Why is her right boob so big?

When you go to school overseas you have to take a class everyday called "Host Nation". Primarily a language class, you also learn about the culture, food, art... I completely cheated my way through host nation. When people learn that I spent 4 years in Spain I often hear:

"oh, do you speak Spanish?"

I often reply:

" No I cheated my way through that class"

My friend Gabby spoke fluent Spanish and so I parked it right next to her on test day.

The one and only thing I remember from Host Nation is why the great masters of art painted nudes.

Why you ask? That I can tell you, how to conjugate a verb, not so much.

When an artist is drawing or painting an image of a tree, flower, or even someone with their clothes on, they can make little changes if need be. If you can't get the fold in the shirt just right, don't put in in.....can't get the leaf on the flower to lie correctly, change the position.

When paining a nude, if you can't get the penis just right, you can't very well just leave it off. What if one boob is larger than the other? Can't leave that, can you?

No to both.

I also remember learning about this painting. The story goes that the guy who commissioned it wanted one nude and one clothed. One for when his wife was around and one for when he was alone....... interesting thing to teach a 6th grader.

Apparently these "nude fun facts" made an impression on me however, because there folks represents 4 years of Spanish culture and language classes.

gum, fruit, and rubbers

Our house was situated at the bottom a hill, a pretty steep hill. I still have a scare on my knee from attempting to ride a skateboard down the hill on my stomach.

My skateboard hit a rock and came to a stop, and due to those nasty laws of physics, I did not.

We rode everything we could think of down those hills. At one point, we were given brand new trash cans, you know the green kind with wheels.....that was INSANE. You could get into those, close the lid and your friend would push you down the hill, and if it did a couple of tumbles....all the better my friend, all the better.

Another favorite past time was walking to the bar to buy candy. The Spanish always had the best candy and gum. For some reason, not known to me, there was a little Spanish owned bar inside the housing complex. A bar that also sold candy to children.

You know until I just wrote that last sentence, I didn't realize just how incredibly creepy the whole thing was.

I remember one day in particular, the reason being, I had just received my very first Walkman for Christmas. I was equipped with a new Walkman and a Madonna "Like a Virgin" cassette.

There I was singing along to the catchy lyrics:
"Like a virgin- yeah....touched for the very first time.....like a vir her her her gin"

"Hey mom, I'm gonna walk to the bar and buy some gum.......touched for the very first time"

"Alright, but remember, don't talk to strangers...........and bring me back a six pack."

When you walked in, it was dark and smoky and there were always a few old Spanish men bellied up the bar. The candy was sold "Little House on the Prairie" style, like you would ask for 50cents worth of coke bottle gum. I don't remember if we paid in dollars or pesetas.

Another, perhaps less tawdry way we acquired our candy was from the "Fruit Man". Everyday after school this Spanish guy would drive around the neighborhoods and sell fruit and candy out of the back of his brown van.........wait..........that doesn't sound quite right either.........

Whether it was on the up and up or not, whatever he was selling, we were buying. The great thing about this guy was, his presentation of the candy. He would make cones out of old magazines and newspaper, and fill the cones with the treats. I loved those cones, I can only imagine now just how disgusting they probably were.

Maybe it was Madonna's influence, perhaps it was due to hanging with old men in bars, or belatedly taking candy from strangers out of the back of their vans, who's to say, but somehow my friends and I got wind of something called a "rubber". We weren't quite sure what this thing was, but we did know it was something naughty, therefore we needed to investigate.

But how.

We couldn't ask someone and risk looking like a child.

We couldn't very well buy any, unless perhaps the Fruit Man was selling?

That left one terrible, terrible option.

We must steal one.

Everything in the base housing served at least a duel purpose. The theater, was also our schools auditorium as well as the church. The convenient store was also our lunchroom. So we were very familiar with the layout.

We thought we knew what the boxes of "rubbers" looked like. So the plan was this....We didn't want the entire box, we just wanted one. So we would get a box and each one of us would walk over to the box and open it a little until it was completely open. Then Gabby would eventually get a hold of one, stick it in her pocket, and we would be out the door before anyone was any wiser.

On a Saturday, we put the plan into place. The boxes were in the back corner of the store. I was first and went back, took a box and moved it to behind all the others and I tore a little corner. Now I was free to run distraction.

I grabbed a coke and a milky way, got my dollar out of the pocket of my Roos and I went to pay. All of the people who worked there were Spanish, this guy had shifty eyes. I was watching him, as he was watching them.

There were four of us, why would four preteen girls walking to the back corner of the store, one at a time look suspicious? I have no idea? But, apparently this guy was no fool, because our fool proof plan- didn't fool him.

I saw the look in his eye the second the light bulb turned on and it was slow motion from there. He walked back to Gabby, grabbed her arm so fast she was unable to drop the "rubber". He pulled her arm free from the shelf and there she was, holding "it". We had done it. We managed to get our hands on one, 1 minute longer and we would have been in the loop.

He yelled something in Spanish and reached back and grabbed the opened box and yelled some more. Gabby was fluent, so she yelled back in Spanish and to this day I don't know what she said, but he set us free. We ran all the way home, laughing harder than we had ever laughed. We still were not 100% sure of our ideas about "rubbers". We had a pretty good idea but still needed absolute proof.

That proof came a few weeks later. There had been an outbreak of "rubbers" being found around the school grounds. All of this detective work could have been alleviated if just one of us would have asked someone, what exactly they were. But the humiliation was too great.

So one Saturday my friends and I were hanging at soccer fields, which were by the school. We were walking and talking and singing about feeling like a virgin, when one of us looked down. There laying on the ground was the answer to all of our prayers....a real live "rubber", set free from the confines of that confusing packaging and everything!

Our suspicions had been right, it was perfectly penis- shaped, rubbery thing. We felt like all of our hard work had finally paid off. We found out without having to to "ask" someone, and it felt really good. But, that feeling didn't last to long before it turned to anger.

"Why didn't someone just tell us what they were?"

"Do you guys think we are the only ones who wonder?"

"I bet we aren't. I bet other kids who act like they know, don't really know"

"Girls, I think it is our responsibility to make sure no one else goes through what we went through!!"

.........................and so we broke into the school and hung the "rubber" from a hook in the hallway......for the good of preteen humanity.

hey there, you little American- shovel that manure

Another perk of living overseas was the field trips. Besides having to take the bomb guy with us, they were legendary. While my kids go to skatetown, I went to The Prado. Mine go on overnight trips to Dallas, I went on week long trips to the Pyrenees. For roughly $100 we spent a week in the Pyrenees mountains learning to ski. That was room, board, transportation, lessons, equipment- everything. All without parents. I was in the 6th grade.

Two things stand out in my head:

A. I did not shower for the entire week. I was never much of a shower-er anyway. I would go into my bathroom at home, run the bath, sit for about 20 minutes, sprinkle the towel with water so it would seem like a had dried off with it, and then I dressed .

B. I got drug up the mountain face first by a ski lift.

These were no ordinary ski lifts my friend. And I, no ordinary skier. And it goes a little something like this..........................

The Lodge was as the top of the ski slopes. You would ski down and have to take the lifts back up. The lifts were the type pictured:

The lift took you through a 90 degree angle up the hill that was insanely difficult to manuver. From time to time the passenger would fall off. This is a hazard that rarely happens on the traditional chair lift. The passenger rarely has to worry about falling off.

I, as one might imagine was not good at this contraption. Some kids were able to just grab the lift at any point on the hill, as opposed to going to the bottom and riding it up. So, as it was from time to time a fellow skier would fall off at the critical 90 degree turn but would be able to just grab the next passing disk on a pole and up they would go.

My story actually begins at the end of a long hard day of skiing the bunny slope. I was sunburned, windburned, and and many other types of burned....The big "fear" the adults put into us was to be sure and get to the top before the lifts stopped running for the day. 'Twas that time of day that the 90 degree decided to take its toll on me. SO, off I fell. I had 2 options and they were as follows:

A. Ski down to the bottom and risk catching the lifts closed, in which case I was to end up like one of those kids who has to sleep in her own urine to keep warn through the night or eat her own arm off, or

B. try to catch a disk on a pole in mid-stride and ride my way to freedom.

Not being much of a survivalist I chose the latter. So here I go.........

I watch a few glide past, I see one that looks like it may need a friend, like maybe it will take pity on me and be my savior.

I approach gingerly and when I grab, my ski pole wraps around it, the strap around my arm, I loose my balance and down I go....but the strap is still wrapped around it and so I am being drug, by one arm, face down up the hill.

I manage to wiggle my wrist loose from the strap and eventually drop like a case of everlasting gobstoppers, to the ground.

I gather my senses along with my things and decide that I shall walk sideways the entire way up the rest of the hill. Passers by would hold out there ski pole for me to grab and be pulled up......

but I had tried shortcuts and decided, I would take the long way home.

If we were send on the ski trip to broaden our horizons and teach up a new skill, then we were sent on the farm trip to teach us that we should thank our lucky stars each and every night that we are not farmers and that we call home, a country with child labor laws.

Here's how I imagine the conversation in the little Spanish farm house went (please read in some sort of accent, if not Spanish then at least Mexican)

Senior: Oh, my dear wife, times are so hard......how will we make enough money to buy the wine and olive oil for next month?

Senorita: I do not know, dear husband......Me amiga tells a story about a man who lives in the south, the Americans pay him money to allow their el ninos y la ninas to work on his farm. I told my dear la amiga she must be loco in la cabesa and have it backwards. Surely he pays el ninos. She says NO! The Americans pay the man money. The children come and do all of the work on the farm, the man only has to feed them.

Senior: It truly does sound as if this senior es loco, however I shall look into it..........

And so our parents paid this man and women actual money and we set off for a week to a Nazi work camp, or the preeteen version anyway.

We slept in bunk beds that were 3 beds high, we woke up at the crack of dawn to a loud speaker playing "Man Eater" by Hall and Oats, and we worked all day. We milked cows, gathered eggs, layed hay down in the muddy pens, and we shoveled manure, lots of shoveling manure.

At lunch time we stood at a window and received our chocolate spread on a piece of white bread and an apple. I don't remember dinner, I don't remember the bathrooms, I don't remember anyone who went with me. I remember the manure.

My mom says that when she picked me up I looked like I had been at war. She says she has never seen me look so tired, and dirty and just all around beat. She says I ate tones of chicken noodle soup and literally slept for two days.

The lessons learned are priceless. Its funny to me that I don't remember any laughing, I dont remember flirting with any boys, I don't remember posing for pictures. Somehow though, that doesn't take away from the feeling of pride I feel when I journey back to those memories. I got dragged up in hill in the snow and I was taught humility and that when one thing doesn't work, not matter how ridiculous, walk up the hill...........and I shoveled manure for a week and I learned that Americans parents are masochists.

home again, home again- jiggity jag

Living in our little corner of Espania had its ups and downs. The upside was everybody had kids- you had to in order to live in base housing, so that was great. My two best friends lived 20 feet on either side of me.

The downside was..........well, huh?

Oh yea, my mother and the drinking, and my dad and the drinking, and my mom and my dad and the drinking ...............and the fighting. Yep, that would be the downside. Big, huge, giant ass downside.

It was always the same routine:

drink drink drink

fight fight fight.

Here's the way I remember a typical night at home.........

nice family dinner, talking civilly around the dinner table, go outside and play in my hole, watch an episode of Greatest American Hero, pretend to take a bath, rearrange room.........bed time

good nights from parents, lights out........tick, tock.....tick, tock..... and about 10 minutes later......

"YOU *&%$(*^^$$%" slammmmm "YOUR THE %#$$^*%$$" SLAMM ETC.......

Lots of door slamming, lots of name calling, lots and lots of screaming.

I do find a morsel of comfort in the idea that they waited until we were in bed to do battle. However, I do wonder..............there is a stage in an infants life called "object permanence" where they begin to understand that just because they can no longer "see" the rattle, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. These two, apparently never reached this milestone in their development.

Why in sitcoms and in movies is it always so funny when the parents fight? In reality it is the single most disturbing thing a child can hear. I can't explain why? I didn't even really like my step dad that much. But to hear the two of them scream like that was gut wrenching.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there were nights I actually chose to have friends spend the night.

I would lie there after we turned off the lights and I would pray.
"Please not tonight, please not tonight, please not tonight" and just as if I were a spoiled brat asking for a second helping of pie- God would laugh in my face and the screaming would ensue

I would convince myself that my friend was asleep and she couldn't hear them. That was my coping strategy, otherwise I could not bear the humiliation.

I was always rearranging my room as a kid. Rearranging, and I moved rooms a lot. I would switch rooms with my brother for a month or two. These houses all had maids rooms and bathrooms. They were tiny little rooms, big enough for a twin bed and not much more. The bathrooms were a toilet and a sink. I suppose the personal hygiene of the maid was of little concern to the home builder. This was Europe after all. But, I loved the maid's room. I moved in there for awhile. Simplifying my life, downsizing.

If I wasn't moving from room to room I was making rooms inside my room. I always had an office and from time to time I would open a library. Always searching. Always trying to make my world a little bit different, or better.

It was while I was residing in the maid's quarters that my mom woke me in the middle of the night and said

"Crystal, get up. We are going to the States"

This is a wake up call I shall never forget.

My grandmother, her mother, was dying of cancer.

The Air Force offered what were called "hops". Flights for really cheap, like in case of emergency.

Great idea right. Super nice...... thoughtful.

The catch?

It was a cargo plane.

We were loaded on like cattle. We sat in hammock-like seat of the sides on the plane , while our luggage was in the middle. We were served box lunches and it was insanely cold. To this day when I receive a package from Fed Ex, my ears hurt for an hour and I crave pudding cups.

As a grown up with children I try and imagine having to take that flight. And usually, I can't. I cannot wrap my brain around having to take a 12 hour flight on a cargo plane with two kids, to visit my dying mother. My mother hated flying. Hated it.

I, on the other hand, loved flying but hated changing schools. Not so good for a military brat. I literally remember crying at the door of every new classroom until at least 5th grade.

While my grandmother was sick ,we had to stay in Louisiana. So, for about a month I had to go to school in Tallulah, I was in the 6th grade. As if this age were not awkward enough, I was a new girl coming to small town Louisiana from Spain, only to stay a month......basically they stuck me in a trailer, put up a sign and charged admission.

I got questions like "Do they have shampoo over there?" and "How do you shower?"

I asked questions like "So, you've really never left this town?" and "How is it you haven't killed yourself yet?"

While I was there I developed a serious crush on a boy I later found out was my 2nd cousin. It was the worst situation imaginable.

I longed for the drinking and the fighting, I missed my hole, I missed the sheep and their sheppard. I missed the castles, and I even missed the thieving Gypsies. I wanted to go home.

We were in my mother's home. This is where her family was, my family. This, I knew, could never be where I hung my hat. I felt suffocated in the small Mississippi delta town. Everyone was the same, a carbon copy of each other. As awful as things sometimes got, it was always better than this.

My grandmother passed away and we flew home. I don't recall if the drinking and the fighting got worse after that. For a while, I didn't mind though. This was my home. I didn't much care anymore about the flat Earth. For now, I didn't really want to sail off the edge in a grand farewell. I had seen the end of the Earth, and I didn't ever want to go back. Once I was home I slept like a baby. The shouting and name calling were as sweet as a lullaby to me.

I was home.

blown to bits

After the year in our Spanish apartment we moved into base housing. The base housing was not on the base however as it typically is. The story was told to me like this......

When the Americans came over to build a base the built the airstrip and housing first. The Spanish government then came along and said:


"Grasias, for building us the fabulous air strip. We really love it."

and the Americans said

"Well, what about us?"

and the Spanish said

"no habla English"

so the Americans went about 30 miles away and built their air base.





The other deal was that the Spanish would not allow the military to put a fence around the housing. So basically anyone and everyone was allowed to roam around the housing complex. This wasn't really a problem for most people, only the people who lived on the outskirts of the complex.

We were these people.

So, what did this mean for us? It meant that the local Gypsies would walk up to our patio in the middle of the day and simply walk away, not run mind you...walk, stroll even, away with our bicycles. There was nothing that could be done.

Despite the thieving Gypsies, it was a great place to grow up. The field next to our house went as far as the eye could see, and in the way distance you could see the skyline of Madrid. At some point a crew of bulldozers was working out in the field, and a neighborhood mom asked them to dig us two holes.

Two holes.


In those days that was all we needed.


Two holes.



One for the girls and one for the boys. They became our second homes. For middle schools kids who had no television and no telephone and soon enough, no bicycles, this was the most we could ask for. The girls dug couches and chairs out of the dirt on the sides and decorated ours with wildflowers from the field. Secrets and lies were told, plans were made and wars were fought in those holes. It was a great place......our hole.




Most people did not have cars either and there were no school buses. We had to walk to and from school everyday, just like our ancestors. Rain, shine, cold, hot, damp or dry. We were like little postmen. We walked on a path that winded it's way through the fields and eventually ended at our school.


Like most kids we yammered on about our teachers, we got a good feel for curse words, we made up stories about the creepy old house we passed everyday. But, unlike most kids we had to be sure not to spook the passing herd of sheep. On this count, I messed up once- in a very huge way.



On the way home from school one day, as we crested the last of many, many hills, there was the herd, along with their sheep dogs and their very own, real life shepherd. Perhaps we were laughing too loud, maybe on that day there was crying going on, or it could have been my new Avon perfume? The specifics aren't clear in my mind. I spooked them....me, it was defiantly me.


I looked at them, they looked at me.


and apparently someone gave a silent signal.........


they were off.

I ran.


They followed.


I ran faster


They followed more closely.


This went on until the shepherd managed to convince me to stop running. In my memory we ran that way for miles and miles, in reality it could have been 5 minutes.


The point is however- this was one possibility I dealt with on a daily basis.

.....the sheep and being blown to bits on a field trip.


The headlines read:

Hezbollah Restaurant Bombing April 12, 1984: "Restaurant Bombing in Madrid, Spain, A bomb explodes in a restaurant popular with American servicemen killing 18, all Spaniards, and injuring 82, including 15 Americans."


The restaurant was called The Rib House. It was a great old house turned into an eatery. The front lawn had long picnic tables and I remember always eating outside on these. But what I remember most vividly is the giant bowls of lemon water. Nowhere in America had I washed my hands in lemon water. I loved it.


My parents loved the Sangria, so we frequented.


We were not there this night however, we were in Germany.


Most of the Americans were not there at the time either. They were at home, in bed, asleep likely, deep REM sleep...


Even as a kid I found it odd that these terrorist would spend the time to find a place frequented by American, plan to leave a bomb in a briefcase in the bathroom, and not know that Americans ate way earlier than the Europeans. How did this little piece of information happen to get left out? Really? You didn't know that? That wasn't someones job in this operation?


Anyway that is why we brought along bomb experts on field trips. After we visited our 868th castle we would walk back to the bus. We would stand however many feet from the bus and our expert would lie on his back, check underneath, then get on and check. Once we were clear it was back to school.........


What I wonder is, what has that done to me. How would I be different if I hadn't watched that happen so frequently. We had an at home version as well. It was a check list my parents had to follow every time we started the car. Did that change me? Knowing that with every key turn or field trip, I could be blown into a thousand pieces....Would I be more meek, afraid to cross the street, terrified of what might be around the corner?


What did it do to my mother? Is that why the drinking began? Was the threat too great to handle sober. Did the beer help her send us off, to see yet another castle. I like to think that it was worry for us that drove her to drink. It is more comforting than boredom, or hatred for a man, or loneliness.......

a foggy olive oil coated memory

Mrs. Powers continued to enlightened us as to the wacky comings and goings of Paddington Bear. She continues to wear sweater vests with sequined pumpkins and removable Christmas trees, and my parents continued to fight.

Our first year in Spain we lived on the economy, which is just a strange way of saying that we did not live in base housing but in a Spanish apartment complex. We moved into an apartment complex and I remember the fights as humdrum, bickering really. Perhaps, my brain was too busy processing the exotic sights, sounds, and tastes of our new life.









Did they fight? Did they hate each other, yet? I suppose I'll never know. What I do remember is..... there were no closest, my parents bitched about how short the Spaniards were every time they hit their head on a kitchen cabinet, and everyone around us was pulling up to the dinner table as I was saying prayers and falling off to sleep. And, of course there was the damn olive oil.


"What is that smell" I would ask EVERY TIME we got on the elevator.

"That, darling is what these Spaniards call, olive oil. It's an oil that is made from olivies, I think its the red thing in the middle that gives it that unique smell"


In 1982 you would be hard pressed (truly, no pun intended) to find olive oil on your everyday kitchen shelf in America. The smell to this day is hard for me to take. Literally, the walls in the elevator would drip with the pale green ooze, my brothers and I would take old coke bottles to the lobby and run them up the walls so we could dress a salad.

Dreams were made and broken in the year we lived in that apartment. The day Mrs. Powers wore her most sparkling sweater, no vest today boys and girls, and told us to enjoy our Christmas break -well, maybe that was the official end of my innocence. In the 4th grade the seed of the Santa lie and subsequent Santa truth gets planted for a lot of kids.


In my class, the non- beleievers fell into 2 categories....

You have your self-confident out right deniers.

"I asked my mom, when I was 2 if Santa was real. She told me ...no. She said its not nice to tell lies to anyone and that I was old enough for the reality of Christmas."

This kid would ramble on about either:
A. the true meaning, blah, blah, blah ..................parents were- crazy religious zealot

B. commercialism and greed.... ............................parents were- stoned ex-hippy

or the slightly more likeable

"I saw my dad putting together my bicycle in his boxer shorts and no shirt, while my mom was drinking wine and stuffing stockings."

There was no self- confidence in this kids story. This kid told the story with regret and sorrow in is voice, you sort of felt his pain.

That year, my fourth grade year, in that olive oil soaked paradise- I became that second kid. For me though, it was beer for both and a desk for my room.

It was that night, in my red and white footie pajamas that my plan was hatched, because you see it was the fighting that woke me up. I wasn't so much sad as I was just like "Damn it!, they've done it, thats it. When will the parade of lies and disappointment end."

Santa was my lost hold on innocence and when he died it was like watching Beaver Cleaver shoot heroin...nothing was ever colorful again. I can't be sure but it seems like Paddington might have even moved out over that break. I seem to recall an end to the sweaters, the stories......

Santa wounded, dying, breathing his last breath strode passed Mrs. Powers house scooped up Paddington, who scooped up the sweaters, and flew out of sight..........

I blame the Spanish for Montezuma's revenge, the Inquisition, flan and killing Santa Claus.

Better People

For the first half of the year we lived in that apartment, our lives were pretty mundane. Every once in a while we would walk town to a local bar called Picasso's (no joke). My parents would drink and my brother and I would eat. The reason I remember this place in particular is because they had a hamburger served with a fried egg on top. It was the most exotic thing I, as a 10 year old, could possibly imagine ever existing on the entire planet.


Some nights, a band of gods honest gypsies would dance in the area between the buildings. Everyone would gather out on their patios and watch the show of ethnic stereotyping and then throw money down. I'm pretty sure someone tipped this little band off to the massive number of Americans that lived in the complex. Somehow, I just don't imagine the local community finding this as charming as we did.

Nights when the band of gypsies were not entertaining us, and more likely than not at a job waiting tables, we gathered 'round the radio. We had no closets, no phones and we had no TV. But, we did have CBS Radio Mystery Theater and Paul Harvey on Armed Forces Radio. Sometimes, when I think back I have to shake my head and adjust the faces in my mind. I was not Mary Ellen Walton, and my brother did not have a giant mole on his cheek. This was 1982. We were living in Spain, not Walton mountain. It's difficult for me to distinguish the two in my mind.


I remember the day as as clearly as a pint of vodka. My dad walked through the door of our apartment, wiped the olive oil off of his head and said,

"I have bought something for the entire family. It is going to change our lives and make us better people."




"What is it!, What is it!, Is it a new radio?"




"No stupid, look at the size of that box. " I told my brother.




"It;s a piano isn't it, we're going to take piano lessons"




"Settle down, Settle down kids" my dad said. "Your mother and I have been saving money for a full year, and recently she sold a kidney she wasn't using"

He pulled out his pocket knife, and began to cut his way through the gigantic box. My brother and I stared, with a hunger in our eyes.


It was some sort of electrical something, a giant, bland, blah something...


"What is it?" I asked


We circles the bland, blah, something for what felt like hours.

"This is called a video cassette recorder, the technical people like to call it a V-C-R."

"What does it do, record what we say?"


"Oh god dad, it's just a fancy new radio, isn't it?"


My dad set it up and explained that we would never have to set foot in a movie theater again. This was the future, movies in your house, whenever you wanted them.

That promise however, was a little long in coming. Movie ran you about $100 and the pirating of movies was in its infancy

Therefore, it was NOT a movie we put into the belly of the mammoth beast.........



Apparently, in anticipation of this financial windfall, my family back in the states made a tape and sent it over. So, for the first six months of our lives of the future, we watched 3 episodes of "The Greatest American Hero" over and over and over and over.

Do not take my humor in jest, this was indeed a fantastic invention. Here was the fabulous thing about it, you could plug in that remote control, stop it when a commercial came on and fast forward.

Fast forward through television?! The world of the future was indeed going to be a fast paced extravaganza. I had signed my name on the dotted line and climbed aboard that train.



I would later find out that the wood grain was not real, just there to make it elegant. I loved the idea of this magnificent invention being carved from wood. What more could the trees do for us than........this.

I would learn years later that my dad wrote a bad check for the dream machine. He would continue to write bad checks....so many in fact that they kicked him out of the air force.

When I was older I remember receiving a TV in my bed room for my birthday. A few weeks later that TV was taken out of my bedroom. Not for breaking any rules. or for making a bad grade. But, because the repo man said it had to be so.

I'm sure that this is where the fighting began. I know that when my mom married this guy, this is not what she signed up for. Living in a foreign country without her family or friends, and a man who writes bad checks to government agencies?!

Yeah, in the end maybe it wasn't so great......but for those first few months in that Spanish apartment, believe it or not I was walking on air. I never dreamed I could feel so free ee eee.

.......and that wood grain sure was elegant.