MEMOIR
Fraidy CatAUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND 02 November 2009 |
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My very first teacher was Mrs. Brady. She was a tall and handsome woman with a severe haircut and coke-bottle glasses. She wore modest calf length skirts with comfortable cardigans and she taught numbers and letters in a furious cloud of chalk dust that was at odds with her restrained, no-nonsense nature.
I shared my classroom with a smorgasbord of misfits.
The puffy-faced boy who brought a black eye to school more often than he brought his lunch; the tiny boy called Johnny who had a hole in his heart as ‘big as a thumbtack’; a pinched-face blond girl whose pinafore had pleats as sharp as her cheekbones.
I was the girl who could never quite manage a smile even with an orchid pinned to her dress.
Mrs. Brady had a daughter. She was much older than us and when fully grown, she would find fame when she climbed Mt Everest without oxygen. She caused controversy with that claim, but I believe she did it. After all, she terrified me so much when I was five, I believe Lydia could do anything.
I don’t remember where we were or why we were there, but we were on a school outing. Lydia had come to help her mother herd the children along. When the day was done, we climbed aboard the school bus that would take us home. I sat next to Lydia. Lydia was about seventeen and she had taken a shine to my plump cheeks. As she squeezed them softly, she leaned in towards me to whisper something in my ear.
“I’m going to take you home and put you in a pot and eat you for my dinner.”
I believed her. I had no reason not to. My face must have crumpled because Lydia hurriedly told me she was only kidding. But it was too late. Lydia had sealed her fate as a sweet talking cannibal forevermore.
‘That woman wanted to eat me,” I would say whenever I saw her on the news after her Everest ascent. People thought I was nuts.
***
When I was even younger than that, I liked to listen to the radio. I thought that there were tiny little bands and miniature singers who lived inside the box. I imagined there was a revolving stage, like a Lazy Susan, inside the radio that would spin around and give each band a turn, before spinning them back to… well, I didn’t know where exactly, but that’s how I thought it worked. I was certain that if you peeled the back of the radio off, you would be able to see the musicians inside.
Music made me feel good. It made me dance. I thought nothing bad could ever come from music.
Until I heard Aunty Jack.
Aunty Jack was an obese, pig-tailed, mustachioed Australian transvestite who had a hit in the early seventies with a song that had lyrics that went something like this:
“I’m going to jump out of the speakers and I’m going to rip your bloody arms off.”
I would hide behind the couch and shout at my mother to turn the radio off. Turn the radio off. NOW.
***
My mother got terribly thin not long after I started school. When we would go out for dinner she would avoid the food and drink water by the gallon.
One day after school, my grandmother was waiting for me at the school gate. She had a roll of chocolates for me to sweeten the news that my mother had been taken to hospital. She was very ill.
“But it’s okay,” my grandmother reassured me. “The doctors have found she has a thing called Diabetes. So that’s not too bad.”
I burst into tears. My grandmother wondered why. After all, she had told me my mother would be alright. What my grandmother didn’t know was that I only heard the first syllable of the diagnosis.
Later, I would secretly be glad that my mother couldn’t eat sweet things, as this meant she wouldn’t be able to take such big bites of my cream donuts.
***
I found a yellowing newspaper article hidden at the top of a wardrobe. I was a precocious reader and so I read it. It was about two girls who had beaten one of their mothers to death with a stocking laced with bricks.
The murder had happened before I was born, but it had happened in a park that I had played in. Time made no difference in my head.
I was worried. I was worried for all mothers when I read this. Especially mine.
When my mother would leave me in the car and rush across the road to the butcher’s shop to get something for my dinner, I would start to cry when she disappeared from my sight. After all, if daughters could kill their mothers with bricks, butchers could easily chop my mother into bits.
I would howl in the car and crane my neck out the window until I saw her coming back across the street towards me. The sense of relief was stunning. I would then wipe my streaming nose quickly on my sleeve so that my mother wouldn’t know that I’d been weeping.
***
I won the lead role in an operetta when I was six. I was to play Becky Thatcher in ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ This would mean a pink gingham dress and ringlets. I couldn’t have been more excited.
Until the singing teacher told us that we would be singing for the orphans.
Right across the road from my school was a Gothic brick building with forbidding turrets and darkened windows. It was called Nazareth House and it was where the orphans lived. On the way to swimming one day, a relief teacher told us that if we were naughty, we would end up living in Nazareth House, where the children screamed all day and were tied to their beds with ropes at night.
We sang for the orphans the week before Christmas, but I kept my eyes closed as we walked through the disinfectant soaked corridors.
I looked down at my feet all the way through the performance. I shut my eyes again as we walked back out. Tom Sawyer gallantly held onto my hand and led me through my self-imposed darkness.
I still look the other way when I drive past it now, even though it’s long since been pulled down.
***
My grandparents’ house was surrounded by bush. It was dangerous for me to walk down there by myself, they said, because there was quicksand I could fall into.
Nor could I enter the big steel shed as there were black widow spiders in there, they said.
Likewise, I should avoid cracks on the pavement in case I broke my mother’s back; abandoned refrigerators in case I climbed in and the door sealed me in; hard candy, in case I choked.
Sometimes when I would sit outside in the afternoon on my swing, I thought I saw lions creeping out of the bush. I would run inside.
I would run inside because the outside world was full of dangers.
It wasn’t until I was grown up, that I learned there were no black widows in New Zealand. Nor was there any quicksand. To this day, I avoid hard candy.
***
I read a newspaper story about the billionaire Getty boy who was kidnapped and had his ear cut off.
I started to look sideways at strangers. I kept a very firm eye on the driver when I got on the bus after school, wondering whether he might spirit me away and kidnap me. I sat as close as I could to the exit doors and my hand hovered near the emergency stop button.
I worried that if I was kidnapped, my mother was not a billionaire and would not have enough money to pay the ransom.
***
I had a friend who lived high in the hills above the harbour. Her house stood all-alone except for a mighty pine tree that kept it in perpetual shadow. At nighttime, when we were ready for sleep, she would tell me about the crazy man who lived down the road in the cemetery. He was called the Goat-man because he had killed a goat and hollowed out its head and now used that as a mask. He stalked little children, but only on dark rainy nights.
As she talked, the pine tree branches scratched their way down the window and the rain beat against the glass. She told me it was the Goat-man. He was outside, and that screaming noise I could hear, was not possums, but the Goat-man letting us know he was waiting for us.
I would cover my head with the blankets, squeeze my eyes shut and jam my fingers in my ears. I did not want to hear him coming.
I would vow in the morning never to go back to that house on the hill.
But I did. And the Goat-man never got me.
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Related Posts |
Comment by Margot
2009-11-02 21:21:44
That was brilliant.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-02 21:39:08
Hey, Margot.
Thanks for reading and for your lovely comment.
Comment by Simon Smithson
2009-11-02 21:32:58
So, after the first story, wouldn’t that make you a… Brady cat?
Heh.
The Goatman?! What an asshole!
Did you really go to school with a guy named Tom Sawyer? That’s awesome. In your picture, you look a little like you’ll grow up to be the girl from Dexter.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-02 21:40:55
Hey Brew.
Ha ha. It would make me a Brady cat! Nice one!
No, his name wasn’t Tom Sawyer. He played Tom Sawyer in the operetta. I think his name may have been Phillip..
Comment by Phat B
2009-11-03 11:52:56
I was gonna say something about Dexter. A dead ringer for Deb.
Comment by Zara
2009-11-03 12:04:25
It’s the fringe….
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 14:06:37
I’ve never seen a single second of Dexter, but I do think you made a lovely child.
Of course, in America, to say such a thing is to potentially risk arrest. A newsman may step out of hiding any minute now and ask exactly how long I’ve been a pedophile.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:45:07
Thank you, Duke. I bet you were adorable too. I hope you haven’t been arrested for your kind comment.
Comment by Phat B
2009-11-03 21:47:39
Why don’t you have a seat over here…
Comment by Zoe Brock
2009-11-08 12:39:49
the goatman!!! was that ME telling you that story??
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-08 12:50:20
Actually no, not in this one! But I DO remember you telling me about the goatman as well.. I wonder if the Goatman still lives in the Lyttelton cemetery? Generations of Lyttelton kids have been scarred by the goatman….
Comment by Simone
2009-11-02 22:49:25
Loved reading this!
Kind reminded me of the time I watched one of the Nightmare on Elm Street films. I think I was about 8 or ( years old. I remember one girl was taking a bath and falling asleep in the water, when Freddy’s hand crept up through the water from the plug. Knives as fingers lingering above the water, ready to strike.
I didn’t bath for a week for fear of Freddy trying to slash me into little pieces. I still get creeped out by it. Ugh! *shivers*
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-02 23:01:55
Thanks, Simone! I was never one for horror movies, I preferred being scared silly by reality. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I did once have a dog called ‘Kruger’ though…
Comment by Robin Antalek
2009-11-03 04:10:11
Zara- I am in awe of your descriptions here - they are so beautiful. This in particular caught me:
“The puffy-faced boy who brought a black eye to school more often than he brought his lunch; the tiny boy called Johnny who had a hole in his heart as ‘big as a thumbtack’; a pinched-face blond girl whose pinafore had pleats as sharp as her cheekbones.”
Ah - lovely, lovely vignettes! More, please!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:21:49
Thank you Robin!
I still remember that little boy, he was always bruised and battered and it’s odd, but nobody did anything about it back then. These days of course it would be a totally different situation..
Comment by Gina Frangello
2009-11-03 17:17:20
Yes, we had a girl like that in my school too. She was beaten up by her father (or maybe it was her stepfather) all the time.
When we were 15 she was beaten to death by her downstairs neighbor with a baseball bat for trying to stand up for her younger brother, who had a cognitive disability, when the neighbor was making fun of him.
I always think if somehow some teacher at the school had gotten her out of her abusive house sooner, she would still be alive, even though it wasn’t her (step)father who killed her. Oh, btw, her other brother was murdered a few years later too, shot in his car, and his pregnant girlfriend was killed too when the bullet went through him into her. He was in a gang.
Fuck, I don’t know why I brought that story up! Sorry. But yes, a very vivid cast of characters, your grade school mates, and definitely of a certain time and age that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:47:58
Jesus! Some kids have such rotten lives.
I’m going to stop complaining about mine right now.
It is amazing, though now when I look at school photo’s and see this poor kid with his battered face, that we all just accepted it as normal. It’s fucking outrageous what some people have to live through.
Comment by David S. Wills
2009-11-03 04:44:47
You paint a fantastically vivid picture, Zara. I’m jealous as hell, but very entertained… Childhood is a weird time, but seem to capture the franticness of it all so well.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:24:32
Thanks David! I’m glad I can entertain you as your posts entertain me so much..!
Childhood is frantic isn’t it? Even though it seems to take so long to grow up, I guess there’s so much figuring out going on that it makes it a pretty weird time.
Comment by David S. Wills
2009-11-03 18:22:20
I forget until I read something like this just what it was like. I think my brain needs a lot of prompting to actually go back and properly recall how… yes… frantic it all was.
Comment by Jessica Anya Blau
2009-11-03 05:09:14
Great story. It is clear that after all these imagined fears you had no choice but to become a writer!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:25:57
Thanks Jessica! By the way, any chance of hearing some more about your father? I love your comment about him yelling ‘Fuck the neighbours!” and I’m so curious about the yellow notepad..
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-03 05:14:10
Ditto to everyone’s conmpliments above - I love how your describe and how you weave it all together. I get such a strong sense of you now and as a child. Oh what a darling picture - you had great bangs even back then!
I laughed out loud about the image of the lazy susan inside the radio because I thought the same thing about the TV. I remember thinking that Sonny and Cher lived inside our TV and trying to poke a hole into the screen with a pencil, so I could climb inside and sing and dance with them on the stage.
I have to remember now as a mom how literally kids take what it is said - the other day Dom got upset when I said that his little friend at school might have a crush on him. Later that night he said he didn’t want to go to school because Ava was going to crush him. Whoops!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:29:58
I love that you tried to poke a hole in the television! That is brilliant and so cute!
It’s true though about the literal interpretation of children,I really thought my mother was going to die simply because I heard Die-abetes. It’s so easy as adults to think that children think as we do, and forget how terrifying the world can be when it’s viewed so very literally.
Thanks for reading Steph.. I love your comments, you are so thoughtful!
Comment by Rich Ferguson
2009-11-03 05:22:22
Zara:
We took photos the same way. I could never quite manage a smile either. Though, I must admit that I never pinned orchids to my dress. For that matter, I never wore dresses. My whole Bond girl phase didn’t start until much later.
Comment by Irene Zion
2009-11-03 08:59:22
When I next visit LA, I’ll pin an orchid to your bathing suit, Rich.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:31:34
Oh Rich, I’m so glad I’m not alone. I don’t have a single photo of me smiling until I got to about ten years old. All my attempted smiles look like grimaces. I just couldn’t smile.
Now? I’m a grinning fool….
Comment by Amanda
2009-11-03 05:33:30
Oh my gosh, when I saw the movie adaptation (Heavenly Creatures, wasn’t it?) of the girls beating the mother to death with a sock filled with bricks, I was in my twenties and it *still* scared the crap out of me! I can only imagine how my distress would have amplified, had I read about the story when I was small!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:33:58
Hey Amanda,
Yes, it was ‘Heavenly Creatures’, and it was an awful story! I just could not conceive of why girls would do something so hideous to their mother. I think it was the image of the brick in the stocking that made it so vivid. If they’d put poison in a cupcake, maybe it would have been as shocking, but the violence of the brick… urgh.
Comment by Amanda
2009-11-03 14:19:52
I think the most upsetting part for me was being halfway through an Anne Perry novel a few years ago and thinking, ugh, Christ, this is AWFUL violent stuff! And then realising oh yes, that’s right, she smashed her mother’s head in with a sock full of stones! Fair enough…write what you know…write what you know…
Comment by Zara
2009-11-03 14:36:18
Oh that’s right! She’s a crime writer now isn’t she? I wonder if she’ll ever write her own story? THAT’s the one everybody would be really interested in. I just hated the way they both smiled those creepy smiles at the trial.. I guess they were young and silly, but still… bricks in stockings? You’d have to be a ’special’ kind of girl to pull that off…Urgh.
Comment by Gina Frangello
2009-11-03 17:18:37
I could not watch that scene in the film. I felt so sorry for that poor trusting mother I almost peed in my pants with anxiety. It was AWFUL!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:49:12
Wasn’t it??? It was the trust that did me in too.. horrible.
Comment by Amanda
2009-11-04 05:41:53
The film was amazingly clever and manipulative though, in that way that makes you all uncomfortable when you see the turn the story takes. I was charmed by the wackiness of the girls’ fantasy lives–the Mario Lanza infatuation, the way they invented imaginary scenes and romances and secret daydreams together. Sucked me right in, and then blam, they’re killing the mother?! Whaaaaaaat?! No! Oh no no no no no! Because right up to that moment, they had me on board, wanting to join their freaky little club of outcast girls who get along just fine without the rest of the world.
Comment by Ronlyn Domingue
2009-11-03 05:39:25
So vivid and viceral! The orphanage bit creeped me out more than the Goat-man. Go figure.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-03 05:46:55
I felt that way about the orphanage too - Goat-man, Schmoat-man.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:35:59
Oh, that orphange was the vilest place. Full of bad tempered nuns and endless linoleum floors. and there were so MANY orphans who lived there. I wonder what happened to orphanages..do they even exist anymore?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 14:02:53
I was threatened with being sent to an orphanage as a child. I wonder where parents now threaten to send their children when they misbehave? Surely there is such a place.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:51:19
Nope, I don’t think there is.
It was a truly terrifying prospect being threatened with the orphanage. Kids these days don’t know how lucky they are…
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-03 18:00:19
Seriously.
The worst we “threaten” is to take away their favorite books. (Dom’s being
“The Field Guide to Amercian Houses” and Prue’s being,”We Why Brush Our Teeth.”)
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 18:10:05
God, I remember my mother threatening to throw my books in the fire if I didn’t pick them. I didn’t believe her, so she counted to five, and I sat smug in the knowledge she’d never do it. But she did! She started to throw my books into the fire. I cleaned up my mess so fast and never put her to the test again.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 18:10:31
* pick them UP.. If I didn’t pick them up.
Comment by Jude
2009-11-04 20:05:29
Yeh, but I made sure I only threw books into the fire that weren’t favourites!
Anyway I think that ‘punishment’ hurt me more than it hurt you…books are such sacred things!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 20:31:39
Oh yes? Did the time you poured cold soup over my head hurt you more than it hurt me?? Hmmm???
Comment by Matt
2009-11-05 10:17:21
Cold soup?! Book burning?! What the hell?!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 10:21:56
Yes… be afraid. Be very afraid…. (Kidding, Mama! x)
Comment by Matt
2009-11-05 11:31:27
Note to self: when in NZ, DO NOT leave treasured books lying around if planning to be naughty. And be very wary if Jude tries to serve me gazpacho.
Comment by Irene Zion
2009-11-06 03:37:26
Zara, Duke, et. al,
Actually until very recently, anyone could abandon their kid up to the age of 18 in the state of Nebraska. They had to stop that when so many parents were coming from all over the country and even Canada and abandoning their kids. It became a tad expensive for the state.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-06 10:50:00
You are kidding? Who does that?
Comment by Matt
2009-11-03 08:20:02
First off, you look adorable in that photgraph! And Simon’s right: you DO kind of look like a very young Jennifer Carpenter!
I never quite managed a smile in my school photos, either, mostly because the damn photographers kept mocking my smile. “No, c’mon, give us a *real* smile. C’mon, kid.” To which I pretty much sat there thinking: Fuck you, assholes.
Growing up as I did with a terrifying bully of a stepfather, I didn’t every really develop any fears or phobias of the outside world, as I was too busy dealing with them inside the house. I was, however, very sensetive to depictions of violence in films and television as a child.
I never get tired of hearing about the Parker-Hulme murder. When I finally make it down to NZ, I’m taking a detour down to Christchurch just to visit that park.
And when I have kids, I’m so telling them about the Goatman. That’s just brilliant.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:40:42
Don’t tell them about the Goat-man! That would be very mean!
Yeah, the Parker-Hulme thing certainly shook poor old Christchurch. Funnily enough it was the beginning of a whole line of weird murders. It’s a strange place. The park was actually up in the hills above the city.. it was quite a trek, but you can still go there today to the very spot, and the tearooms where they took the mother for afternoon tea before murdering her are still there too.
Comment by Matt
2009-11-03 10:16:29
Is that tea shop still there? In the special features that come on the Heavenly Creatures DVD the filmmakers claim it was knocked down not long after they finished shooting there. I know they also filmed in the actual house where they Parker/Rieper family lived and kept boarders, and where the girls plotted out Honora’s murder. I’d like to pay that a visit, too, ghoulish little twerp that I am.
Now I’m gonna have to do some research on weird New Zealand murders. C’mon Google, don’t let me down!
(Oh, and my kids are SO getting the Goat-man! I’m going to do a goat voice when I tell them, too. “He snatches you from your bed, when it is dark and rainy! Nahahahahah!”)
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 10:24:27
The tea shop is definitely still there. It’s called the Sign of the Kiwi and it’s right at the top of the Port Hills. I drove past it last time I was in Christchurch.
Oh yeah, there are some weird NZ murders. It’s a dark little place sometimes..
Comment by Matt
2009-11-03 11:21:55
So my Google search is telling me…..
Comment by Richard Cox
2009-11-03 08:43:54
Aunty Jack made me think of the song “Saucy Jack” from This is Spinal Tap. So for the next five minutes I kept singing Aunty Jack in the tune of Saucy Jack.
So when are you going to climb Everest without oxygen?
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:41:24
HA!
Richard, I wouldn’t even get to base camp without oxygen!
Comment by Richard Cox
2009-11-03 14:59:26
Don’t you mean Rob? My name is Rob.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 15:04:52
I think Rob Lowe has left a comment for you, Zara.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:53:02
Oh Rob Lowe! I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you at first! Please accept my apologies.. You’re looking smashing these days, may I say.
Comment by Don Mitchell
2009-11-03 08:50:12
Those are all great, great stories, Zara. I favor the little people inside the radio, the diabetes bit, and the kidnapping one. I don’t like cute kid stories very much, but I love kids-making-wrong-inferences stories, and you’ve posted some winners here.
One time, when I was maybe in first grade, I helped my father clean the car battery terminal, which was all covered with white junk. I asked what it was, and he said “battery salts.” OK. Later, we were driving in the car and I was glad we’d cleaned it, because the radio talked about a guy who had been arrested for a salten battery.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:43:23
Thanks Don!
That is lovely about ‘a salten battery’ - I bet you breathed a sigh of relief and I bet your father cracked up!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 14:12:55
Yes, the people inside the radio reminded me of the lady in the furnace inEraserhead.
Comment by Irene Zion
2009-11-03 09:02:14
Zara,
It is really good to know that there is someone out there who was just as paranoid as I was as a child.
I want to see more pictures of you as a kid. You were a bonny little lass! (I was just talking to David….)
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 09:45:15
I was a bonny little lass! Quite the chunky little monkey.
I too, am glad other children were as paranoid as I as was.. It’s good to know that I keep such good company, Irene! x
Comment by jmblaine
2009-11-03 10:53:02
Do you recall that song by those Atlanta Lesbians
about what would you give for your kid fears?
All those things that went bump in the night
seem tame and quaint compared
to the subcutaneous terrors
and subtle angsts of the grown up world
no?
Audio for Aunty Jack please.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 11:05:11
Oh yes, it’s the grown up world that really gets under your skin.
I was never afraid of ghosts or ghouls or monsters under the bed. It was all the real things that made me worry so…
I’m hopeless at posting links.. but you can find Aunty Jack here:
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 14:11:31
This is one of my favorite things you’ve posted. I’m tempted to go through it, bit by bit, and compare your childhood fears to my own, but don’t have the time for such in-depth analysis.
However, have ever you seen American Graffiti? There’s a bit in it about somebody called the Goat Killer or something like that, and two teenagers think they hear him approach, with the sounds of baying goats in his wake.
Again, awesome post. I’m sure to return and repeat myself later.
Comment by Zara
2009-11-03 14:16:45
Duke, I cannot tell you how much joy your comment has given me. You know the reason why.
I would very much like to hear your comparisons. Please return when you can…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-03 14:59:31
I have returned, only to say how awesome you are.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:53:39
No, you are.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-03 18:01:35
Awww, you guys are adorbs.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 22:00:17
We are. It’s true.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 16:13:29
What does adorbs mean?
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-05 16:30:00
It’s an all too adorable way to say adorable.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 16:38:12
I know. I was just being — oh, what’s the word? Silly? But I never apply that word to myself, even when it does.
Thanks for the sympathy shown to my spider comment, or rather to my reaction when Zara bit my head off. Yes, I have no head now, just as the Bond Girl post had already taken care of my eyes.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 17:44:04
You’re welks silly man.
Just trying to keep the peace between my two favorite TNB adorbitrons. xo
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 17:55:47
What does welks mean?
And I didn’t bite Duke’s head off… it was more a reaction like ‘SHUT UP!!!” you know how teenage girls do it??? Mine just happens to be ‘FUCK OFF!!!”
I would never swear at Duke.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:10:13
You’re welks is short for your welcome. In keeping with adorbs.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:10:35
Oh, really.
I like the sound of “welks,” whatever it may mean.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:12:12
Oh!! It’s good that you keep the peace between Duke and I, Steph.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:15:34
Is this issue resolved? Because I’m sensing unresolvement.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:17:54
I’m just helping Duke out, by trying to cause tension. Then we can resolve it in the third act. It’s all part of a master plan.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:22:57
Zara is really good at the building-tension part, but there’s never any resolution in the third act. I mean, she’s never come in and helped me finish a screenplay at the last minute. We exist in a movie without an end, apparently, forever stuck in a second-act purgatory.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:26:21
Oh now, that’s not true. I’m always offering the olive branch of resolution.. but then you introduce a spider or two..
Is purgatory better than limbo?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:34:22
Isn’t it roughly the same? I wouldn’t know, seeing that I’m not Catholic. It’s heaven or hell for Southern Baptists; no substitutes.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:38:00
purgatory is religious but limbo is just laymen’s regular.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:41:13
Oh, so they’re the same thing?? That’s disappointing. I thought limbo sounded waaay better than purgatory.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:47:50
I think it is.
Purgatory has all this religiousy heaviness to it - like you fucked up
so you can’t go to heaven, but you can’t go to hell because you’re not totally bad.
Limbo could be just waiting for your plane to Hawaii to take off,
so you’re stuck at the bar. No big whoop. Or like the fact, that I can’t get
off this computer - I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Glad to be a part of yours and Duke’s forever limbo second act whathaveyou.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:50:31
Oh I glad you are too! You’re stuck in it now, you know!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-07 21:31:23
And here we all are.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-08 16:19:19
actually, now it’s just me.
Comment by Gina Frangello
2009-11-03 17:20:40
I’m with Duke. This was one of the most enjoyable TNB posts I’ve read in a long time, despite the maimed kids you went to school with . . .
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 17:56:11
Thanks, Gina!
I’m glad you enjoyed it despite the walking wounded… I’m still reeling from your tale of your classmate…
Comment by sheree
2009-11-03 21:45:04
Excellent writing!
I do not recall being frightened of anything as a child and that frightened the hell out of my elders. I would climb out the window before I was five and walk to my grandparents house in the middle of the night until my father finally nailed the windows shut in my bedroom.
It wasn’t until I was around 15 or 16 that I learned to have fear and respect it. I had my throat kicked in by a boy who came out of nowhere and threw me to the ground, kicking me in the wind pipe. Thats the day I learned to have fear of the world around me. I got away from him but after that day I was never the same.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 21:59:29
Jesus! Kicked in the windpipe? Could there be a worse place to be kicked??
I’m not surprised you weren’t the same after that - random, sudden violence is terrifying.
I love that you share these snippets of your life with us, I am intrigued by your upbringing and would love to know more…
Comment by sheree
2009-11-04 10:15:31
It’s the time of The Long Talkers. Cold weather months when stories are told. All the long talkers in my lines are dead now but they left their stories with me for safe keeping. I will be posting something about them soon on my blog. You’re welcome to read them when I do. Confessions of a temporal lobe at blog spot dot com. I’m not a writer by all means so don’t expect anything fancy.
And as for the kick to the wind pipe his foot caught me more on the side of the wind pipe in the throat muscles, that’s the only thing that saved me. He got his a year later across the street from a biker bar that I worked in slinging free beer and buying music for. He fucked with the wrong bikers chick and was thrown down to the ground from over a 6′5 bikers head. He landed on his head and I heard his skull crack. Wrong as it is I laughted like a fool. He’s in a wheel chair for life now. He won’t be kicking anyone ever again. Karma may not always be swift but she gets the job done with panache.
Comment by Zara
2009-11-04 10:38:10
Jinkers.
Sheree, thanks for the blog address, I will be heading over there shortly… XX
Comment by sheree
2009-11-05 08:35:34
I made a mistake I was 17 when the boy attacked me. Heh, getting older with a fast paced youth makes for blurry memories….
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 09:54:30
My throat hurts just thinking about it. Ugh, you poor thing - it’s horrible.
Comment by Marni Grossman
2009-11-03 22:31:46
Zara, I loved this. It was funny and touching. You were so imaginative. I never had those sorts of fears when I was small. Because I never had much of an imagination. Even when I played pretend, I pretended to be people who already existed. Kelly from “Saved by the Bell” for instance. But you! You were- and are- fantastic.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-03 22:37:21
Oh Marni, thanks for that. I can’t tell you how much I adore your writing, and you. Who needs imagination when you have such innate grace and ability like you do? x
Comment by sheree
2009-11-04 10:26:25
For a laugh at a snippit of my life read my comment on Mr Blooms post.
Comment by kristen
2009-11-04 12:34:24
Ah, childhood. Way to capture so well that magical, wholly believing time in our lives, back when the strangest little things held the most profound significance.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 15:30:39
It’s funny how memories like this are a lot stronger than some of the really good ones.. Hmm. Our brains are weird.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-04 22:05:24
A few of my childhood fears:
I had an uncle who used to come to my house every workday morning to pick up my dad, and whenever he saw me, he’d say, “I’m going to cut off your nose, boy.” I hid most mornings. I was convinced he really was going to cut off my nose.
Any calamity I saw on television could instantly be transferred to my family. One Christmas I saw a re-enactment of King Herod’s slaughter of the newborns, and I burst into tears because I had a baby brother whom I imagined as one of Herod’s victims.
If my parents were late picking me up, they’d been killed in an accident. If I heard a fire alarm while at school, it was my house that was burning. At church I’d been told that Gabriel would blow his horn at the start of the apocalypse, and every time I heard a sound that sounded remotely like a horn, I’d think, “Well, that’s it; the world is ending.”
I imagined the faces of criminals whose pictures had appeared in the newspaper staring at me in the folds of nighttime curtains. Werewolves especially scared me. At three, I had to be carried out of a movie theater during a scene in fucking comedy involving a man in a werewolf mask. I was also frightened by the face of the man in jail on the Monopoly board, because to me he resembled the disgruntled worker who set fire to a barn full of calves on my grandparents’ farm — something I didn’t witness but heard about through my aunts and uncles, who described the cries of the calves as they were being burned alive.
I’m still pretty fucked up by the last one.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 22:37:13
Oh god, that last one is awful.
When I was little, I was staying with my grandparents who lived kind of in the country. One night, some people broke into the neighbour’s house, which was across a paddock and they shot his dogs. I woke up at the noise of it. The neighbour was out at the time so he was lucky. Not so, the poor dogs. I still feel creepy when I think about that.
Not nearly as horrific as your tale though…I’m so sorry you had to hear about that. It would have given me nightmares.
Your fears seem remarkably similar to mine, do all children share such a literal interpretation of the world do you think?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-04 22:44:06
It’s pretty awful to have woken to the sound of dogs being shot. That would’ve fucked me up for sure.
I imagine most kids do see the world in the same literal terms, yes. Don’t you?
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 22:47:30
I don’t know. I assumed everybody thought the same way that I did, but having canvassed friends about their own childhood fears, it seems not.
Some kids are seem to be born fearless. Others are filled with all sorts of weird fear. I think I was the latter. Everything seemed potentially dangerous to me…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-04 22:58:32
I don’t think everything seemed potentially dangerous to me, but I was an anxious child. I come from a chronically histrionic family of overreactors, so I was destined to follow, genetically and environmentally.
But don’t you suspect that the fearless lack imagination and/or empathy? I do.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 23:05:52
That’s interesting. I was an anxious child and am still an anxious adult, yet I come from a line of stoics.
Maybe I’m a throwback.
See, I always thought I lacked imagination which is why I took things so literally. I envied the kids who could dream up monsters under the bed because they seemed much easier to deal with than the fears of people eating me or kidnapping me.
I think maybe you are right with your assessment though - the adults that I have met who have (seemingly) have no fears at all do seem to be less empathetic. But maybe that’s because they haven’t had to deal with situations where they feel out of control and terrified and therefore have no patience for it in others?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-04 23:25:37
Well, imagination doesn’t have to be totally original, you know. To “borrow” a face from a newspaper and transfer it to one’s bedroom — don’t you think there’s imagination at work? The literal-minded would keep the face in the paper, where it belongs.
In fact, I’m much more interested in those whose imaginations work “realistically” than fantastically, which explains my taste for gritty literature, for instance, and my dislike of science fiction.
I’d tend to think the fearless lack empathy because they’re emotionally detached in general. I once read an article about why some people are emotionally intense and others aren’t. The former, on seeing a photo of a car wreck, project themselves into it, thinking, “That could be me who was hurt or killed.” The latter, seeing the same photo, will locate “objective” details, like “That dead woman isn’t wearing any socks.” It’s a self-protective tactic, which is understandable, but it has an unfortunate numbing effect.
I have, or have had, friends of this kind, and I’ve found them hard to take. But I’m sure they find or found me equally hard to take.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-04 23:34:35
Yes, that’s true. It does take imagination to see faces in the curtains. I suppose it’s just the other end of the scale as seeing shapes in the clouds.
That’s interesting about the car wreck projections. I would be more likely to think “that could be a loved one” rather than myself. I tend to worry more about others than myself.
I have to say though, I did laugh at you thinking the world was going to end whenever you heard a horn sound..
I always felt disaster was just around the corner too.
I remember being terrified that an ice age was going to descend on earth when I was away from home one weekend. I had to make plans in my head on how I was going to find my way home. God knows where that one came from. I blame television.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-04 23:59:26
Yes, television is always ideal for blame. And empathy is the meat and marrow of the acting profession, so I suspect you have acting talent, though you’d likely laugh at such an idea.
Writers, of course, also tend to be an empathetic lot. Egomaniacal as well. So, too, with actors. But egotism and empathy aren’t necessarily at odds, as many (the unimaginative!) would automatically assume.
Oh, and funny that you hit on the “That could be a loved one” clause. I was going to add that the projection of an emotionally intense person isn’t limited to him- or herself alone. It’s the personal connection that’s key, I think, and that can obviously include a loved one.
A big box is headed your way, incidentally. There was something so satisfying about putting it in the mail. And I’m currently eating fantastic chocolate chip cookies sent to me by Debbie Gaugler.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:03:14
I read your comment as ‘A boom box is heading your way.’
I thought, ‘Why is Duke sending me a boom box?” took me a while to work it out. I may be emotionally intense, but I’m also just a little bit dim, it would seem.
I do hope you included a delicious cookie in the box?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:13:47
I hadn’t opened Debbie’s package before I mailed yours. But I don’t think the cookie would have tasted so good by the time it arrived in NZ. However, I did manage to include a deadly spider.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:16:44
Fuck off!!!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:18:35
Oh, man.
Just kidding.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:21:45
You know that I’ll be seeing spiders in the box!!!
And that is definitely the worst thing ever said to me… You’re number one again.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:26:21
Very appropriate, given that this post is about fear.
But I can promise you that there are no spiders in the box. I packed it and sealed it with tape.
Wait. I think there’s a fire down the street. Fire trucks pulling up.
Must run and check.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:28:15
I take it back, you are 100. You did it again. You are truly awesome. Really.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:30:03
Oh and the tape is no guarantee.. I taped Greg and Steph’s gift up as tight as could be and that spider STILL managed to creep on inside.
Oh and do be careful with the fire. Don’t run inside a burning building.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:33:34
It wasn’t a fire. It’s paramedics. I hope it isn’t fatal.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:36:54
I hope not too.
I’m glad you didn’t run into a burning building. I was worried.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-05 07:24:56
The thing is with our FND package, I did see some kind of hole in the caffeinated eye roller box- I blame Nutrisse. And the spider had beautifully non-puffy eyes, that’s another giveaway.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 09:52:59
So, all eight eyes were non- puffy? It MUST have been in the Nutrisse, right?
Oh and the My Little Pony lollies look fab. I have found you the most awesome chocolate bar, by the way. I’m putting together a special Christmas FND for you.
Did you like the peanut slabs? They are my favourites.
And don’t you think Duke is mean for teasing about the spider??!!!
Comment by stephanie stjohn olear
2009-11-05 10:08:28
Yes, all eight eyes and all eight legs were svelte and sexy, that is before we killed her.
She was quite angry and hungry, having traveled all that way with no airline refreshments Wait, now I feel bad. We would have put her outside, but then we were afraid that maybe we would have caused some kind New Zealand/NY State spider imbalance and all our crops would be ruined next year.
Yes, it was mean, but it’s clear that he feels badly about it in the comment.
Thing is, we were so not traumatized by the spider, we thought it was hilarious. I feel more badly for you for feeling bad!
Comment by stephanie stjohn olear
2009-11-05 10:10:36
I meant…. that Duke feels badly about it in his next comment. can’t type..)
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 10:17:45
I feel bad for swearing at Duke now.
AND I feel bad for the spider I sent you. I am quite phobic about spiders, but I cannot bring myself to actually kill them. When I find a spider in my house, I trap it and take it outside and then put it on the road. I leave it there and hope it will get run over by a car. In my mind I am leaving the spider to its fate while at the same time absolving myself from any responsibility. I am such a dick.
Actually, I HAVE felt sorry for spiders before.. when the Australian bush fires were raging earlier this year, there were reports of huge bush spiders coming into people’s houses and collapsing due to the heat. I did feel sorry for them. But only for awhile…
I think I would like spiders better if they had a face.
Comment by Matt
2009-11-05 10:25:32
Don’t worry Zara, I’ll send you some cookies if Duke won’t! And I’ll make them myself!
And there will be no insects of any kind in the package!
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-05 10:35:11
I’ll send cookies too! To all of you! But first Matt, I should go read your piece.
Is there some kind of cookie TNB club that Greg and I don’t know about? I kind of love making cookies - it’s like my own passive aggressive way of being able to eat them because I’m making them for others.
And oh no about the bush spiders collapsing. that’s sad. don’t spiders have faces?
There was once a spider who bit me while I was just wearing a nightshirt.
I ripped my nightshirt off in seconds flat, doing a screaming dance and the spider came crawling out. I had quite a bite.
Ever since, I’m always afraid in class I’m going to rip my clothes off and run screaming because I think a spider has bitten me. How’s that for anxiety?
Comment by Zara
2009-11-05 10:35:54
Perhaps you could make some spider cookies.
Comment by Zara
2009-11-05 10:39:38
Oops.. my comment went troppo.
I Know! It IS sad about the dehydrated spiders…
I guess they do have faces, but they are too tiny to see. If I could see them smile, I would feel better about them.
And Steph, I’m with you on the anxiety - I have fainted twice because of spiders. Once, when a big hairy arse of a spider leapt onto my shoulder without warning, and again when I found another spider crawling on my stomach. eeeeuuuuuuuw. Little creeps.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 10:44:13
Oh and Steph… Do you pronounce your last name as ‘Saint John’ or ‘Sinjin’?
Here, in NZ - St John is sometimes pronounced as ‘Sinjin.’
Like Cholmondeley is pronounced ‘Chumley.’
Comment by stephanie stjohn olear
2009-11-05 11:07:22
It’s Saint John but I’ve had profs call me Sinjin - I love that - so exotic.
Like Chumley!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 11:10:38
Okay! Good - I see you as Sinjin.
And isn’t Chumley great? So weird. Oh and the other one we do, is pronounce ‘beauchamp’ as ‘beecham.’
Comment by Matt
2009-11-05 11:29:25
Funny about the spiders…..about a week ago, while I was wrestling with one of the earlier drafts of my newest TNB post, a teeny little garden spider dropped down on a web right in front of my face, then settled down on the top of they keyboard. He just chilled there for a while without moving, watching me type. Since I didn’t want him to get all smooshed, I took him outside and put him in the little potted tree out on my balcony. I think he’s still there; when I was watering it the other day I noticed a bit of web in the branches.
Also, I once found a tarantula in the banana display at the supermarket.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 16:10:49
And I saw a black widow go marching down an aisle, apparently having just escaped from the fruit department.
I think spiders are very common stowaways, actually.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 16:12:07
Oh, and wasn’t Katherine Mansfield’s real last name Beauchamp? I think it was.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 17:53:06
I think it was too. Funny you should bring that up..
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:06:23
Funny why? You mean, funny as in coincidental?
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:08:21
Yeah coincidental. I’ll explain later.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:27:51
Yes? I’m waiting.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:30:26
Oh sorry! I didn’t realise you were here waiting. I should have been more explicit.. I shall call you later to explain.. !
Comment by Irene Zion
2009-11-06 03:44:21
OMG, Duke!
That’s the Silence of the Lambs stuff. Horror movie stuff!
Now I’m scared!
Your uncle was a horrible man!
Comment by sheree
2009-11-05 00:08:11
“The literal-minded would keep the face in the paper, where it belongs”.
I was always and still am a literal minded person. I can create things with my imagination but that bores me senseless. On the other hand the literal part of me is never bored. I see and hear everything and it explodes in my mind. Like Mr Haney being a mustard seed on a black velvet cloth and you being the sun on a cool day.
In fifth grade I was told to write a story using my imagination. I wrote about a dog whose mouth was an elevator that took demon fleas down to his bowels of hell. The teacher gave me a D+ for my efforts. I remember my mother being really pissed at the teacher over it. My mom told me that my story was fantastic no matter what the dumbass teacher said. It was the first really nice thing I remember my mom telling me about myself. I can’t fault her much though I was a difficult child to contend with. My children were born literal minded as well. They don’t seem to mind it one bit.
I wonder what makes some children literal while others have their heads in the clouds?
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:16:15
Oh Sheree! Do you still have the dog story??? That’s an A+ right there. Your mother was right - that teacher was a dumb ass.
I love that you see Duke as a mustard seed on velvet and me as the sun on a cloudy day. Such great imagery from a literal minded person!
I think of you as a warm wind through a canyon. Or a cool river at the end of a hot day.
You bring such good things to me and TNB - you’re a treasure.
Comment by sheree
2009-11-05 09:28:54
You dear lady are the sun in a cool blue flawless sky. Nothing cloudy about you in my minds eye.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 09:50:10
Bless you xx
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:16:49
Temperament, I guess. We’re all trying to work out are various theories here.
I think your fifth-grade paper sounds very imaginative. Your mom was right, and your teacher was an ass. And I still like hearing myself characterized as a mustard seed on a black velvet cloth, thank you kindly.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:17:54
Ha! Notice the overlap, Z!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:22:40
I did! It was awesome. Almost exactly thought for thought..
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:24:14
Awesome, have you met awesome? You should. You’re both so awesome.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 00:26:08
You talkin’ to me?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 00:26:55
Awesome quote.
Comment by sheree
2009-11-05 08:26:48
Awesome imagination can be found here:
The Far Queue blog spot dot com
The Dread Letter Office blog spot dot com
Both By: Pisces Iscariot of Colchester UK
Happy reading!
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 09:49:44
Cheers, Sheree!
Comment by Ducky
2009-11-05 17:43:49
HA! Great post. I love the way you write.
I told my niece once I was going to eat her nose off and she tried to scratch my eyes out. Never jokes with kids about cannibalism. It always backfires.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 17:52:16
Thanks Ducky! Noooo you should never ever joke about cannibalism with children. Sometimes not even with adults….
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:07:58
Is Ducky my uncle? Because my uncle threatened violence on my nose, as I reported earlier.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:11:39
My uncle used do that “got your nose” thing with his thumb - does that count?
Plus he was always drunk.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:13:55
Oh I love ‘Got your nose.”
And the one where you ‘pull’ your thumb off. I’m good at magic tricks.
And I’m good at turning money into pixie boots… Kids LOVE that.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:26:59
No, my uncle would threaten to cut off my nose, and he said what he did out of meanness, not drunkenness. Alcoholism doesn’t run in my family, thank God.
Meantime, I’ve witnessed Zara’s transformation of money into pixie boots. But the way she phrased it a second ago, it sounded like her pixie boots brought top dollar. If only that were true, I’d be making pixie boots like crazy. But, then, so would everyone else, thus destroying the pixie-boot market.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:31:21
I reckon a pixie boot dollar could sell for two bucks easily.
Comment by stephanie st.john olear
2009-11-05 18:35:28
I’m sorry about your mean uncle.
I’d take drunk over mean. Unless it’s mean drunk.
What’s a pixie boot?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:35:31
That’s a great profit margin. Let the factory begin!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-05 18:36:12
Lots of explanations needed around here, huh?
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-05 18:39:40
It’s a regular DIY board!
Steph, It’s a little origami trick where you fold a dollar note into the shape of a pixie boot. It’s too cute for words. In your next FND box I will fold one for you so you can see it. I have some US dollars left over from my trip which is handy because I can’t do it with NZ money because it’s made from plastic and doesn’t fold properly.
I got very excited in LA because I could make little boots again after years of not being able to do it because of NZ and Australian money being so weird and dumb.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-06 03:19:46
Sounds like a good idea for an episode of FND.
We run out of money because of all of our frivolous shopping antics,
so we hatch this scheme to make money by making your pixie boots.
But maybe we use monopoly money instead.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-06 09:39:49
Brilliant! It’s going to be a ratings winner!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-07 21:30:26
Did you see that Steph apparently has another idea for a sitcom? This one would be about overthinkers.
We’re really going to dominate the airwaves, I tell you.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-07 21:42:44
Great. I’ll put on my publicist hat and make us all rich and famous. Actually you can keep the fame, I’ll keep the money.
Comment by Stephanie St. John Olear
2009-11-08 04:09:35
Overthinkers Think The Darndest Things!
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-08 10:04:17
That’s the title, Zara. Grab your hat.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-08 10:08:18
Where are we going? Will I need a suitcase too?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-11-08 10:12:56
Your publicist’s hat. There’s a new show to promote.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-08 10:21:43
oh of course.. Fuck I’m slow.
Comment by Debbie
2009-11-06 07:24:28
Great post Zara!!! I especially liked your descriptions of the orphanage.
Fears are a funny thing, aren’t they? I was pretty fearless as a child. I would do pretty much anything…mosty because people thought I couldn’t. I also wasn’t allowed to watch t.v. when I was a kid unless it was educational or for school. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I started to fear the world around me.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-11-06 09:41:43
Thank you, Debbie. I’m glad you were fearless as a child, it’s a much better way to spend your childhood I think!
x