1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

Tracy Tipton.  Tracy was my second high school boyfriend. He was this cute, funny outsider at school.  One day he pulled up a chair and sat near - not at - a table where I was with friends.  A big round loud table full of the kind of guys that would maybe beat up the likes of him for sport, when the girls weren't around.  He was this little island, him in his chair, his smile shy with purpose.  I loved him instantly.

Prom day was interesting – I had a softball game, a play off.  It was hot and sunny and I got a ballplayer’s tan that went oddly with my prom dress – my face, neck and forearms were all burned, while the rest of me glowed palely in the photographer’s flash.   Back then prom dresses were Cinderella-esque – long, flowing, sometimes with hoops, always with lace. Nothing at all like the hot mamacita slinky cocktail style gowns I see today, *man* girls are so lucky that a  Gone With the Wind-themed prom would be terminally unhip.

I was not permitted to wear makeup so I put the dress and heels on, combed my hair and carefully applied tinted lip gloss (the one cosmetic I was allowed)  and I was ready, a habit I’ve maintained to this day no matter how fancy the event.

2. Who was your FIRST love and do you still talk with him/her? 

BJ Anderson was my first, puppy love. I was in fifth grade, he was in sixth, he was the best looking boy in school.  It was a Catholic grade school and we went to mass every day, and I lived for the days he was a server so I could stare at him undetected. Many masses passed with me blushing furiously under his gaze, and it was, truly, a holy experience.  At the time there was a popular song on the radio most mornings and I though it was about us:  

“You were fifth grade, I was sixth, when we came to be / My eyes adored you/Though I never laid a hand on you my eyes adored you/ Like a million miles away from me you couldn't see how I adored you/so close/ so close and yet so far.”

 I guess my first real love was Tracy, already mentioned.  No, I do not talk with him, though my sister did not so long ago. Tracy and I dated for 3 years. He wasn't a popular kid, but dating me brought him a kind of notoriety.  " You don't know how much you've changed my entire life," he wrote to me once.  But I did know - he was so sweet, he let it show all the time, not just in private notes.

He broke up with me in the worst way -  after 3 years of daily togetherness, he ignored me.  I was devastated, which is strange, since for maybe six months I’d been feeling sort of ho-hum about him, and thinking things like “when we graduate I’ll go to college and he won’t, and that will be that, thank God”. 

It was my first experience with overt rejection, and I took it hard. I stopped eating, I stopped talking. My weight dropped below ninety pounds and I lost interest in sports, math and music. All I wanted to do was read, alone in the room I shared with my ssiter, who was so startled by my uncharacteristic quiet that all I had to do was look at her to send her scuttling away for a safe haven from my haunted eyes.

But she didn't go far; we were close, and though she couldn't protect me from dad,  she could and did guard me from harm by others with a fierce loyalty that belied the timid expresison of her large, watchful brown eyes in her small, pale face.

One night I heard my father raging at night to my mother “This is stupid! Make her eat! Make her talk!” and my mother standing up to him for the only time in my memory and saying “You leave her alone! Her heart is broken!”  I will never forget how startled I was to hear her say that, and the instant warm wave that washed over me.  It was so strange, to feel so safe in the face of my father’s bull-like rage, though afterward my mother never spoke of the fight with dad, nor did I.

 Years after Tracy and I split he dated my cousin for awhile, so he was back in the family sphere.  There was talk of drug taking and drug selling and eventually they split and my cousin left him far behind, doing a stint in the army, then marrying and moving to San Diego. Tracy stayed in the home place and years passed and one day he up and tried to kill himself.  That same year my sister ran into him and said he looked okay. A little thin. Older. He said to give me his best, which made me  remember the sweet, unaffected boy he once once and think, maybe he already did.  Wherever he is, I hope he's doing well.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Sips of dad's Natural Light beer.  He'd sit on the front or back porch with mom and  say "Run get me a beer, Sandy."  "Can I have a sip?" I'd ask.  "Just a little one," he'd say, and I'd take the beer from its carton in the fridge, relishing the crack-hiss when I pulled the tab, which I'd pocket to add to my chain mail vest I was making.  Then I'd take a decent sized gulp. I liked the taste, the fizz-tickle on my nose, the hoppy smell, the friendly, easy way my dad talked when the beer drinking had only just commenced for the evening...maybe that most of all. 

I continue to associate beer with positive things, though it actually had quite a negative impact on my childhood. 

My first *unsupervised* drink of alcohol occurred with my friend Vicky Morton, who had big breasts, a divorced mom, and was the first person I ever knew who lived in a rented house – a duplex.  She also, literally, lived on the other side of the railroad tracks, on the east end of town.  

For a year or so I became close with Vicky, and while at the time I thought my mom was totally unfair for holding Vicky’s well-matured bosom and divorced nurse mom against her, looking back I have to admit it was a reasonable fear my mother nourished. Because when I went to Vicky’s, I tried smoking, tried drinking, and I donned her super short-shorts and went walking around the neighborhood after midnight with her, both fascinated and terrified at the older men in their beat-up trucks with the bad mufflers slowing down to call out to us. Vicky always seemed to know what to say to them. She got pregnant and left high school her senior year, years  before we’d fallen out of one another’s circle of friends.

4. What was your FIRST job?

The first job I had where I had to fill out a W2 was McDonald's.  I wore a little blue polyester outfit with matching visor. The manager who hired me was named Greg, and he had quite an influence on me - he was in  his mid-20s and I was just 16 but he spoke to me with earnest respect and listened to me with interest, never crossing the line into flirting.  He was polite and efficient with the customers, never ingratiating.   He did his work with care and consideration but never ostentation.  He was a tall skinny guy with an open, Opie Taylor face and a tiny wispy moustache  and I was fiercely loyal to him.  I’m glad I met him there at the start of my life of work, because it taught me an early and valuable lesson, that any job that is done well can be satisfying, and that pride in work is most truly rewarding when it comes from within.

5. What was your FIRST car?

I once wrote an essay about my father  here on OS – his ever-present rage, which was not at all diminished by the 1975 gold colored Dodge Coronet with no air conditioning, a car so bad, so balky,  he once threatened the dealership that sold it to him with “I’m gonna paint a lemon on the goodamn thing and drive it all the way to California!”  This threat did not have its intended effect and the car remained balkily in the family for many years, until it was  gifted to me when I graduated with my Master’s degree, under the condition that I pursue my Ph.D. studies closer to home in Indiana and not far away Austin, Texas. 

This condition had nothing to do with my parents wanting to see me more often or a real concern for my safety – it was a condition that was all and only about control, which my father felt inexorably slipping away as my professors continued to build up in me the newly discovered notion that I just might be smart, I just might be able to break away from the claustrophobia of my parent’s frightened, rigid way of living in the world and make my own way without encountering any of the dire catastrophes my dad predicted as certain to happen if I didn’t do as he did (and,  more importantly, said).

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

My friend Annie in Austin. Annie had a stroke a little over a year ago, and the fact that she is doing something like *texting* me when not so long ago her brain literally tried to burst out of her head and kill her - and quite nearly succeeded - is nothing short of stunning.  One of my most enduring memories happened just about a year ago today, when my friend Tricia called me from Austin to give me an update on Annie's condition just after she'd had a dangerous surgery that invovled cutting a big chunk of her skull away so that her rapidly swelling brain had somewhere to go. 

"I saw her," Tricia told me in choking sobs that told me the answer to the unasked question.   And I sat there on the step two thousand miles away in the mild California sunshine, weeping, feeling small and stupid and helpless in the face of the knowledge of what might happen.

I have my phone set up so that when I get a text it makes a short, musical rrring-rrring!  not unlike one of those old-fashioned bikes with the bell with the little metal lever you pushed with your thumb to warn walkers ahead of your fast-approaching bikey presence.   I don't get many texts, and the first one from Annie was such a welcome happy surprise that ever since then, I associate that sound, that tiny crsytalline bell sound, with her.

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

I woke at 7 a.m. this morning, just 4 hours after I went to sleep.  I went to the bathroom, came back and found the little one in middle of the bed, her eyes peeping slyly at me over the covers.

Move over, I told her, and she gave a grudging inch.  As I fell back asleep I felt her little arm and leg steal around me, her hands give me a quick squeeze.  I love you, she said right out loud into the morning quiet, and I smiled.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Sister Antoinette was a terrible, frightening nun who understood that I was a year younger than the rest of the class, but refused to make any accommodation for my different rate of maturation. She slapped me and verbally humiliated me on a regular basis, often commanding me to hold my hands out in front of me, palms down, so she could smack my knuckles with her heavy, metal-reinforced wooden ruler.  

The violence  culminated in a bare bottom spanking administered in front of the entire class full of children who were only about six years old but still with the sensitivity and basic humanity (qualities distinctly lacking in the good Sister) to look away from the spectacle.  I know, because in my anguish I looked out at them as the sister struck her blows, and only one boy, Mike Lauko, dared to briefly  meet my eyes in a look of such stricken sympathy that tears of humiliation poured down my face.

I was so young, I didn’t even hate her for what she did. I figured I deserved it because she was an adult and an adult wouldn’t hit me unless I deserved it (gee, dad, I wonder where I got that idea?).  When my parents found out they surprised me by their outraged talk of moving me to another school. I couldn’t see the big deal. While it was horrible as it happened, it wasn’t exactly *new* treatment for me, and I saw no reason why the sister should not also lay claim to the same authority to randomly strike me and frighten me as my father.  

9. When and where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

My first business trip was to a little town in Indiana where a famous office furniture maker had its headquarters.  I was travelling with two men and I swear to you I am not making up their names: Fred Peacock and Mike Growcock. Fred was a big hale hearty fat fellow with horn rimmed glasses, a perpetually red face and a nervous, ready laugh; he was like a jovial Willie Loman. Mike was small, neat, wiry and intense. Neither had a detectable sense of humor so I refrained from remarking on the remarkableness of being a woman sitting between two guys with a cock in their name.

The meeting went well; to my surprise Mike continually turned the floor over to me when the client asked questions, and to my greater surprise, the client seemed to listen more intently to me than the two men  To my greatest surprise, none of this seemed to have much to do with the fact that I was ‘hot’; they actually seemed to be interested in what I knew and what I thought about the marketing programs we were discussing.  I was growing up. It was great.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?

My first best friend was Jan.  She lived three doors down and we were some of the very few girls in a neighborhood dominated by boys – from my house, boys were two to the left, five to the right, two across the street, four kitty-corner across the street.  Jan and I couldn’t have been more different – she was tall and thin and blonde and pale and not terribly athletic,  while I was a small and compact bundle of energy with sports-scabbed knees  - the Instigator, for sure.  We spent many endless humid  summer days playing along the creek and in the big pine tree where some neighbor boys had built a clubhouse.

Once, on a dry day in August, we got the idea to throw lit matches into the  golden bearded grasses that grew tall and wild in a lot behind our houses.  The grasses burned hot and thirstily and we spent a serious, frantic few minutes stamping out the flames.  We were good girls and so it was only a matter of hours before one of us led her father to the spot and received a stern-faced lecture on playing with matches.

11. Where was your FIRST sleepover?

Kathy Lodes had a sleep over for her tenth birthday. I was only eight but got invited because our fathers played softball together and camped and fished together. I’ve heard of children who get homesick at sleepovers and call for their parents, but this is not something I can imagine - I was ecstatic to go to a sleepover.

We changed into our pajamas at around nine-thirty, when it had just fallen full dark in her small southern Illinois backyard.   I’d just received some spiffy new jammies for Christmas, a harem set modeled after Barbara Eden’s outfit in I Dream of Jeanie. I was so proud of that outfit with its beautiful pinks and purples.  Another girl, Karen, had the same pajama set, which thrilled me to no end, that such a beautiful accomplished, nice *older* girl had favored the same pajamas that *I* had, la di dah!

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

My lovely husband.  He reached over the little one and squeezed my hand and I said, hi, and he said, Good morning my love, are you hungry? What can I bring you? He always says that. He's great.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

 The first wedding I was in was the wedding of  my college friend and roommate Beth, who married my college friend Pete, so they have been Beth-and-Pete for going on twenty  years now.  They are both classic Norse people,  white haired and blue eyed, their cheeks ruddy with fresh-from-the-Fjord beauty and health.  

They got married in an ancient wooden church that stood in splintered, spiritual silence in the middle of Nowhere, Illnois.  It was unelectrified  and explosively hot; throughout the ceremony the barn swallows flitted among the rafters above us.  The priest read their vows in a beautiful baritone, matter-of-factly and repeatedly mopping his entire face and slim bald head with an oversized handkerchief.  At the altar, I watched as the dress of the bridesmaid in front of me went pale lilac to a dark, sweat-stained purple, right before she fainted.   Then we all  adjourned outside to a meadow that is surely identical to the landscape that so inspired Thoreau. 

I was young and unsophisticated and uncomfortable with the heat.  And maybe I was also a bit thrown to be witnessing friends so assuredly joining their live together when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next.  At any rate, I enjoyed the weekend but never thought of it again until now, when I finally recognize the austere beauty of the surroundings and the service, the simple spirituality that permeated that church, and has, indeed, permeated these dear friends in all of the time I have known them.  

We lost touch for awhile but reconnected when I moved to the Bay Area and discovered they lived a few towns over.  We’ve visited a few times and I’ve watched their family grow, three Norse sons with the same white-blonde heads and eyes as friendly, clear and blue as a bottomless Alpine lake, plus two daughters of China, sparkling eyed and blackheaded, exotic pepper to mix with the simple honest salt of their family.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

The first wake-up call was to the bathroom. Then I went back to bed, found the little one there and the three of us snuggled until 9:30, when we all re-woke up and had bowls of cereal with blueberries in the kitchen.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

Foghat. Big-breasted Vicki and her older, delinquent brothers and sitter took us.  They offered me beer and I declined and to my surprise, they told me ‘sure, that’s cool’.  The brothers were opposties, Cool Night and Hot Day.  Doug was brown  haired and intense looking, with an imperial, aquiline nose. Tracy was blond and blue-eyed, a twin of Shaun Cassidy, with a sly and unreliable grin. I was confused how I could be equally, passionately infatuated with both types/personas.  I don’t remember much about the music, but standing between them at the concert was pure heaven.

16. FIRST tattoo?

It’s still in the planning stage.

17. FIRST piercing?

I got my ears pierced at the new mall in Fairview Heights when I was twelve. My mother took me, over my father’s objections.  “If God had meant you to have pierced ears, he’d have made you with two more holes in your head” he liked to say as justification for denying us this accessorizing opportunity.  

I said “If God had meant you to be drinking beer all the time you’ d have been born with a beer can in your hand” which got me in big trouble but just might have been the impetus for my mom gaining the courage to defy dad’s wishes and make the unfamiliar drive to the mall, where first I, then my sister, then mom got each lobe pierced with a bright golden ball.

18. FIRST foreign country you've been to?

When I was 23 I went to the UK for a business trip. I went to London, Manchester, and Liverpool, and my husband came along and the two of us had a grand time sightseeing in between the meetings.  I was very nervous about finding my way around without someone more senior from work but I needn't have worried.  The Underground is maybe the easiest, most readable mass transit systemin the world.  Less than a year after that trip I changed companies and went to Germany, France, Malaysia Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia in the first six months.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing in the theater?

My mom and dad dropped my brother with us two little sisters at the BAC Ritz Cinema in downtown Belleville while they finished Christmas shopping.  I guess I was around 7 or so – the movie was Song of the South, and it featured a song that went “Zippity Doo Dah, Zippity Day, My oh my what a wonderful day! Skies are blue and heaven’s  a-way, Zippity Doo Dah, Zippity Day!"

It was a movie about Bre’r Rabbit which I misheard as Bear Rabbit which did not at all make sense to me as the rabbit in question did not look remotely bear-like. It wasn’t ‘til I was in my late twenties did I one day look up with a funny expression on my face and say, apropos of nothing, “Oh – its a contraction for brother!”

20. FIRST Detention you had?

I never had detention from school. At home I was in permanent detention from age twelve until I left for college, at which time I left home and never looked back.

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

Illinois, Illinois, Illinois.

22. If you had three wishes, what would the FIRST one be?

Right now I’d have to go with “That Greg Correll will have all the money he needs for his daughter's colleges and weddings.”

My second wish would be that anyone who tried to commit an act intended to violate another person's welfare, their arms would fall off into the dust at their feet. 

23. What is the FIRST thing you would learn if you had the chance?

How to drive a race car.