Bacon Bits
Here @ my Bacon Bits page, I will feature writings – essays, articles, poems, short-shorts, short stories – of mine.
| In 2005, I met a foe that wouldn’t allow me to batten down the hatches and hope for the best: Rita. Hurricane Rita to be exact.The following is a memoir piece I wrote almost directly after returning home to Lake Charles, Louisiana, some two-plus weeks after the storm hit.
Being Wristband Girl
I have always been the poster child for diversity and multiculturalism. I grew up in a small township of Baltimore in which my high school graduating class was 264; 18 were black, yet no one seemed to mind. We interracially dated. We smoked our first cigarettes together and patted each other’s backs when we thought we were going to die from choking. I received my bachelor’s degree from an all women’s Catholic college; blacks were the minority, yet I never felt that way. We went to Mass together. We studied for the LSATs together. We braided each other’s hair, and like my friends of other races, my braids always unraveled because my hair was fine and thin. I graduated from a grad school that had only me and one other black person in the program, yet I always felt a part of the group. We discussed literature. We commiserated over coffee…and other libations. We raced to each other’s apartments in the middle of the night to provide comfort during thesis crunch time. I am, in fact, a living, breathing Benetton ad. +++++++++++++++ |
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+++++++++++++++ Earlier in 2008, before I turned 36, I thought about love, relationships, and being a grown woman; “35 to the Power of Love” is the result of those thoughts. 35 to the Power of Love Separately, the ages 3 and 5 are very young; you don’t know much at these ages, and you haven’t been indoctrinated into the world enough to truly have societal ideals thrust upon you. Sure, girls are shoved into pink dresses and some have bows tied into non-existent hair that just won’t grow, much to the chagrin of their mothers, their pure, pure mothers who just want them to look like girls. And sure, boys are given lots of blue (and probably are given the blues, too) to wear. They both get their gender-specific toys – gotta have Barbie if you’re a girl, and boys, well, G.I. Joe was the “it” toy back in the day. You were a real man-boy if you had one. However, despite all the separation between boys and girls, sometimes, you might have shared a room with your brother or sister; you might have still managed to get thrown in the tub with your baby sibling, who was the opposite sex. Wee Wees and Coo Coos sound like things your parents said solely to make you laugh. You were having too much fun playing, eating, and sleeping…and starting pre-school and pre-K to do any real research on such scientific terminology like Coo Coo.
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