I remember that wheelchair

It was postitively prehistoric by today's standards. Although I am sure at the time it was top of the line. To me, it looked like a lawnchair with wheels. It was tiny, but so was the kid that used it. His name was Randy. He had muscular distrophy. Whenever he didn't come to school (which was a lot) it would sit empty in the corner of the classroom.

He wasn't full of sunshine and light, like they tell you on the telethon. He was actually kind of grouchy and mean. They told us to ignore that because he was going through things we could never understand - so we did. When he came to school we played with him. If he felt like playing kickball we would all scoot in from the field while the pitcher rolled the ball straight at his foot. When he could manage a kick, the ball would bobble a couple of feet to the side. Then one of the big boys would push his chair around the field. Sometimes he would make it to first base, sometimes he would get thrown out - just like the rest of us. Every now and then, through a comedy of errors, he would get that homerun! I remember once he was in right field and the ball went straight to him. He caught it. The celebration was truely monumental (even the kid that kicked the ball celebrated that one).

Mostly he just sat on the sidelines and cheered and did plenty of trash talkin'.

In the fifth grade they moved the class upstairs. The big boys (6 th. graders) would come and get him 10 minutes before and after recess and lunch. They would carry him, wheelchair and all, either up or down 2 flights of stairs. Just think of the hell that would be raised if that happened today! I think it made us all closer.

In the 7th. grade we moved to junior high school. Randy did not come with us.

He died when I was in the 9th. grade.

Please donate to muscular dystrophy: www.mda.org

1-800-FIGHT-MD

We Used to Collect for the Jerry Lewis Telethon

Back in the 70's when people went door to door to collect money for "Jerry's Kids" and you didn't have to worry about them stealing it, we would collect money every year. We went on lots of vacations when I was a kid. We spent nearly every weekend in the Great Smokey Mountains or we were in Florida or we were camping at Summersville Lake. No matter where we were my parents made sure we got home the Sunday before Labor Day so that we could spend Monday collecting for Jerry's Kids.

My friend Sherri and I would go together and Billy and Rhonda would go together. Billy and Rhonda would get the houses closer to our house because they were younger. Sherri and I would roam our whole neighborhood collecting and sometimes roam down to Mitchell Heights too. Some years daddy would drive us to neighborhoods all over Logan to collect.

My parents would give us a glass jar to carry because they said people would give more if they could see money in the jar. Daddy used to make sure that we had "seed money" to start also. He would put a bunch of change and a few ones and an occasional $5 in there so people would give more money. Then we would go out and spend the afternoon collecting for muscular dystrophy. We had to be home by 5 o'clock so that we could count the money and take it to Logan to the local telethon office at the Aracoma Hotel. (I may be wrong but I don't think they had credit card donations in those days - everything was done the old fashioned way by CASH!)

The first few years we would have around $50 and then it went up to the $75 range. Finally we would be so close to $100 that my dad would just add the rest to it so we could make the REALLY BIG DONATION! We were always so proud to march in that Hotel with our jar full of money and all the people would make a big deal out of it. Which it was a big deal. There weren't a whole lot of $100 donations back in those days and we were really happy to help those kids.

Afterwards we would all go to Dairy Queen and get Mister Mistys and hot dogs. It was a great day every year. It is sad that today's kids can't do stuff like that. They are really missing out.

From My Druggie Days

One time I was at a couple's trailer. They were always so messed up that they walked around with their eyes closed all the time. I used to wonder how they walked around without bumping into anything.

One day the man told me he had something to show me. We went into the hallway where the middle bedroom was (remember those tiny bedrooms they used to put in trailers?). He had wired the door closed and it took him a minute to unwrap the wire around the network of nails and the door knob.

He flung the door wide open and laughed. I slammed back against the wall in the hallway and gasped for air. Inside that tiny bedroom were two of the biggest pythons I had ever seen in my life. Each one's head was the size of a paper plate and their bodies were at least a foot in circumference. They were coiled around each other and were so big that they filled up the entire room.

I raced out of the trailer scared out of my mind!

After he secured the door he came out to tell me about the snakes. He said he fed them each a rabbit once a week and occasionally he would give each of them a chicken to change things up.

A couple of weeks later the couple was killed in a police chase.

99 IQ?

I used to work in a kennel with a trainer that I absolutely despised. He was a worthless crack addict and as time went on I was completely unable to hide my contempt for him. This is an example of the kind of things that we used to do to each other to get under each other's skin. One day we were standing in line waiting for weigh - in.(Weigh - in is where you take the dogs to check them in before the races. They are weighed and their tattoos are checked to make sure that you have the right dog.) Brent started to brag to me that he had a 99 IQ. I just looked at him while he prattled on thinking surely he was making a mistake. The more he bragged the more he kept mentioning the 99 IQ. Finally I could resist no more. I asked him if he was making a mistake about the number. He insisted no that his IQ was 99.

I asked him what he was bragging about. He informed me that the IQ scale went to 100 and he was one point from perfect! I let him have it. I told him that he was mistaken that the IQ scale went up to 200 points! That if he had a 99 IQ then his IQ was one point below average like Forrest Gumps IQ was one point below retarded!

EVERYBODY LOST IT! THEY STARTED CALLING BRENT "FORREST".

Everywhere Brent went that day people were shouting "Run Forrest Run!" completely humiliating him. That night they put a sign in front of our kennel where Brent parked the truck that said "Stop Forrest Stop!" When he pulled up he got out of the truck and ripped the sign to shreds. It was HILARIOUS!

Later he engineered a coup and had me fired. The only job I ever had that I was fired from.

Our Greatest Accomplishment

had to be the clubhouse we built one year. It was the summer of the 5th. grade and we had just moved into the new house that my parents had built and there was all kinds of scrap lumber left over. So me and Billy and Rhonda and Rusty and Sissy decided to build a clubhouse.

This was no ordinary clubhouse. It was a masterpiece of architecture (even though it looked like a shanty) We not only had a second floor but we had a balconey that extended over the riverbank. The actual house was about chest high to a fifth grader. We of course had a ladder (sometimes a ramp - but it kept breaking) to the second story. Part of the second floor was under roof also. We spent the entire summer building this clubhouse.

Even when we ran out of lumber we kept pounding nails into it. There was one board that was comprised entirely of nails. It looked like a sheet of metal. One day I was sitting on the balconey and it collapsed underneath me. It didn't go crashing to the ground though it just kind of swayed to the side and I rode it down to the ground.

Then there was the infamous hammer incident. I threw the hammer to Sis one day and it hit her on top of the head. Luckily she lived although I still hear about it to this day.

The most awful day was the day my mom made us tear it down. I had scratched my back on one of the many nails that poked through the boards. That was all the excuse she needed to destroy the greatest eyesore that a kid ever built! That was also another thing that I still hear about to this day. (usually from Sis)

what were you doing 5 years ago?

2010 - hanging out, blogging, helping little old ladies when I could (life w/heart failure), working at Fruth parttime. Thanks to government intervention I am alive.

2005 - tried to make a go at a 35 acre farm, working at TA Truckstop, Fruth and puppy mill, first symptoms of heart failure - making excuses for being so tired. Billy killed Lisa - tried to be supportive to Becca and Arnie (their kids) as much as I could.

2000 - started job at Fruth pharmacy. It was supposed to be temporary until I found something better. left job at Rxbytel - Walter (the owner and pharmacist) was a crazy fucker and I couldn't take it anymore. when I told the manager at Fruth why I left the other job he hired me on the spot. (as he did many times with ex Rxbytel employees)

1995 - left my husband after 13 years of marriage - he went bonkers! Started working at Raines Kennel at Tri State Greyhound Park. Lester hired me on the spot - my reputation preceeds me

1990 - moved to Florida to pursue my career as a greyhound Trainer, had 2 operations due to complications from an untreated miscarriage (paid for both of them out of my own pocket)

1985 - Huntington School of Beauty Culture

1980 - graduated Logan High School, attended Ohio State University

1975 - a very ugly and ungainly teenage girl

1970 - 3rd. grade. I had Mrs Mays. We donated 2 cents every week and we had a candy party and art every Friday after lunch. She had neat stamps that she stamped our papers with. The year I learned there was no Santa Claus.

1965 - 3 years old. My Sister Rhonda was born. We lived in Tennessee. I remember flying a kite and my dad cussing when I accidentally let it go, I remember being scared of some brush when we went fishing one day, I remember a nightmare with a woman's head on my nightstand and running to my parent's for comfort, I remember eating raw spaghetti with the neighbor boy next door - through the fence.

CRAZY lucid Dream

two men were walking toward me

one man's mouth turned into a black hole

I REALIZED I WAS DREAMING

I dove into the man's mouth because I wanted to see what the inside of a person looks like

It was very dark - so dark that I couldn't see anything

HOW DISAPPOINTING

I WOKE UP

next time maybe I should dream up a flashlight

A Tomcat named Arnie

We had a tomcat named Arnie when we were growing up. He was named after my dad. When he was just a kitten we started putting him in a baby carriage on his back (just like a baby) and covering him up to his chin and putting a pacifier in his mouth. He would lay there for hours sucking on the pacifier.

As he got older he would still lay there and suck the pacifier but he didn't want us to touch his baby carriage anymore. He used to love to tease him by touching his bed and he would slash us with his claws whenever we did this. We would try to get out of his way but he was too fast for us. Consequently all 3 of us had scratches on our hands and forearms from Arnie.

We had put the baby carriage up at some point and one day I found it in the garage. I set it up and found Arnie and you should have seen his eyes when he saw his baby carriage again. INSTANT RECOGNITION! He crawled in and I covered him up and put the pacifier in his mouth. He lay there all day long. He was happy.

Later on he decided he loved our neighbors Marsha and Johnny better than us and he adopted them. Boy oh boy, was that hurtful to a kid.

I Was Jump Rope Champion of the Third Grade

That is probably my biggest claim to fame in grade school

In the first grade me and Suzanne would run out to the merry-go-round and jump on it and the big boys (6th. graders) would push it as fast as they could and we would hold on for dear life. One time she flew off and another time I chipped my tooth!

We liked to play hopscotch. Sometimes we played Chinese hopscotch.

We played chase. Nobodies feeling were hurt because they were "it". If you were "it" a lot you learned to faster and then you weren't "it" anymore.

THAT WAS RECESS IN GRADE SCHOOL IN THE EARLY 1970'S

Red Rover was a big deal for awhile. As was dodge ball. We played a lot of kickball too (I wasn't very good at kickball)

A bunch of us used to play doctor behind the bushes - we never got caught.

There was jump rope by yourself. There was jump rope with other people. There was double dutch jump rope. I remember Chinese jump rope but I can't for the life of me remember how we did it.

I was a 4 square specialist. Even if you spiked the ball I could usually knock you out (of the game that is)

My biggest daredevil act was on the swings. We would take over 3 swings in a row. The two people on the ends would swing like a pendulum toward each other. The person in the middle would swing right through them. The object was for them to touch and separate just before you came swinging through the middle of them!

RACIST 3#!%#*!@! PIGS!

I HATE THEM! BECAUSE OF MY APPEARANCE MANY PEOPLE COME UP TO ME OUT OF THE BLUE AND MAKE RACIST COMMENTS. COMPLETE STRANGERS THINK BECAUSE OF MY FAIR COMPLEXION THAT I WILL AUTOMATICALLY AGREE WITH THEIR DISGUSTING VIEWS. HERE IS WHAT SET ME OFF THIS TIME...

I was at work and there was a group of teenage, black children looking at the candy. They weren't hurting anything or anyone. An old couple was walking past and all of a sudden he darted over to me and whispered, " you'd better watch them," and looked at me in that knowing way.

I looked at him and loudly said, "Why, did you see them do anything wrong!"

He then recoiled in shock and looked at me like, "how could you let the world know I made a racist comment?"

I just looked at him with disgust as he slinked out of the store. (just to let you know the kids weren't paying any attention to us and weren't aware of what happened) They just continued looking for their candy.

Unfortunately I feel racism like that will just have to die out with the old coots!

"I'll be going to that big carlot in the sky"

That was one of my dad's favorite quotes. He also would say, "I'll be going to that big dogtrack in the sky," when he was winning big.

Another of his patented quotes was, "Money isn't everything - health is 2%." He later revised that in his later years and his health was failing seriously. Then the quote was, "money isn't everything - health is 10%"

He used to floor the doctors with his sense of humor. One day he looked at his podiatrist (who was trying desperately to save his one remaining foot) and said, "I am on the amputation diet. 20 lbs. at one WHACK!" I thought the doctor was going to choke himself to death with laughter.

This is the same doctor who upon seeing that yet another treatment had failed to heal my dad's foot said to him, "well, that's why they call it PRACTICING medicine."

YOU GOTTA HAVE A LITTLE HUMOR IN LIFE OR YOU'LL GO CRAZY

WARNING: I SHOOT SHOPLIFTERS

Last night at work I had the BRILLIANT IDEAof loading one of the BB guns that we sell and shooting some of our regular shoplifters that come through.

While I was laughing about it with coworkers I looked up to see a state policeman. I asked him if he would arrest me for shooting shoplifters with a BB gun. He smiled and told me he would have to arrest me for malicious wounding.

I said, "well I don't have any malicious intent - I just want to have a little fun."

He said, " then they could sue you."

"Well that's just perfect," I told him. "They can sue me for everything I own because I don't have anything. So that is no deterrent!"

Then my friend, Dick, a lawyer, came in. I asked him if he would represent me if I shot a shoplifter with a BB gun. He cocked an eyebrow and smiled and said, "since it's you, yes." Dick is one of our meanest, grouchiest, most crotchety customers. (we get along great - all the other cashiers are scared of him) He also happens to be a nationally reknown defense attorney who has been know to defend celebreties in the past.

So now I'm set. I have my defense lawyer and I can fire at will!!!