My story began on or around my father’s 29th birthday, when I am 99.99% certain was when I was conceived. Six days short of nine months later, I decided to join the other 8 people in the family. Being the dark haired, dark skinned little bundle I was, Mom took to calling me her Little Brown Bean. I was the baby, the last of the seven children my parents would have. I maintain that they were attempting to reach perfection and quit having babies when they reached it. My elder siblings say our parents had to quit before it got any worse.
I’ve always loved to write and sing. I wrote a song when I was in 4th grade in the Girl Scouts, about my fictious horse named August. It was terrible. In 5th grade, my school put on a version of Snow White, and I was in the chorus. I convinced the director to change the ending of Someday My Prince Will Come so that it would resolve instead of hanging on the same note for “Someday when my dreams come true.” I was always changing things–not exactly breaking rules, just adjusting them as much as I could so that I could do as I wanted.
In high school I became involved in plenty of music and theater, playing flute and then cymbals (I took a crash course) in the Bishop Kearney Marching Kings. We went to Ireland in 1979 where I kissed the Blarney Stone, an item I imagine they don’t let people kiss anymore. In senior year, after I’d moved from upstate NY to Connecticut, we put on The King and I. I was I.
I grew up and became a high school and middle school English teacher for 33 years before I retired. I was a founding member of the middle school teachers’ cheesy cover band, The Faculty Lounge Lizards. As I aged and my black hair starting turning white, I colored black all but a streak of white in front, an homage to Bonnie Raitt. My students started calling me Cruella. They were, of course, being ironic. Niceness was my Achilles heel.
Eventually, my second marriage ended and I retired and married The Old Guitarist. You already know the rest, so far.