And today Bingo lives a normal life, except for the loss of balance
Once again it’s time to go back through my journal to April 13, 1985 when I was 17 and finishing my junior year in high school. As is always the case, this is a slice of my angst-filled life.
So let’s go.
On April 30 I get to go to the Conference for Young Authors at the University of Michigan. It all started when I had Creative Writing with Mr. D, cool guy. There’s this conference that takes place every year and only four — yes, count ‘m baby — only four students from each high school get to go.
Now of course more than four people in our class wanted to go, so Mr. D said, “Everyone who wants to go to this will submit a one-page essay on anything. Don’t put your name on it and I’ll give them to Mr. S. He’ll decide and I’ll have no input. That way it will be fair.”
About ten people raised their hands and I didn’t because I thought, ‘No way, everyone wants to go I won’t have a chance.’
So I didn’t raise my hand. Mr. D said, “Cardiogirl, aren’t you going to try?”
“No.”
“Oh, go ahead, give it a shot.”
So I wrote about everyone’s favorite teacher, Miss G. And I was picked. Anyway on the 30th I go to a three-hour conference where you can bring things you’ve written and a professor sits with you, reads your stuff and tells you what he things.
Watch, I’ll get someone like that guy on “Paper Chase” — mean, old and decrepit.
My hair looks like an old rat’s nest. I’m letting the back and part of the sides grow out and the part that’s suppose to grow isn’t and the part that isn’t is. It figures. The girl who cuts my hair said it should be the right length by summer, I doubt it.
Man I shaved my legs yesterday after letting them run wild for about six months. It took 45 minutes and somehow I cramped the big toe on my left foot and it hurts every time I walk on it. It feels like a Charley horse, it’s killing me.
Jack smashed Bingo in the bathroom door. It’s been two weeks now and Bingo is almost back to normal. It was so gross.
Bingo was sitting on top of the bathroom door and Jack just went to the door for no reason in particular, didn’t look up and slammed the door, twice.
It wouldn’t close the first time, so he tried again. He opened it all the way and down came Bingo like a lead balloon.
Dad took him downstairs, got a stick and was going to kill him, but alas! Bingo flipped all over and Dad decided to let him live as long as he could.
Today Bingo lives a normal life with a little bit of lost balance here and there, but he’s almost okay.
So very much to say.
Clearly my insecurities run deep and were honed at an early age since initially I didn’t even try to enter the contest. Other people are interested too? I give up. And my pessimistic nature was also in full swing back then — “…I’ll get someone like that guy on “Paper Chase” — mean, old and decrepit.”
Just call me Susie Sunshine. I honestly don’t remember attending that conference or what articles I brought. I also do not remember what the professor had to say. I wonder if I kept anything from that experience. It would be fun to look back at the prof’s analysis.
Regarding my legs, too bad I didn’t have my Tweeze back then.
And poor, poor Bingo. He was a teeny, tiny blue parakeet who apparently liked to hang out on the top of open doors. It seems really odd to me that my brother would simply walk to the bathroom door like the Terminator and slam it shut. Twice. Maybe that was my 17-year-old interpretation.
By the way, my brother would have been 25 at the time.
I do recall, very vividly, my father taking Bingo to the basement with the intent of smashing the life out of him. I cried.
And then I was extremely relieved to hear that the man who played god decided Bingo could live. I also remember taking Bingo to the vet and giving him pink medicine from an eye dropper.
Surprisingly, I do think Bingo lived another year or so. Man, that’s like surviving a horrific car accident and then living with the driver of the other car and the mass murderer wandering the town.
If I were Bingo I would have feared and loathed living in that house.
