was nice that night, so instead of running the air conditioner, I had the front door open with only the screen door keeping the bugs out. My roommate and I had been doing this for two years, as local law enforcement professionals were apparently as broke as college students and our parking lot was always well populated with cop cars. I turned on the outside floodlight, as was my habit when I was waiting for my roommate to come home.

My first thought, when I heard the scratching sound, was irritation. Siouxsie and the Banshees were on the television and I was already saving up for the first Lollapalooza. When I figured out it was coming from the door, three feet from where I was sitting, I jerked around huffily and I saw him.

There, three feet and an unlocked screen door away from me, was, aside from a tee-shirt over his face, a butt-naked man having a nice time with himself (that was a really lame description, but my Sainted Southern Mother reads this blog).

I was a fan of cigarettes (Don't start, kids) who three years before had figured out how to skip the 1.5-mile run and still get a passing D for the one college P.E. credit required for my English degree. I got kicked out of YWCA gymnastics in 7th grade because I couldn't do a cartwheel, so I never moved on to complicated flips off the horse.

But in those two blurry seconds, I sprinted across the room, performed a beautiful scissor-split over the pile of boxes and ascended the stairs to the second floor in two bounds. I burst into the bedroom and screamed, "Call the police!" before grabbing the phone myself.

Rex, who'd been minding his own business and had no idea what was going on, looked blankly at me. Then he managed to catch the baseball bat I flung at him and followed my screeching instructions to go down and lock the front door to keep the naked man out.

After I got off the phone with the 911 dispatcher, Rex was able to coax me downstairs, assuring me the naked man was gone and the doors were locked. We sat waiting for the police and I thanked Rex over and over for being so brave. "What's a naked man going to do to me?" he asked.

The knock on the door nearly made me jump out of my skin until I heard a deep voice announce, "Police." "Thank God," I thought as I flung open the door. Standing before me was the cop who had pulled me over a week before, asked for my license and registration, and replied to my polite "Yes, sir" with "That's ma'am."

"Oh, hi!," I managed to say, as I had a date to see her in court. She very professionally acted like nothing had ever happened between us and began asking me questions. "Can you describe his body? Did you see his genitals?"

As I began to try to stammer out an answer, her radio crackled and she stepped away. She came back and told me her partner had caught the perp running out of the woods and pulling up his pants. As they were the only squad team on patrol that night, she had to leave to pick up her partner and take the perp to jail, but she gave me a number to call the next day to find out the status.

I called. The guy was a middle-aged accountant from an old-money family. He was released and all charges dropped.

Incident 2, October 1994, Raleigh, N.C.

I had the crappiest job in the world; I had been there for three years and was up to $7 an hour for pounding away on the keyboard producing biographies for vanity reference books. I literally had to punch a clock and had a senior associate editor title.

My job didn't much matter to me back then; I've never really been on a career track. I was party girl number 1 at that age. So one day, I had a roll of film (Google it, kids) of me and my fun friends acting like fun people at the club to drop off for development. I clocked out for my 30-minute lunch and drove across Glenwood Avenue to Wal-Mart.

I parked my faded Nissan Sentra and got out. An older Pontiac covered in right-wing bumper stickers --really crazy ones-- stopped beside me as I walked in, but I was way too cool to pay attention to the driver. So I was also too cool to pay attention to him, even though I noticed him, as he followed me around the store and back out into the parking lot.

I'm gonna go ahead and give myself some cool points here, because when he pulled up next to me when I was in the turn-only lane at a red light in broad daylight, I just looked at him. Looked at him and pointed my mace at him when he got out of his car sans pants and approached my window. He backed off and got in his car. I got the left-turn light and went back to work.

The first thing I did was clock in. Then, I pretended to have a panic as I told my co-workers what had just happened to me. They called the police and comforted me as we waited for the RPD to arrive. A nice officer came and questioned me, then took me downtown to look at mugshots. I couldn't remember the guy's face, so it never went anywhere. But my employers didn't make me correct my time card or make up those hours, so it was AWESOME.

Lessons learned from the incidents:

From my fleeting glances -- and it wasn't cold either of those days -- flashers should keep it to themselves.

The best e-mail I have ever gotten in my life ever

My little hometown at the beach now has a Harley Davidson dealership. This completely blows my mind because I remember when it didn't even have a Hardee's. I asked my Sainted Southern Mother to please get me a "Harley of Shallotte" tee shirt for a White Trash party I'm going to this weekend.

She did, bless her heart!!! Here's her story of her visit to the motorcycle dealership:

(from: my mama)
(to: me and my facebook friends)

Well, let me tell you about my trip to Harley Davidson dealership.

First of all your father would not let me go by myself - so he goes with me. When I turned off Hwy 17 to enter Harley's parking lot I said, "Oh, please Lord, don't let anyone see me".

We went in and I was stunned. I have never seen so many motorcycles in my life!!! There were so many people in that place and they must have had at least 20 employees. About five dove at me and asked if they could help me and of course I gave them my honey dripping smile and said, "Hon, of course you may". Your Dad pretended he didn't know me and went to look at the 'wheels'.

Oh, good Lord, all of y'all should have been flies on the walls - some of the clothing items blew me away! The young lady asked me if my daughter had a Harley. I gasped and said, "Heavens no!!", then caught myself and honestly I don't know what I said after that.

After my purchase I was asked to go upstairs to the bar, have a drink and play pool. Again, I almost died, looked for your Dad and said, "It's time for us to go".

I really was impressed with the staff and facility. I do wish them a success in Shallotte.

Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble - and by the way I mailed your shirt express mail.

Luv ya!
Ma

p.s. I forgot to tell you, your Dad was the one who selected the shirt we purchased (and then disappeared) and Lord have mercy it is trashy!!!

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How awesome is my Sainted Southern Mother? Seriously. She reads this blog (which is why I don't use "ugly" words or tell "vulgar" stories), so give her some love!

How to make the white people dance

Just play "The Electric Slide," especially at a wedding reception with an open bar. Great-Aunt Gladys might sit around her house listening to Artie Shaw phonograph records and complaining about kids these days, but when the wedding DJ spins the first two notes to "The Electric Slide," she'll jump right over her walker and knock over some little ones to get in the line on the dance floor.

Because I never learned the dance or how to hide my disgust when the song is played, I can't explain this phenomenon, except to say that maybe the white folks feel confident mimicking proscribed moves. Hence, the line dance craze.

This leads me to my point: Wedding DJs are the biggest dorks in the world (followed closely by wedding bands) and they can't be trusted. I have had two -- count them, TWO -- friends hire DJs for their receptions and specifically tell them NOT to play "The Electric Slide," but they did anyway.

So when Steve and I planned our wedding reception at the dive bar three years ago, we programmed our own music. I like to think nobody we invited knew how to do "The Electric Slide," but I wasn't going to chance losing respect for anyone who loved us enough to join us on our big day by trusting my playlist to a DJ.

What clever people we were as we spent an entire week programming four hours' worth of music! For the first hour, when guests would get there before us, we loaded up the AM Gold, delighting our audience with Barry Manilow, Air Supply, Player and Rupert Holmes. From there we segued through classic soul and into 80s ballads up to the point where we got onstage for the speeches before our first dance, to "Slave to Love."

After that, we picked up the pace. I grabbed the mike and yelled, "Hey everybody, come dance with us to our song!" A few people who'd been served enough to start feeling brave came and joined us for Gran Torino's "Moments With You."

That song ended, and only two seconds into the next song, all my friends -- white, black, gay, straight, hipster, professional -- rushed onto the floor. I was dancing with my arty friend Buttercup. My 5-year-old nephew Banyan, whose miniature tux was unbuttoned and shirttails were pulled out, was busting the moves along with us. Unfortunately, Ban's signature move of spinning around with his eyes closed kept causing him to fall on the floor. Each time, he'd jump right back up and do it again, even after Buttercup yelled, "Somebody cut this guy off!"

The song? "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough."


Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough (Official Music Video) - The most amazing bloopers are here

I never will forget those nights (and days)

I was out in public with friends the other night in a very loud place. The music these kids listen to today was annoying me anyway, but when I heard the familiar, sacred opening notes to "Boys of Summer" mixed into an insipid dance beat, I gasped. No, really. My face contorted into one not unlike the victims in "The Ring." Time went to slow motion as I spun around and my gaze settled on my friend Maria's, which was set in exactly the same expression as mine.

I know the kids, with their superstar producers, are mining the "oldies" for songs to sample or remake, because kids these days .... But don't mess with "Boys of Summer."

Seriously. They don't love boys of summer like I do, and I don't approve of their blasphemy.

I grew up in a small, Southern town that happened to be at the beach. My Sainted Southern Mother (SSM) took us out every day in the summers to burn off energy, and each day went a little something like this:

* My SSM would spend an hour preparing a picnic of sandwiches, Bugles and Coca-Cola products, herding the three of us into our bathing suits, then putting on the perfect finishing touches on her hair and makeup before loading us into the wood-paneled station wagon.

* Once we got to the beach, SSM would slather us down in the harsh 1970s sun creme I can still taste and feel stinging my eyes.

* SSM would set up the chairs and the food, then arrange herself delicately and attractively in the sun. (My mama was a knockout, btw.)

* One of us would take a bite of a sandwich, get a mouthful of sand, and start crying.

* While my SSM tended to the crying child, the other two waded out into the ocean and got carried a hundred feet eastward by the drift tow. As they bobbed up and down, one would inevitably get knocked over by a wave, scrape her face on the bottom and stagger out of the surf wailing from her near-death experience. And the other would get yelled at laughing at her sister's misery.

* Now with three crying little girls, my SSM would pack up the station wagon with its searing-hot vinyl seats and drive over the bridge back to our house. 

* Once home, my SSM would line her three daughters up in the backyard and spray them down with the garden hose before letting them in her house.

That's when we were small. I think it was around age 10 for each of us when my Sainted Southern Mother wised up and just dumped us off at the beach with our playmates for the day.

And that's when I started making friends with the summer kids from faraway places like Raleigh and Charlotte, whose families owned houses they only lived in during the school break. The ones my age all just happened to be boys.

We started out splashing around in tidal pools and digging up sand fleas. Before long, we were pirate twins in the dunes. We were absolutely fearless, with our skinny bodies tanned and our hair streaked blond. We ran races up and down the shore, our feet splashing in the salt water. We screamed our hearts out with glee out there on the beach, where nobody would admonish us for not using our inside voices, and we all whimpered and squirmed as our parents pulled us apart to go home for dinner.

Each school year started and we sent each other letters, counting down the days until school would be out for summer. I missed them so much during the winter, when there seriously was nobody on the road or beach.

We got older and started hanging out in the arcade, playing air hockey and Galaga, plugging quarters into the jukebox to hear Def Leppard over and over. Then, before we knew it, we were getting together after dark, sitting on the beach, listening to "The Boys of Summer" on a boombox, drinking wine coolers someone's older brother scored for us. The next summer, we were always piled up in someone's beater car with the windows down and sunroof open, riding up and down the island, the Cure blasting on the radio, elaborate 80s hairstyles getting ruined and feeling more young and alive than ever. 

We always ended up back on the beach, looking at the stars and wondering what life after school would be like. And we couldn't imagine that we'd ever be apart.

Then it ended, our childhoods on the beach. I moved away for college and never came home for good again, they became grownups who didn't vacation with their parents, and we all lost touch.

Still, all these years later, they will live in my memory as the boys of summer.

Don Henley |MTV Music

(for Bernard)

The best ad copy I ever wrote in my life...

... got me no raises, no Addys and wasn't even printed.

It only appeared on match dot com. I was searching for an intelligent, silly person. My perfect match saw it, paid $19.95 to respond, and the rest is history.

Mr. Sweetypants travels constantly for his job. This was never an issue for us the first few years; my most successful relationships in my youth were long distance and, at the tender age of 35 when we got together, I was accustomed to living alone.

But lately, I've had nothing to dread -- er, do -- during my unemployment and I rely on Mr. Sweetypants to keep me entertained, so I miss him when he's gone for days on end. Dave and Eudora are here, but they don't break into improvisational song or hurl lightning-fast insult comedy quips.

Truth be told, I've gone a bit feral here on my own with no mandated routine. I wear comfortable clothes and don't put product in my hair, let alone putting on makeup. I eat when I'm starving and sleep when I need to, which happens to be for four hours twice a day.

I woke up from my most recent nap, glanced at the clock on the cable box, and saw that it was 7. Sleepy and groggy as I was, I couldn't remember what time I'd gone to sleep and panicked because I honestly didn't know if it was morning or evening. So I turned on the TV to see if Jeopardy or Good Morning America was on. GMA. Problem solved.

Needing to share this hysterical bit of stupidity on my part with the person who would most appreciate it, I e-mailed Mr. Sweetypants. He called two minutes later from his hotel room.

"What are you doing up this early?," I asked, "Aren't you in a different time zone?"

Unsure of what time it was because the room didn't have a clock, Mr. Sweetypants decided to rely on his trusty companion, Mr. iPhone. I heard him shuffling around before he said, "I can't find my phone."

"You mean the one you're speaking to me on?" I replied, ending a sentence with a preposition and dissolving into laughter.

We agreed that we were even and started talking about time zones, trying to figure out what time it was there. Mr. Sweetypants, the scientist and geography buff, started quoting latitudes and longitudes while I thought about TV listing times for the Central, Mountain and Pacific zones.

"Yes, but Iowa is west of here," I said, proudly figuring out that west is behind.

"I'm in Maine!," he reminded me.

Oh yeah. Oops. I really need a job, but that's the only thing I need. I've got my Mr. Sweetypants and two surly, nonplussed cats to round everything else out.

As girlie as I was in the 80s...

I just could not stomach unicorns.

Seriously. My sister, my best friend and I made fun of the subculture of girls who bought unicorn figurines and fantasy airbrushed posters from Spencer Gifts. We called them "purple girls," as they usually wore purple unironically and we weren't that good at coming up with subtle cracks back then.

My daddy took the three of us to see "Legend" at the movie theatre and the showing was filled with purple girls. "Oh, come on," I said way too loudly during the unicorn scene, when the poorly affixed horn wobbled on the horse's -- sorry, the "unicorn's" head. "SHHHHHHH!!!," the purple girls in the audience hissed at me. There were way more of them, so I piped down.

A decade or so ago, when I was in my late 20s, I found the greatest tee-shirt ever at Hot Topic (because I was totally underground at bought clothes at the mall Goth store): It was purple, had a picture of a unicorn shooting a rainbow from its horn, and the words "Unicorns are stupid."

I freakin' loved that tee-shirt. My Sainted Southern Mother saw me wearing it once, asked me to stand still so she could read it, and replied, "Yes. They are stupid."

Because I have been lucky enough in my career to never be beholden to a dress code at work, I wore it to my job. I was trapped in the elevator one day with an example of the Peter Principle who was way higher up the food chain than I was and she commented on the shirt: "Well, they aren't around anymore." And I could only smile politely.

Around that time, I had decided that the funniest thing in the world was to give myself fake names at delis as I waited for my order. "Leigh Ann," after all, though it is only two simple syllables, can be spelled 15 or so different ways and spelling it out is tiresome. So I renamed myself the funniest name I could think of. "Brandi, with an I," I always told the person at the counter. Comedy genius, I thought.

My grownup best friend invited me to a party in his neighborhood one night years ago, and I wore the shirt. It was a huge party, so we had to fill out name tags on the way in.  I wrote "Brandi" on mine and we made our way into the party, passing through the den, which featured a very elaborate, bone china unicorn as the centerpiece.

"Oh, shit," we both thought at the same time. I stuck around long enough to have a couple of drinks, crossing my arms over my chest while dodging the host and hostess, then ducked out, claiming babysitter problems (for the children I did not have).

Still. Unicorns? Really?

I am extremely proud to write that our disdain for them runs into three generations of my family now. Two Christmases ago, my darling nephew Joshua used his Christmas shopping money and picked out the best present ever for me:

Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?

I am from a small town in the South and my co-conspirator, Mr. Sweetypants is from a factory town in Engerlund. I've written before about how we talk different. (That's not a typo, it's vernacular.)

We celebrate our diversity and each other's heritage and background. Not regularly; we usually just sit around making fun of each other. From time to time, we play the "How do you pronounce this?" game, wherein one of us writes a word, asks the other to say it and then ridicules his or her laughable mispronunciation.

So I was sitting here at the computer, minding my own business last night when Mr. Sweetypants thrust a piece of paper in my face. It read: Controversy.

"Con-TRO-vers-y," I said. "Not Cahn-trahv-ers-y, you silly person."

Except I didn't say "person." I said (sang, actually) another word, one from "Sexy MF" because I have been in love with Prince since I was a tween and "Controversy" is the best. song. ever.

Prince. He is one sexy person. "1999" came out when I was in the 8th grade and I got weird feelings every time I saw the "Little Red Corvette" video.  The next year, when I was 14 and too young to see an R-rated movie on my own, I got my aunt to take me to see "Purple Rain." Then I swooned at dances in the school cafeteria my freshman year in high school when the dj played "Purple Rain" as the slow jam.

It only got better. "Sign o' the Times" came out when I was old enough to drive and I tore that cassette up in my bitchin' Camaro. My girlfriends and I, during our freshman year in college, ran squealing onto the dance floor at the club every time "Hot Thing" was played. And we did the same thing four years later, when we were official young professionals, when "Gett Off" came on.

In 1997, Prince announced a tour of "surprise" shows, wherein tickets went on sale seven days in advance. I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to hear one of the shows would be in Raleigh. So I called my best friend Michael and we agreed to buy two sets of tickets, like we'd always done for Lollapalooza, and sell the lesser seats whichever one of us ended up with.

At 10 that Friday morning, in the days before online buying, we both called and got tickets. I called Michael afterward. "I got 7th row!!!!" he proclaimed jubilantly. "That's cool," I said calmly, "But I got FRONT ROW!!!!"

That's right. We sat in the front row for Prince on a greatest hits tour. No "Here's one from the new album" giving us a reason to go to the bathroom or concession stands. It was Prince, feet away from us, performing the songs we grew up with and loved. When he slapped Michael's hand, our other friend grabbed Michael's hand and put it on her boob. 

So, vicariously, Prince touched my girlfriend's boob. And she gets to think about it every day for the rest of her life when she's getting dressed. I too, took home something Prince touched, and it's been on my refrigerator ever since.

I was there. I saw it.

During my junior year in college, my roommate Kathy and I were f-l-a-t broke all the time. So we watched a lot of TV. 

We saw a commercial for Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, two or three times a night. And we made fun of it, and Dolly Parton and the sort of people who would go there, every single time it ran.

Being the too-cool-for-school, ironic hipsters we thought we were at the time, along with the young girls who loved amusement parks we actually were, we decided it would be freaking hysterical to go to Dollywood and make cracks for a day. Fall break was coming and we both had fabulous Discover cards we'd gotten along with some free Tupperware we badly needed from the nice guy in the mall who didn't think our lack of tangible income was an impediment to getting credit.

We (and our best friend Rex) set off in Kathy's Hyundai (it was much nicer than my '77 Mazda GLC) on the six-hour journey to the Tennessee mountains. We checked in to the cheapest motel we could find (one bed for all three of us) and snickered about our plan.

First thing at 11 in the morning, we rallied, gorged ourselves at Duff's Smorgas, then set off to Dollywood. At the gate, we were offered two ticket options: one for the park only and one for the park and a Ray "The Streak" Stevens show. "As if," we sniffed snottily, purchasing our park-only tickets on our Discover cards.

We rode rides until the late afternoon. Because it was the off-season, there were no lines, so we did them over and over. 

Eventually, we got done with all the adrenaline rushes and settled back into our mission. We went to the Dolly museum.

"Bahahahaha, this is going to be so funny!" all three of us each said at some point as we waited in the longest line we'd encountered all day. 

We stopped making jokes once we got inside the exhibit. We saw pictures of poverty none of us could begin to imagine: a family of 12 children whose parents had no money in post-war Appalachia, but did the best they could.

I was starting to feel like the world's worst person around that time. But then we moved forward a few feet to the next exhibit.

There, behind the glass, was the coat of many colors. It was tiny and patchworked. The cuffs were frayed. It had grass stains. The story was written on the pane in front of it and the song played on a loop.

My friends teared up, but I wept like a baby. My nose started running and I had nowhere to blow it. I got the little kid wind-sucking sound because I couldn't catch my breath from crying. Kathy and Rex gently guided me back out into the sunlight.

We don't talk much about it, but we all changed that day. We were never the same again. 

I think I can speak for all of us, though. If you laugh and make fun of our Dolly, we will cut you up pretty bad.

I dream of a world where we are judged by the character of our content

I haven't been blogging much lately. It's not that I've been depressed about being unemployed because we aren't in danger of starving or losing our house and I really don't miss corporate America. Or the back-biting and nepotism (assuming the word "nepotism" applies to people who aren't related but are scratching each other's backs and other parts). 

I miss my friends, though. And I really miss the wealth of material. I've got nothing to write about nowadays. 

The 12 years I spent working and taking smoke breaks outside on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh when it was still a pedestrian mall provided a constant source of entertainment every day. I miss coming back up the elevator to the office and telling stories that began with, "I was outside minding my own business..."

* My office was directly across the street from the courthouse. I always enjoyed watching the "bird man" feed the pigeons and koi in the fountain and scream obscenities at passersby. Even when I accidentally made eye contact with him once and he bellowed, "Hey, mother-----, what time is it?" I have never worn a watch, and when I told him that, he let loose the most creative string of curses I have ever heard in my life, and I know a lot of English people.

* One of my friends, a very white hipster girl, observed a homeless man washing his feet in the same fountain. "Who was the guy in the bible who washed feet?" she asked. "You mean Jesus?" I replied.

* The Sir Walter, once the most opulent art deco hotel in downtown Raleigh, is now a subsidized elderly people's home. I spent a lot of time talking to the residents when they approached me, often returning to my office in tears because I felt so bad for them.

One day, I was sitting on a bench, indulging my bad habit and minding my own business. I heard a "draaag, click, draaag, click" sound getting closer to me. An elderly lady dressed in a muu-muu was approaching me, leaning on her walker that had tennis balls on the front legs to prevent slippage. 

She came and sat next to me and asked, "Have you seen my cat? I can't find her." She went on to tell me how she and her husband had been married for 50 years, but he'd died without leaving her with anything, so she and her 14-year-old cat had moved into the Sir Walter.

"Are you in high school?" she asked me. "No, ma'am, I'm 34," I replied. "I can't see very well," she said, "I didn't realize you were so old."

"Good luck with your cat," I DID NOT ACTUALLY say, though I thought it before excusing myself to go back to work in tears.

* I got to know all the street preachers. My favorite was the toothless, elderly African-American gentleman who was always dressed to the nines in a three-piece, 70s polyester suit. That is, until he informed me one day out of the blue that I was going to hell for committing suicide by smoking.

Then there was the "Jesus Saves" tee-shirt guy who screamed at people in front of the courthouse while passing out scary tracts. I managed to dodge him for 10 years, but one day, he caught me off guard and said, "Was that you in the paper?" "Yes, sir," I replied. And we became friendly after that.

* Speaking of religion, I was just minding my own business one day when a normal, office-worker-looking lady told me that Jesus loves me. "Thanks!" I said, bewildered. Then I realized I was wearing bondage clothes and had blue hair, so she probably assumed I was a godless heathen.

* And the homeless people, bless their hearts. They always talked to me. I always talked back, because I have never had "there but for the grace..." more than a beat away from my thoughts. Of them all, "the soul is like a hot dog" lady is my favorite sage. I really do hate bluetooths for making it harder to tell who's talking to themselves.

* Then there was the time I was outside at the right time and saw my future president. And he smiled at me.

-------

So nowadays, I really have nothing. I'm happy as a clam, but "I was outside minding my own business and saw a squirrel frolicking in the tree" just doesn't have the same impact as "I was outside minding my own business and a man who claimed to be the emperor of Raleigh got down on his knee, kissed my hand and asked me to be his empress."

 -------------------------

"Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it," I told Steve as we watched a :90 spot for Sundowner retractable awnings during a commercial break on We or Discovery Health or Investigation Discovery or one of the other old-people networks I've begun watching before going to bed a few nights ago.

"There it is!" "It" being the very bad voiceover dub listing the new price being advertised since the spot was originally shot.

"I'm concerned about your relationship with the television," Steve said.

"It's my only friend!," I shot back.

And we laughed.

Great moments in things I actually said vol. 1

After college, I worked as an editorial assistant by day and cocktail waitress at nights during the summer concert seasons at the amphitheater here in Raleigh. I ran back and forth to the concession stand for people sitting in expensive corporate box seats. 

One night, as I served a round of drinks that added up to $19.75, the woman paying gave me a $20 bill. I gave her her quarter in change and she set it on my tray. So I set it back on the table in front of her. She asked, "Don't you accept tips?" "Yes ma'am, I work for them," I replied before walking away. 

Her husband followed me and slipped me a $20.

Father's Day Column for Oakwood News

June 21 is Daddies’ Day

That’s right. It’s Daddies’ Day. Anyone can be a father, but it takes a very special man to be a daddy.

I want to congratulate all the daddies out there, but I will always have an affinity and special appreciation for daddies of little girls. So here’s to you.

Your little girl will always love you like nobody else you’ve ever met; especially when she’s small and when she’s grown up. And you will love her through her teenage years when she’s mortified to be seen with you. Because she’s your little girl.

You were your little girl’s first superhero -- you had magical powers to take the boo-boos away. When she saw you coming in the door after work and her eyes lit up, it was because she knew the handsomest man in the world would sweep her up in his arms, smother her with kisses and make her feel like the supreme princess of the universe.

“Look at me, Daddy!,” she called out to you a million times, whether it was after you let go of the bicycle and she pedaled away, or at her first dance recital, or her first soccer game, or when she caught her first fish.

You were there for her first day of school. You dropped her off for her first slumber party, then came back at 9 p.m. to pick her up after she called in tears because she missed home. You answered, “Who’s there?” 100 times as she repeated the only joke she could remember. And you always laughed.

And you were bewildered when her personality completely changed when she reached adolescence. Your sweet little girl wasn’t so sweet anymore as the hormones kicked in and she hated her body and her emotions and was confused with and mad at the world in general.

But you were patient. You taught her to drive a straight-shift and worried incessantly each time she left the house. None of those boys who started sniffing around were worthy of your princess, but you couldn’t stop her from going out with them. And you probably fantasized about what you would do to any boy who treated your little angel with anything less than worship.

You beamed with pride when your little girl walked across the podium at her high school graduation, then felt sad as you helped her unpack her belongings and move into her freshman dorm room. And your heart broke a little when she said, “Bye Daddy!” before you drove off. Four years later, your little girl, now a young woman, walked across the stage again to accept her degree, and for a moment, you completely forgot about how much it cost.

Years went by and your little girl didn’t call home as much as you would have liked. But when she called from a city hundreds of mile aways to say, “Daddy, he gave me a ring!,” you knew she was making a good decision. 

And when you walked her down the aisle, lifted her veil and kissed her cheek, the last person she smiled at before looking at her groom was you. 

Nobody can love a man like a girl loves her daddy.

My best wishes to you all!

Tagline: Leigh Ann Frink loves getting comments on her blog: thatgirlfromshallotte.blogspot.com

Eureka moment part deux

I went through a phase in my 20s when I would only refer to my favorite band as "Front Deux Quatre Deux." Because they were European. And I was pretentious.

This time of unemployment has been a blessing in disguise and has led me to my true calling: Avant Garde auteur filmmaker.

My first short film (writing, direction, cinematography, styling and animal-training by Leigh Ann Frink), which I'll be workshopping at Cannes next year (hence the "part deux"), is called "Eudora, Steve and bubbles." In it, I explore the space of one bedroom, its inhabitants and the bleakness of existence in a world without technology. I'm hoping for some German backing... fingers crossed!

Of all the worst literary stereotypes of women

Well, there weren't all that many in the centuries before I was born.* The ones that spring immediately to mind include:

** The hooker with a heart of gold.

**  The innocent coquette from the gutter rescued by a prince pretending not to be one, just as she's at her wits'  end.

** The unattractive antagonist prone to malapropisms.

But the worst one, the ugliest stereotype of women, is the crazy cat lady. The spinster. The one who calls her cats her children and leaves them in her will if she doesn't get a visit from social services who find all 106 of them first.

Hey, check out this video of 7-week-old Eudora Steve just found!

Miss Eudora Thunderkiss

* Strange girls with strange names like Eudora and Flannery bucked the Southern system and blew those stereotypes out of the water for girls like me.

All these things that I've done

When I was 4, my parents lived in a house owned by my grandparents way out in the country while they were building a new house in town. It was a 20-mile trip into Shallotte for my daddy to work or for my mama to go grocery shopping.

On one grocery-shopping trip, I asked my mama to buy me a bag of Hershey's Miniatures and she said no. From my seat in the shopping cart, when my mama wasn't looking, I took a bag and stashed it inside my cute little navy blue with white polka-dotted raincoat. Seriously, that was an adorable little coat and I wish I could find a replica in an adult size.

Once we were driving back to the country house, I decided it was safe to start gobbling up the Hershey's Miniatures. I smashed them into my face, even the dark chocolates I still don't like. My mama was busy with my screaming infant sister in her car seat up front (it was the 70s) and didn't have time to pay attention to me in the back seat. My silence eventually caused her concern, and when she finally looked in the rearview mirror, she saw me: face and hands smeared with chocolate.

She whipped that Chrysler to the side of the road and yanked me out. That was one of only a handful of times my mama spanked me. She then turned the car around, drove back to the grocery store, dragged me inside and made me apologize to the owner, Mr. Gerald, as she paid for the candy. 

I learned my lesson, and I didn't shoplift again for eight years. My mama went back to work when I was in middle school, and my sisters and I went to my daddy's Western Auto store to hang out after school until she got back from her office job. Each day, Daddy would give us each two quarters, enough for a soda and a candy bar from the five and dime next door. Unfortunately, the grocery store two doors down installed a Ms. Pac Man machine. And I started pocketing candy from the five and dime while supervising my little sisters before going off to play Ms. Pac Man.

I never got caught. Was never even considered a suspect. It was, after all, a small town where everyone knew me as the child of my upstanding-citizen parents. I was the kid sent into a store to buy Vantage cigarettes while my daddy sat in the idling car. Oh if times were still that innocent. If I could have a child to send into a store to buy my smokes, I'd be tempted to have one.

My shoplifting spree didn't last very long. My Methodist upbringing instilled in me a healthy dose of guilt, especially after the one time I had to call the preacher.

When we Methodist kids were still young, but too old for nursery and children's church, we all had to sit on the front pew where our parents in the choir or my mama, the organist, could see us during the service. But when we became adolescents, we started ducking out to the Zip Mart between Sunday School and service to stock up on snacks, which we'd take with us into the balcony. One particularly boring Sunday, my best friend and I, all hopped up on M&Ms, cracked ourselves up and apparently disrupted the service.

Once we got home, my mother called the preacher to make me apologize. I was beginning to feel my oats at that time, so when she passed the phone to me, I said, "My mama says I'm sorry." Bad, bad decision. 

After being grounded for several decades, I got the bright idea, as my middle school was walking distance from my house, to invite my two best friends to skip school and come over. So we met up and hid on the outskirts of the kickball field then walked back. It was the funnest day ever! We watched Nickelodeon, made Pizza Quick for lunch and had a water fight indoors, managing to break one of my mama's favorite vases in the process. We found some glue, put it back together, and stuck it in a corner, where she didn't notice it for months. And I blamed one of my sisters. 

Then came high school. West Brunswick still had a clause, originally intended for children of tobacco farmers, wherein students could miss up to 30 days of school each year. We crafty kids mapped out each new school year with a plot of days we'd skip. And we did.

Getting caught was nothing more than a slap on the wrist for us. My daddy actually spotted us in town in my bitchin' Camaro senior year and turned us in. In-school suspension was nothing, at best, I actually got my schoolwork done. A few months later, my best friend and I got caught skipping and were sent to the vice principal's office at the same time. When he told us we were suspended for two days, we snickered and rejoiced that the weather was good, so we could go lay out on Ocean Isle. And we did. 

For us, it was all about laying around on the beach slathered in Afro Sheen during the day (really, it clogged up all the pores but turned us a lovely shade of orange), and cruising the boulevard in Myrtle Beach at night. I had too many (insert Bruce Willis Vocals) Seagram's Golden Wine Coolers and let a friend drive my Camaro home on King's Highway (Highway 17) one night and she decided to try to drag race a Maserati. And she blew a rod in the engine. 

I managed to limp the car home, turning up the Cure on the cassette deck to drown out the pinging sound. The next day, my daddy went out to check on the car, and I saw tears in his eyes for the first time ever.

So I got grounded. I was allowed to go to the prom, but had to be home by 11. My friends all had an awesome place at the beach and partied like rock stars, but I stayed home. Same went for graduation a few weeks later. But then, a week later, after the Superintendent's Excellence Awards banquet where I accepted three awards, my mama decided to let me and my best friend take her Pontiac 6000 down to the boulevard.

If you aren't from the South and have never experienced the Redneck Riviera that is Myrtle Beach, let me explain the cruising experience to you: Bumper-to-bumper traffic of teenagers, college students and too-old weirdos creep along at maybe 5 mph yelling at and flirting with each other. My best friend was driving my mother's car that night and a drunken, be-mulleted redneck staggered up to the passenger window and said, "Y'all are some pretty little mother------s." Standard compliment in Myrtle Beach. And we went home and told my mama we'd been to Swenson's, the best ice cream parlor ever.

That was a big old lie. I'm sorry.

Now that I'm getting things off my chest, I want to admit to all these things that I've done.

* I stashed crib notes for AP biology tests in the palms of my Madonna-inspired, fingerless, lace gloves in high school.

* I did nothing but party in college. I made great grades in my major (English), but I put in the least amount of effort possible, which is why I failed so many maths and sciences.

* When we were studying abroad in London, I just watched English TV and went to pubs.

* I only enrolled in grad school so I wouldn't have to get a job.

* In my first job at a vanity press, I encouraged people to buy the books, knowing it was a total fraud and not worth the paper they were printed on.

* I went three calendar years without an inspection sticker on my car before the state started enforcing it.

* I hooked up with two of my friend's exes and never told that friend.

* After promising not to, I cussed in a courtroom.

* I tricked car salespeople into giving me samples, which I used to further my career in advertising.

* After advertising, I found myself working in an ultra-corporate environment. I hated everything about it. I was tasked with writing a management memo and, to entertain myself, I worked in every corporate buzzword bingo phrase I could think of. I got an "atta-girl" note for it. (I just wrote "I was tasked," the stink is still on me. Shudder.) 

* I had free cable in my house for 10 years. When the cable company figured it out, I asked Steve to move in with me and transfer his cable account to my address.

Wow. That felt good. Weight of the world off my shoulders. I hope you don't think less of me.

Eureka moment

In These Trying Economic Times (TM), millions of suddenly jobless people like myself are clamoring for an angle. I'm happy to announce I've found mine! Consulting!

Yeah, right, you say, every unemployed professional considers him/herself a consultant and nobody's buying it.

And that's where you negative Nelly naysayers underestimate me, because I have an angle. I'm calling my new business (drumroll, please) "Sensitivity Training for Former Managers of the Newly Unemployed."

Here's a free demo of lesson number one: Things Your Former Employee Does Not Want to Receive In a Fedex Box at Her Home Several Weeks After Her Severance.

#1: A formerly unbroken coffee mug from a team-building exercise.

#2: A ratty, logo-branded fleece from a supply closet she used to wear around the office to stay warm.

#3: An old "atta-girl" note from management. 

My expert advice that will save costs on shipping charges (and it's all about cost savings in These Trying Economic Times)? Be proactive and do the following:

Sign up now! I only have so much time in the day between blogging, napping and watching television programs. All clients will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

And? You're welcome.

Wherein I relate an awkward teenage story of unrequited love that doesn't involve a pop star

My husband, Steve, had a crush on a girl at school back in England in the 80s. Her name was Donna and he admired her from afar from the ages of 13 through 16, too nervous to tell her how he felt. They ran into each other in a pub 10 years later and reminisced about a bus ride they shared one night as kids. She told him, "I was hoping you'd make a move on me that night."

They had a laugh and, luckily for me, didn't attempt to rekindle whatever teenaged passion they missed out on.

I had a love like that, too. But it lasted, at least on my end, many years longer.

Before I started kindergarten in 1974, my mama invested in a series of phonics records and taught me to read. Phonetically, of course, so I'd read road signs from the huge, green Chrysler and pronounce "beverages" as "beaver ages" and "antiques" as "anti cues." Still, it was enough, back in those days of ability grouping in public schools, that I was alone in my reading group (though I was still the kid counting out dried beans from a can when we were learning to add double-digits) until I was in the third grade.

It was in Mrs. Russ's class in 1977. It was reading time and I was sequestered in my corner with "The Wind in the Willows," when my teacher interrupted me to let me know I had a new reading partner. His name was not Scotty, but that's what I'm going to call him.

Scotty was a skinny little kid with brown hair that wouldn't behave. He had blue eyes and wore a "Keep on Truckin'" tee-shirt. When he sat down and started reading aloud with me, I was smitten and couldn't keep my place on the pages because I was trying to sneak glances at him. Rat and Mole who? What were we talking about? I was eight years old and completely flustered.

I can probably blame some of my math deficiency on the fact that all I could think about was reading group with Scotty.

When we moved up to middle school the next year, Scotty and I shared the same classes. I did everything in my power to sit next to him. We all went to the skating rink on the weekends, and I dreamed of couple-skating with him to Peaches and Herb or Kool and the Gang, and my heart got broken every weekend when it didn't happen. Other girls were starting to notice how adorable he was as he grew out of his awkwardness, something I'd known from the get-go.

Scotty became the class clown, the first to acquire an arrow-through-the-head prop a la Steve Martin. By sixth grade, he was wearing a clip-on tie with his tee-shirts at school. I adored him, leaning in to smell him every time he talked to me, which was daily, as I was his smart/funny buddy. 

"Do you think I should ask so-and-so to go with me?" he'd confide in me. "Nooooooo! Ask me!!!!" I always thought. "I guess so," I'd always answer, my heart crumbling as I conjured up hate for the other girl in question. "You're a great friend, Leigh Ann," he'd say, exactly the last thing I wanted to hear. But still, it was something, and it was from Scotty to me.

I didn't particularly care about "Star Wars" or "The Empire Strikes Back." But Scotty did. So in eighth grade, I got my Daddy to take me to see "Return of the Jedi" on opening night so I'd have something to talk to Scotty about. "Don't tell me what happens!" he proclaimed the next day, as he hadn't seen it yet. "Wait, tell me how Han Solo gets unfrozen. Wait, don't!" And I loved having his attention all day.

During the summers, I didn't get to see Scotty, but he was always on my mind, giving me reason to look forward to the new school year when we'd be in the same classes again. I especially anticipated art classes: I could draw okay, but Scotty was talented and being in those classes gave me a reason to compliment him. During our junior year in high school, I spent an entire semester drawing images from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" on my pink Converse high-tops because I knew Scotty liked that movie. And when he complimented me, my entire 16-year-old existence was validated.

Scotty went off to train with the National Guard to earn money for college the summer between our junior and senior year. When he came back, he wasn't just the cute, funny, smart guy: He was smoking hot and ripped. My head nearly exploded when I saw him the first day back at school. So, unfortunately, did the heads of the dumb pretty girls who would never have given him the time of day back in middle school, and they recognized him as the catch he'd always been in my eyes.

But I was still his funny little buddy, and we still talked every day and took all the same classes. And I still melted a little bit every time he spoke to me, though I would never have told him.

We were both in drama class, and getting together after school to practice for our play made me giddy, especially when we got out of school to go look for props and got to ride around in my bitchin' Camaro. 

On the night of the play, "Boys and Ghouls Together," a low-rent takeoff on "The Munsters," I played a witch to his innocent schoolboy. I took his arm on stage and was supposed to utter the line, "Drink this, it will make you calm." But in front of God, my parents and everyone, I said, "Drink this, it will make you come." I didn't immediately realize I'd said it, so wrapped up was I in the sheer delight of touching his arm. But Scotty started to snicker, and I turned 15 different shades of red.

Later that night, at our "wrap party" on the beach, he gave me a hug and assured me my flub was hysterical and nobody else had noticed. Then he went off to kiss and hold hands with the cheerleader who played a bit part. 

A month later, we graduated from high school, becoming unleashed forever from our small beach town into colleges and futures far away. Scotty wrote in my yearbook: "Hey, Sweetness! You've been great all these years. You leave me speechless. You're a very rare type of person and you've got loads of talent! Remember me when you publish your first book (cover art?)! You're going to go far, baby -- don't forget me. I love you, Scotty!"

He drew some bricks and wrote "Pink Floyd Forever!" But he called me baby and said he loved me!! And I read it over and over, reading more into it than was there. Sigh.

I went away and never came back. Scotty came back after college, married a local girl and started a family. My mama ran into him seven years ago and he asked about me. My mama said, "She was always in love with you."

"Oh my god you didn't tell him that!," I screamed over the phone after she told me, reverting back to the gawky girl I was even though I was well into my 30s. I was mortified. "He said he never knew it," she replied. And I decided I could never go home again on the off-chance I would run into Scotty after all these years.

Unfortunately, one of our best friends and classmates was killed in a car accident three years ago. Steve and I were newlyweds and he never got to meet my friend, but he went down to the funeral to support me through my grief. As he, my best friend April, my parents and I approached the Lutheran Church, I saw Scotty. "Crap," I thought, "He knows I liked him."

But when we approached him, he swept me up in a big hug of greetings and mutual heartache. "Scotty, it's so good to see you," I said as we embraced. Then I introduced him to my "stusband Heve." 

Back in the studio at work the following Monday, I related that story to my two best girls, both graphic designers. "He got old and fat, didn't he?" one asked. "No, he actually looks just like Jason Bateman," I replied. "He's probably got a loser job," the other suggested. "He's a graphic designer." They both swooned, and one doesn't like boys in that way.

For the love of all that is holy, does there ever come a point in a woman's life when she doesn't go knock-kneed in front of a girlhood crush? I think I could shoot the breeze with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran without a care in the world now, but Scotty from Shallotte still gives me a lump in the throat.

Just like the thought of Donna from Northampton still gives Steve a lump in the throat, so we're even.