I want to jump ahead a bit… Well, way ahead to my early thirty’s or mid I guess… I had gotten my little brother and me a job at a company were they gave us each a company truck and some Porter tools and a route. The job consisted of driving around on the route and cleaning up under the dock doors of companies and walking a long the grass and picking up trash with a pick stick( that was nothing more than a revised version of the stick with a nail in the end of it )and putting the trash in a little bucket that you carried. There was a bit more to it than that but that was basically it. Me and my brother had swapped a few addresses on our routes and on this particular day I was at one of his addresses. I was walking a long under the docks picking up dead pigeon’s and what not in front of a rice and bean factory. When something above me caught my attention. When I looked up, illuminated by the florescent light behind him stood a bronze GOD! His hair was dark, cut neat and clean and his eyes where light golden brown. I saw a sparkle of gold in both ears…. His shirt fit tight across his stomach and I could see three SETS of different muscles! He was smiling and his teeth were even and white…. He jumped down off the dock and we stood together face to neck…. Now I grew up fat. I remember only a few times boys asking me out on a date the whole time I was going to school… My first husband had been a looser and I hadn’t had that much experience in the “art” of looooove or picking them since….. He reached down and picked up a heavy piece of broke pallet and said that a woman as pretty as I was shouldn’t be out here picking up trash…. I replied with my best smile… He then went on to introduce his self sticking his hand out to take mine…… Now I was reading a blog the other day about first impressions… How you never really get a second chance to make a first one… I find this to be true……. My hand came out and then the next thing that happened I had NO control over…. My mouth came open and some awful discussing giggle came out! I tried to recover from this but when I sucked in air to take a deep breath for the impending save a snort sound happened! Just like a PIG! I felt heat moving up my neck and I saw the smile leave his face and I knew I had blown the moment. “THE FIRST IMPRESSION”!

For some one who doesn’t believe in Hell I sure tell my husband to go there a lot. A long with half the neighbor hood I live in… The man across the street from me shoots off a gun that sounds like a canon. I think its some kind of musket loader. I live 12 miles from town and it’s ok to shoot a fire arm…. My neighbors are not of rock throwing distance. And if they were I think I would have done chunked a few. I am ashamed to say but growing up with 4 brothers made me a damn good shot with a rock. Which is leading me up to the next story of the LaToS. (Life and Times of Sherrena)…..

 

We were in Louisiana visiting my husband’s brother that is a shrimp boat captain. They have seasons for this so on his “off” season he had started hunting neutra rats. Now if you haven’t ever seen one just imagine a rat the size of a medium size dog swimming around in the swamp water…. I have no idea what the fur is used for because they are the color of a rat too! Well he went on and on telling us of how tricky they were and how hard they were to trap…. Day after day for three days I heard of how it was done before I got to see it done… I shook my head as I watched them falling in the water and nearly drowning trying to get the rats with out them biting them…. It was pathetic really… Then I saw my brother in law fall down on his trap and skin his knee… This made me laugh out loud and then all eyes were on me… I was the only one laughing…. My laughter faded off into a chuckle and then it stopped…. My brother in law looked at me like he could cut me into small pieces and feed me to his rats..instead he said if I could do better then go for it…. I stood there a moment grasping the situation…. He had called me out! And just like in the Clint Eastwood movie “The good, the bad and the ugly” (in my head) the music began to play…. My husband said nothing in my defense. I looked at my feet and picked up a rock about the size of my fist…. I held it for a moment…. My brother in law later said that he thought I was throwing it for his head…I hadn’t… I had thrown it past him and hit a neutra rat right in the head with it. He called it a lucky shot so I did it again…. Then I lost the stomach for it….both of them had not survived… I’m not big on killing things for no reason… I need to eat it or I just can’t kill it…. And yes that goes for BUGS! I don’t eat bugs so I don’t kill them! Really it’s because of the pop they seem to make under your shoe…. So long story short…. My husband on the way home said I had embarrassed him…. He said he had never known a woman to throw a rock like that and next time keep it to myself….I’m still puzzled over his reaction…. It could have been because they had joked with him to take me hunting… that he could save on ammunition…. “Ha Ha!.. Just git yur wife ta chunk a rock!” .

This next day started when I was 14. I remember it was a Saturday because everyone was home…. I can’t remember where all of us were in the house but I remember how my Dad yelling for all of us brought us all together pretty quickly. He had been in the garage. I could see how red his face was before I got to him…. He was looking at his new medal garage door…. The week end before he had installed and painted his new door that led out into our back yard from the garage…I saw right off what had made my father so mad. There in the middle of his new door were two small holes side by side about the size of a pencil…His finger shot out and pointed to the holes and he said….. “Who did this!?”……We all stood there looking at the holes…. No one said a word….. My brothers shifted from one foot to another and my step sisters hung their head in shame because they had never experienced the wrath of my father….. His finger pointed again and demanded to know who had committed such a horrific crime! Again no one said a word. That’s when I realized that who ever had drilled those holes was NOT going to admit it! I think my father realized that fact at the same time. He then made us all line up… I thought the wiping of a life time was coming for all of us…. He waved my oldest brother up and with out letting him bend he made him try to look threw the holes…. He couldn’t… they matched up to his chin…. One by one we stepped up…..one by one we stepped back, with out a match… then it came to be my little brothers turn….. I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I saw his eyes match up with those holes but I remember what happened. How we had all jumped back quick to miss my dad’s hand as it was swinging around…. How it had caught my brother right square in the back of the head…. How he had TRIED to out run my dad! I think there’s a time in every ones life that they TRY to run from a parent. You see the trouble of a life time coming for you and in one split second, you make the bad decision to run….. Mostly you’re a very small child when this happens. My brother was 11. As we watched my dad running around the back yard trying to catch my brother so he could beat the hell out of him I wondered how many neighbors were watching…. I wondered if any one else’s brother would have drilled eye holes out there dad’s new garage door so he could see out in the back yard with out opening the door…. I wondered a lot of things but was just mostly grateful that I hadn’t been the one to do such a stupid thing this time…… My Dad eventually caught him…. It was much worse than it would have been…. I saw my dad’s belt come off like he was pulling a bull whip out….Ah the price you pay for being a dumb ass….. My first driving experience happened because my little brother was getting his ass whipped. A man had called my dad one day and told him to come up the street…. So he and I drove up there… The man had been a house builder and he had caught my little brother and his friend stomping holes in the sheet rock. My brother stood there covered in white dust and looking at his feet…. I drove the car back while my dad’s belt was swinging on my brother all the way home…. They walked on the sidewalk while my dad had him by the arm and was leaning down talking to him in between whips…. By the time we got home and my older brother pulled the car into the driveway for me my little brother could barely speak… my hands were shaking because I had never driven a car before…. Lucky it had been just a strait shot down the street! Later my little brother told us my dad had been asking him if he was ever going to do that again while he was whipping him… He said he replied yes a few times on accident and my dad had whipped him even harder…. My dad was not a big fan on corporal punishment… But if you caused it…. You got it…. And that was the way of the woe. My poor dad had to go through 4 sons and a daughter that couldn’t act right…. I look back on it and I am surprised that he didn‘t break down! My older brothers while being told to wait in the car at K- Mart decided to play with matches and burned my father’s car to the ground… Instead of the lady on the loud speaker announcing the blue light special she was telling the owner of the red car out front, which happened to be my mom and me, that her car was on fire in the parking lot. They had caught my dad’s news paper on fire and a huge fire was stoked….They had made it out of the car but only after witnesses said they had tried to pull one another BACK into the flames in their haste to escape through the window first. The reformatory was threatened on a daily basis but this didn’t detour true juvenal delinquents like my brothers had been…. They had even casually walked by and stolen the principle of my elementary school’s car as it sat running in the lot to warm up… And you thought my Dad was being mean at the beginning of the story didn’t you…. (smiling)… He barely survived us!….

Growing up with brothers, hadn’t been so bad…. There were the occasional jokes that went a rye… Like the time I was 4 and on Easter my middle brother told me the white piece of dog shit I found in the grass near my Easter egg was a chocolate surprise only given to special little girls….. “Go ahead and eat it… The bunny left you two….”… where his words to me as I lifted it up to my mouth…. My older brother slapped it from my hand just in the nick of time…. Then there was the time that we were playing African in the backyard and I wanted jewelry for my nose, like I had seen on the Tarzan moves and he handed me a small ball baron…. The trip to the hospital to get that ball out of my nose was something ,let me tell you….. Then there was the dog food in the ear trick…. And then my all time favorite….. “ Go ahead and pet it…its wagging its tail that means it don’t bite”…. That cost me 4 stitches…. Yes it was tricky being a girl around them… I was made all time center during there foot ball games with there friends and a few times I ran home crying from being on the bottom of the dog pile… June bugs wear thrown in my hair for fun every summer and at least once a year I was chased around the yard with the dreaded dog do on the end of a stick…. Ah yes….. The memories of child hood. And Some wonder why I was so terrible…. I learned it from boys!

And even though the moment passed me by
I still can't turn away
Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose
Got tossed along the way
And letters that you never meant to send
Get lost or thrown away

And now we're grown up orphans
That never knew their names
We don't belong to no one
That's a shame
But if you could hide beside me
Maybe for a while
And I won't tell no one your name

And I won't tell em your name

Scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there
Did you get to be a star
And don't it make you sad to know that life
Is more than who we are

You grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
And reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I won't tell no one your name
And I won't tell em your name

I think about you all the time
But I don't need the same
It's lonely where you are come back down
And I won't tell em your name