Writing Exercise 3-15 Part Story Part Essay "Starstruck"

Loreen was eleven when her family moved across the street from us. We didn't know much about them except for two things; her dad was a country music singer in the Grand Ole Opry and they lived like trailer trash, or so I thought filtered as it was through my 1960's Beaver Cleaver version of how life should be lived on our street. Her two year-old brother, Buddy, would sputter around the yard in the cold, autumn air, naked except for his dirty cloth diaper sagging down his pink little hips, his legs chapped from the cold. Loreen also had two younger sisters; nine year-old Kimberly with her tangled nest of greasy, blond hair and four year-old Sue Ann, a wild-eyed terror who bit. I loved to sit Kimberly down and coax the blond mess into normalcy while she made circle designs with her compass on a discarded pizza box. I wouldn't go near Sue Ann.

Most of the time, though, it was just me and Loreen giggling and whispering in her bedroom like school girls do. I liked the exotic thrill of being in a home where no one cared about it. Food hardened on plates on coffee tables and under beds, drawn curtains blocked out the neighborhood I knew, the kids tending to themselves while the mom took long afternoon naps that spilled over past supper time. Loreen ate at our house a lot. Once, we tiptoed into her parent's bedroom while her mom napped and Loreen showed me her dad's sparkly, fringed stage costume in the closet. I wasn't impressed, but still, he was famous somewhere, so I told her I thought it was wonderful.

At least that's how I like to remember those two years. Loreen, she remembers it a bit differently. She remembers the ridicule, the taunting, the constant "loyalty" tests she endured at the hands of our five-girl neighborhood clique, girls who had grown up together since toddlerhood. Loreen was not only the new kid, she was also "country", a label guaranteeing unhappy results towards her ambitions to fit in. One time, as a test of her loyalty to the group, she was thrown inside the Wallace's fence, to face Rascal, a mean, vicious and unforgiving bulldog who made an immediate beeline for her screaming figure, his teeth bared, ready to take her down. We grabbed her at the last minute and hauled her over the fence, leaving Rascal snapping at the fence in frustrated leaps. We congratulated her on her bravery and welcomed her to the group, until the next day when she would face yet another test to prove her worthiness. We made her constantly perform for us, singing little songs she had written, or funny little commercials she'd create. One was about a toothpaste called Buttermilk Glisten. Each performance was followed by the promise of acceptance and welcome, the Nirvana of girlhood. It never came.

I look back on those years with the hope that she remembers me more as the friend who played one-on-one with her in complete contentment, and that it was only in the throes of mob mentality specific to twelve year-old girls that I stood by and let her endure the humiliation. I'm not proud of this episode in my life and even now, twenty years and two bad husbands later, I would love to find her and apologize. But with all her fame and fortune, I doubt she would see the sincerity of my approach, tormented as I've been with her big, round face, her haunted eyes.
So, all I can do is listen to her on the radio, when the electricity hasn't been cut off that is, or watch her radiant elegance when she picked up her last CMA award on television, when I can get decent reception out here in the country, and be glad that whatever angst she went through maybe contributed to her success today. She's famous, rich, and beautiful, a sight better off than when I last saw her so long ago. I recall on that final day, while the movers packed up the "rental" as the neighbors called their house, Loreen and I walked up and down the street together, discussing our futures, how we would stay in touch, conveniently forgetting my silent participation as observer of her misery during her stay here. I hope that's how she remembers it, I think to myself as I go outside my double-wide to chase my youngest in his diapered waddle. He could use a bath.

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Quote of the day: I find it to be generally true that the people with the most hateful, inhumane, intolerant politics are suckers for the most obscene forms of guileless sentimental exploitation. There's something about the love of handguns and Jesus and Old Glory, astronauts and unborn children that makes a lot of fat, racist, ultraconservative hickweeds want to gamble and buy sweatshirts and get all choked up in front of some wacked-out, self-worshiping bloatus of an entertainer in a full-body tiara singing "Born Free." Cintra Wilson - "A Massive Swelling"
Chosen because so much of her writing made me smile, or laugh. This passage underscored some feelings I have myself about some groups of people, but she just sort of spits her feelings out with gusto, and I liked the freshness of someone this descriptively snarky to go for it.