Whenever you write about Julie, I learn something new about you, helps me better understand. Here, I now know how punishing, to you, the event was. I can't bear it sometimes, how do you? Of course you do because you lived it. Odd that it seems unbearable to me, yet here you are still bearing it. Does it hurt as much? I can't imagine.
So for a little levity, I don't think I ever told you my bible story. Well there are two really. The more recent one is really my daughter's bible story, but it reflected mightily on me.
She was in third grade when one of her new teachers (we had recently moved to this rather small town) said something about the bible. My youngest raises her hand with a question.
"What is the bible?"
You can just imagine what that did to my social standing in my new, small, and quite Catholic, town.
The second story reflected on my mother, in her turn as outsider in a small town.
Teacher: What is the Number One selling book of all time?
(This is not a trick question. You know this one.)
My hand shot up in the air! I knew this one! Teacher called on me!
I confidently rattled off the title and author of a Jean Harlow book I'd seen on my mother's bedside table, which said it was the #1 bestselling book right there on its cover. No one in that room knew the answer. I can still see that teacher, the same teacher I wrote my first ever haiku for, get hopping mad. She actually hopped.
Harlots, infidels, heathens, pagans, sinners,
Oh, I love these stories! You knew the #1 bestselling book and the teacher was literally "hopping" mad!
And heretics! Iconoclasts!
Sounds like small towns were not your best fit. :)