Those were the days

I went to my 35th class reunion on Saturday 10/6/2012. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at how many of my former classmates have been following my life. I really expected to have to repeat a million times, what had happened to me over the past 35 years. Why I walk with a cane. blah blah blah Instead I was greeted with many warm hugs and words of endearment and encouragement. My high school years were fun and carefree. My first job, at the age of 14 was at the movie theater, I worked there for almost 2 years before I got a job a bit closer to home at Tastee Freeze. I would go to school, then to work until about 11:30, drive home, go to bed and the next day do it all over again. During my highschool years, I was known as a "Tech-er" this means I attended high school for half a day and vocational technical school for the other half. I was a cosmetology student. Because of the number of students wanting this option back then, they increased the hours and classes at vo-tech to 3 a day. During my Sophomore year I went to vo-tech from 3pm till 6pm. This meant that I didn't have to get up for school until 9am. We had to be there by 10. So a typical day for me would be to get up at 9, school from 10 till 2 (they picked us up with the "short bus", tech from 3 to 6 then work from 7 til midnight. Before I turned 16 and got my license my then boyfriend who later became my first husband would take me to work. When I turned 16 and got my license my first car was an old rambler, I had that about a year before I "upgraded" to a Ford Fairlane. Don't remember the years but OLD. I am the oldest of 5, I have 3 brothers and the youngest is a sister. Both of my parents worked so at the age of 11 I was pretty much responsible for my siblings until my mom got home from work. I had an old Honda 90 motorcycle back then and when we would get home from school we would spend the hour of parental freedom riding the bike up through the slate quarries. The bike had a luggage rack on the back so I would put my sister in front of me on the gas tank, a brother behind me, and the other 2 on the luggage rack.

It looked something like this except the gas tank was in front of me like a traditional motorcycle. Oh the hours of enjoyment we had on that thing. When I look back on it now I realize the dangers of riding a motorcycle on broken slate but back then it was just fun times. Later in high school, as a senior I moved out of my parents home and into an apartment with my then future husband I remember going to the school office and telling them that I no longer lived at home and wanted to know what I should do about an excuse if I was sick. I was told that since I was always a good student I should just write my own excuses. There were no questions asked. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen today. I graduated in 1977 and got married in October of that year. The marriage was short lived however, as I was simply trying to remove myself from a sexually abusive father. He was my escape and I am truly sorry I did that to him. My current husband and I met in 1979 and by November of 1980 we had our first daughter, Brooke. We later married in March of 83 and had our youngest daughter the following February 1st. We raised our daughters in the same home in Bangor, PA throughout their school years. It was in the garden of this residence where I was bit by the obnoxious tick that gave me Lyme Disease. That was in 2005. Also the year we moved to our current home. I went on IV for the Lyme in 2006, it was just about 6 weeks after that I suffered the brain aneurism followed by complete brain stroke. I spent just a little over a month in the hospital, most of the in intensive care. From what I understand (I don't remember a day there) I had to be taught how to do all of the things that I used to do daily. Cook, clean, etc. The only thing I apparently did remember was how to work a computer. Weird huh? Seems a nurse sat me at a computer and asked what I wanted to do, I (apparently again) told her I wanted to chat with my brother in AZ on yahoo chat, before she figured out how to download it, I had it already downloaded and was chatting with him. About 6 months later, I was tired of sharing a computer with my husband and had him bring up the 3 old ones that were down in the storage room and within a couple hours had built him one. I went back to work shortly after and because of a faithful staff held on to my position until 2008 when my assistant had to be hospitalized, it quickly became apparent to my supervisors that she had been pretty much running the show and I was left go. I had been there for 20 years. I went on unemployment and applied for SSD, lucky for me the government took a dive and I was able to sign up right up until the day my SSD was approved.