The first year I was at Monroe I grew mentally. I had a new chance to have some sort of an ideal how to live life with harmony and love. The life there was structure and the same every day. There were no surprises with steady guidance. I learned the basics of the how to live happy and with kindness and truth. As each day came I grew to love Monroe. The people there and I were all in the same boat. Most came from families with drinking problems or in trouble with the law. We understood each other so there was a lot of kids there that were mentor's there to the other kids. Once I got to understand that it was a place for me to trust I fit right in with everyone else . . .I had a need for people to like me. I would follow J.C. around like a little puppy dog. I craved the attention that he showed me. All the kids went to church every Sunday. I went to Second Presbyterian on Belmont and Woodmount Blvd. I was baptized in that church and was a part of the church. There were young couples there too that helped with the youth classes. There was a guy named Richard Spieght. He and his wife taught the class I was in. We as a class, went on Christmas and gave a party at the Fannie Battle Day Home kids and we served them refreshment and wrapped presents for children. I had a picture of me in the local paper. I attached myself to Mr. Spieght and wanted him to love me like I wanted J.C. to love me . . .
There was a coach at my new school his name was Mr. Keathy I followed him all year when I first came to school there. He was my coach for track. Now days you hear all the time about teachers that take advantage of teenagers. Most are girls but there are boys that are taken advantage of too. I was walking down the hall one day and he was in front of me and I'll fell back some and he jumped around and yelled BOO, I was not behind him someone else was and he scared the poor kid almost to death. He was so embarrassed when he saw it wasn't me behind him. I would go to his office all the time and sit and talk to him about track but in my head I was conspiring for him to like me more than the other kids just like all the other males in my life. It kinda makes me wonder why. Was it because my dad didn't show me love like they did? I don't know but as I think on it now I see where I put myself in harms way all the time when I was a kid. I was always looking for someone to love me. Till this day I do the same thing to a fault, I ware people out by wanting all their attention that has become one of my worst problems in my life. Back then I was lucky that someone didn’t take advantage of the young puppy love that I had . . .
I missed my mom and dad and wished that they could get their life's in order so I could come home. Well I am not sure what was happening in their life's at this point in time and probably that was a good thing. I had enough to think and worry about on my own. I was moved to the big girl's unit about one year after I came there. They put me in a room with a crazy girl that was three times the size of me. Everybody said she was a kid that did things to hurt herself. She was a cutter, they said. She would cut her arms and watch herself bleed. For some reason she liked me and we hit it off well. She was moved to T.P.S., a school for juvenile offenders about three months after I started rooming with her. She stole one of the station wagons and took a joy ride in it and got caught by the police. She was hurt somehow in her life and she tortured herself for it. I began to see that my life was not as bad as I thought. There were kids there that had horrible things happen to them and it left scares that may never heal. I was OK compared to them . . .
I missed my mom and dad and wished that they could get their life's in order so I could come home. Well I am not sure what was happening in their life's at this point in time and probably that was a good thing. I had enough to think and worry about on my own. I was moved to the big girl's unit about one year after I came there. They put me in a room with a crazy girl that was three times the size of me. Everybody said she was a kid that did things to hurt herself. She was a cutter, they said. She would cut her arms and watch herself bleed. For some reason she liked me and we hit it off well. She was moved to T.P.S., a school for juvenile offenders about three months after I started rooming with her. She stole one of the station wagons and took a joy ride in it and got caught by the police. She was hurt somehow in her life and she tortured herself for it. I began to see that my life was not as bad as I thought. There were kids there that had horrible things happen to them and it left scares that may never heal. I was OK compared to them . . .
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| Sound Of Music First Movie I Saw At Monroe Belle Meade Theater |
After Eddie number two left, I started dating ( yes! another Eddie ) Eddie Shawb, he was a preppy and something I was not use to. He would bring me a rose in class. He was really romantic. We went together for the last of the eight grade and the beginning of the ninth grade. It was kind of ruff for us after that cause he got a car and Monroe would not allow me to car date yet. So it didn't last and we stopped dating midway in the ninth grade. I saw Eddie many years later, he worked as a dispatcher for Yellow Freight and my husband was a truck driver for Yellow Freight. It was kind of nice to see one of my old loves. He hadn't changed a bit and he still looked the same . . .
I had a small rash come on my elbows and my knees about summer of 1967 and was taken to see a doctor. He said it was psoriasis. I was so embarrassed and self conscious of it. Kids of course made fun of me. They called me an alligator girl and snake girl and would say things like, don't touch me it might be catching. So now I did not fit in again, I was different from the other kids. I was put on methotrexate a very powerful drug. I had to have a white blood cell count each month. It can and does have side effects: sore throat, chills, fever, or other signs of infection; unusual bruising or bleeding; excessive tiredness; pale skin; or shortness of breath and may cause liver damage. The doctor got it under control within a month. I have the sun sensitive type, the sun in other cases helps it but 25 percent of the people that have it, are sun sensitive. So needless to say I stayed inside almost the whole summer that year. I have had to deal with it all my life . . .
Then I was on my own. I like a couple of boys at Monroe like Johnny Eubank, Diana's brother, she tried to fix us up but he didn't want anything to do with me. I already had a teenage crush on a couple of the older boys there but most of them were already taken. So my last year at Monroe I had no boy friend. That wasn't too bad I was into school sports anyway. All that changed when I left Monroe. I had passed to the ninth grade and Mrs. Birdie was so proud of me. She worked hard to help me. I was so excited. My momma and daddy gave me twenty dollars because I passed. Summer time at Monroe was so much fun. We had lots of things to keep us busy. Canning veggie’s from our garden. There was a summer camp that was at Monroe for under privileged kids and we were to help with that. Skinny dipping! Darnn, I wasn't supposed to tell you that. Yes, one year we got caught skinny dipping. It was just we girls, there were no boys. All they did to punish us was, make us clean the pool and we had lots of fun doing that to . . .
Psoriasis. It is a red patches or lesions called plaques . . .’s a chronic (long-lasting) inflammatory skin condition that is caused in part by an overactive immune system that triggers the body to grow skin cells up to ten times faster than normal. Instead of shedding, these skin cells pile up on the surface and form . . .
Want to read more about psoriasis click on link below
http://www.psoriasis.org/
http://www.psoriasis.org/
By December 1967 my momma and daddy had bought into a Pepe's Pizza shop. They had moved to West Nashville in a small house behind the shop. I was allowed to go and spend week ends there with them. Boy, they were altogether different mom and dad than when I last saw them. They seemed happy. They were doing really well in the pizza shop. That started a whole new thing for momma and daddy . . .
My next chapter breaks into the new kid in West Nashville . . .
My next chapter breaks into the new kid in West Nashville . . .