Memoir Monday, May 23, 1961

 Near the end of the next-to-last year of school. Nothing too exciting!!

May 23, 1961

Another day passed. Now there are only nine left. Oh yes,, I can live that long. In nine days I will have passed or failed chemistry. In nine more days I will be free. Today was a long and boring day in school. We are having an archery test in PE. Coming down the stairs I fell and twisted my ankle, sprained it really. I didn’t ride Ruby tonight. We drove out to the corral and I rode Trixie back. Had a little trouble getting things done but once I took off, I was okay. My ankle was stabbed with pain but victory was mine. She walked and fast too. Somehow then I knew we had it made. I knew I could stop worrying. Tomorrow Dad is planning to go to St John. I will have to get up early and ride out to the pasture. I don’t think that will be bad though. I was worrying about Wayne’s letter but the solution is don’t answer it. I will at least wait til school is out--that’s only two weeks--before I answer his or any other letter unless something happens to make me change my mind. Well it is early to rise in the morning so I am going to get to bed before 10:30 for once. Hasta luego.

I guess I had more trouble with Chemistry than any class I ever took. (Well except for Algebra II which I began and then after the Mule Year, never resumed again.) At this time I had a big mental barrier about math and science, especially math. I had little trouble with chemistry until we got to the formula and valance stuff--that just boggled my brain. I got a 4 (D) one grading period and scared myself spitless.  Somehow I pulled thru that and ended up with a sympathy 3 (C) for the class. Bless Mr Clark--he really was a nice guy and a good teacher if a bit crotchety at times! I had geometry with him too and that was not hard when I convinced myself the angles and shapes were really art, not math! 

I was never really a klutz ( ha ha) but I would get in too big a hurry at times and do dumb things like trip on the stairs. My poor right ankle took a beating; got a bad cut once and probably sprained it half a dozen times. Then I broke both bones just above the joint in 1999 and had a piece of metal put in to stabilize it. Not been sprained since! Dr Susini did a good job so I 'immortalized' him with a different name in my novel Hearts to Heal which also uses my accident experience for my heroine's first scene--and how she meets the hero! I will get that book reissued later this year.

Ah, the little mules that I especially liked: Ruby and Trixie. They were both smaller--just about 14 hands high, barely not pony-size, so easy to saddle and mount, Ruby was a dark Hereford red with a white star and Trixie was black with a white muzzle and a dainty dished face (I think) from her Arabian mare mom.

The mentioned trip was another of those "ranch hunting' treks. Boy did that get old after awhile and I became terminally cynical about the prospect of ever moving. And I was right--it did not happen. Wayne was an off-and-on favored pen pal. He was always planning to come down (he lived in Washington) to make a rodeo so we could meet but that never happened.  He had been calling me every 2-3 weeks and I suppose I got chewed out for that, though I am not recalling clearly. 

Oh well, the angst and aggravations of being 18 and still essentially forced into a 12 year old's life style although I did an adult's work with the animals and had adult responsibility in that regard. Socially, no way.  It has taken me over a half century to unravel all this crap--part of the process is sharing glimpses from it.  I felt so alone and alien then; now I know my odd life was not that unique or strange in a broad  sense--so many have gone through trauma growing up, many much worse than mine.

Some recycled photos: Trixie under saddle; me holding Ruby  probably the prior summer; me on Trixie on the North Point Trail, Mingus; and Wayne Wylder, rodeo cowboy and pen pal. Lastly, me in May 1999 with my denim blue cast