Posts tagged coming of age
Sex Ed

I’m organizing my CD collection alphabetically by artist, like every Saturday. The Cranberries, Janet Jackson, La Bouche, No Doubt, Selena, the Spice Girls, and TLC are among them. I have a stack of cassettes by Michael Jackson, New Kids, UB40, and various Disney movies. A cheerful knock at my open door catches my attention. Dad stands in the doorway, holding a semi-ripe banana.

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We Wish You The Best (After We Regret to Inform You)

Dear Aspiring Dancer,

Thank you for auditioning to be in the Nutcracker; we can tell just how far this was out of your comfort zone. We appreciate that when you dance, your arms flail all over the place like palm trees during a Category 5 Hurricane, you maintain a comical lack of flexibility even after four years of attempting to be anything but a human tree branch, and you will not stop talking to your neighbor about the movie Enchanted, no matter how loud we play Tchaikovsky as a sign to tell you to shut up.

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Queens to You, My Friend

“Like, would that string really have stayed on her finger for fourteen years?” Lindsey asks, and I laugh in the carefree manner typically brought about by cheap vodka.

“Well, it’s magic string,” I respond, “because it’s infused with love.”

We continue to watch, a bowl of popcorn between us, buzzing on the fruit-flavored Smirnoff I am finally able to buy legally now that I’ve just turned twenty-one. It is summer; the semester has ended; we are each home from college.

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Crowning Glory

My father was a career military man and did three tours overseas. Each time he returned home from deployments his skill at attacking others in darkness was sharper and keener. He drank heavily and became easily enraged, used the skills he had mastered to be quick and precise when striking out at the object of his ire. The only daughter in the family, I was not spared the violence inflicted upon my four brothers. My father did not discriminate in his lashing out. My disadvantage was the possession of gloriously long dark hair that both parents insisted I grow.

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Cleaning God’s House

I grew up in the exalted spaces of a United Methodist Church. Dad was a pastor who, after graduating from seminary in Ohio, drove with my mother across the country to the far west of Washington, with six-month-old me strapped into a bassinet behind the front seat. In the early days of memory, I enjoyed singing hymns, drinking grape juice from thimble cups at communion, and helping Mom entertain parishioners in groups according to their last names for lunches in our home, where she served vegetable soup and black bottom cupcakes until she’d run through all the letters of the alphabet.

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Dangerous Curves

Dr. Thompson was feeling my breasts. Sitting on the table in his exam room with my gown dropped to my waist, I was embarrassed to have him touch me. I was embarrassed just to be at the appointment. My body developed curves early. In seventh grade, when most girls had flat chests, I wore a C-cup bra and hid in the corner of the locker room to change before and after gym class. By fifteen, my 34D chest was a health concern.

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