Personal Experiences (2 page)

My eyes focused back on the field where our game of tag had obviously come to an end, seeing as how Rachel was skipping her way towards me with a wide grin on her face as she repeated "I tagged him, I tagged him" in a nanny-nanny boo-boo tune, just then she turned and screamed at Lilly to come back over to where I was sitting and all six of us second graders sat in a perfect circle, Indian style with hands in our laps. "I'm going first!" I declared to the circle, as I got up on my knees and leaned into Rachel to whisper my secret like it was a plot to overthrow the government.

One by one, each of the others discovered my secret. While smiles on each face got bigger and bigger, the secret continued around. Reaching the last person; Curtis yelled out "I have a behind and I think it's funny!" Everyone in the group laughed and looked at each other; pointing, trying to figure out where and who changed what words and why. TJ looked at me and noticed I was the only one not laughing; my eyes were wide and my lips were tight with just a little shake. I felt like I didn't know whether to cry or scream. At that precise moment is when I lost it. I screamed at the top of my lungs "That is NOT what I said! I said bees live in hives and I like to eat honey! I don't understand what is so funny about I have a behind and I think it is funny, it makes no sense!"

We are from the south, people! We ladies are southern belles with southern charm. We fan ourselves, so as not to drip one drop of sweat onto our beautiful bosoms, even though we have to wear four hundred pounds of girdle and dress. Oh, and don't forget about the men; they are gentlemen. They sit on their front porch in their white suit pants, long-sleeve pinstriped, tailored shirt and pastel colored bow tie; with a sweet tea on their knee as they bask in the hot Georgia sun.

My daddy taught me that.

TJ suppressed his laughter and spun around to Curtis and whispered low in his ear. Curtis' eyes got big and his smile grew wide, as he echoed to Lilly what TJ had said. Lilly's eyes grew even wider as she was repeated the phrase to Bear. As the classified information made its way around the circle, my anticipation grew, what could create this outcome on everyone's face? Eyes bulged out of heads as though they were about to explode. As the anticipation grew, Rachel closed in on my ear to whisper the secret that had everyone stunned and giggling incessantly. I listened as though my life depended on this information. It took a second, but then it hit me what I heard. What tidbit of information had passed around this circle of my closest friends. Arching my shoulders up, as the rest of my body tightened I screeched "I am not saying that, Trevor!"

"Yes you are! Those are the rules and don't call me Trevor!"

"No…I am NOT!!!"

I noticed TJ had moved up to his knees and was leaning across the circle at me "YES… YOU… ARE!!!" he hissed.

Looking through deadly eyes, I could feel my anger growing, finally knowing I was going to have to repeat this horrid secret I murmured "When I grow up I'm gonna marry Trevor Jordan McHale." At this announcement, the whole circle erupted in laughter and started chanting "Ellie and TJ sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. " I, in a bluster got up to leave the group when Bear stood with me and informed the whole group "that's ok Ellie, I'mma gonna be a' marryin Rachel Elizabeth Locke." He leaned in quickly, planting his lips on Rachel's cheek. Disgusted, Rachel got up and ran away singing "circle…circle…dot…dot; now I've got my cooties shot."

As Lilly, Rachel and I were dashing towards the swings; Ms. Wilde blew the whistle and hollered for her second grade class. We embarked on what seemed like a long trek for us, but really the building was just on the other side of the field. TJ ran by us and upheld his stance; "Oh…it'll happen Elleny Jean Barker, I can promise you that."

"Not in a gazillion years, TJ! I won't marry you, tha…that's just gross!!"

"Then I guess I'm never gonna be getting married then."

Chapter One

June 1992

"I can't believe we made it, finally! I thought if Bear stopped one more time for one more thing I was gonna scream."

Rachel informed us as she pulled down the lawn chairs from the back of the truck to hand down to me. Senior skip day had become a yearly tradition for seniors at Richland High. Taking the last Friday of the year off to do whatever you, the senior wanted to do, the six of us decided to make it the whole weekend. Going to the lake, camping, swimming, rolling the trucks in the mud. I may have been a pink princess but I wasn't too good for a mud bog at a local mud hole.

As I stood there in my daisy duke jean shorts, pink tank top and my flashy bikini on underneath, I made sure to get those chairs planted firmly on the water's shore. Alan Jackson's voice was in the background coming from a Ford F-150 Dually's radio singing about being down by the Chattahoochee. I grabbed a long neck of Budweiser and stashed it in the front pocket of my shorts, grabbed Lilly and Rachel's hands and dragged them down to the lake's edge. Stopping abruptly, Rachel, in her sweet Georgia girl accent screeched "Wait, we need more beer then that, once I'm in that chair I aint movin' for nothin."

Coming back up to the camp area, I noticed that there were five coolers sitting by the tents that still layed on the ground in the nylon carrying pouch. I looked in the first cooler and saw that it contained all the meat that would be used on the grill for our dinners. I looked in the second one expecting to find beer this time and found that it contained all the snacks and side items to go along with the meats. "Where the fuck is the beer, did the boys drink them all?" I was getting frustrated that we wouldn't find any beer at all when I opened the third one "Aaahaaa, I found it!!" I attempted to pick up the beer cooler myself and found out that it was way heavier than it appeared to be so I asked Lilly to grab the other side of it.

I grabbed one side and handed my beer to Rachel asking her to hold it for me. Looking up from the ground I heard a "swishhhh" of the bottle of beer being opened. I sweetly expressed but yet glared at Rachel "Sweetie, I asked you to hold it, not swipe it."

Laughing a deep laugh she knew what I was saying to her "Keep your panties on there's more in there." Rachel teased, as she sauntered in front of us back down to the water. "Trust me… I know. We stopped at every fuckin' curb store between Richland and here to clean ‘em out of beer. Bear took Bubba's fake ID, and he's gonna be pissed when he goes to use it this weekend, serves ‘em right for not carryin his wallet twenty four, seven."

Bubba is Bear's older brother, he's twenty. They moved here from Louisiana to live with their grandparents so that their pieces of shit momma and daddy could go sell Georgia peaches on the side of every interstate they came in contact with. They turned out to be even shittier parents by naming them Ernest and Willie, so when we met them, we gave them nicknames; Ernest is Bubba and Willie is Bear. We called him Bear because when he was young he liked to give and receive hugs since he wasn't getting any at home. Not anymore though, times had changed, if you valued your life you wouldn't try and hug him. Both Bear and Bubba liked to fight. No one EVER called them by their real names…EVER! No scratch that, one time at a bar, a guy who worked with Bubba thought he'd be a smartass and called him Ernie, which landed him in the hospital and Bubba in jail and jobless.

Speaking of Bear, Rachel and him had been together for years now. At first it seemed strange, considering they're complete opposites. I think Rachel was with him just to piss her daddy off, since he thought his debutant daughter should be with a "good, decent and wealthy young man." Rachel, TJ's cousin, was not only lavishly well-off, thanks to her daddy's money, but she is absolutely gorgeous. Brownish, blonde curly hair that was shoulder length, cute figure, big boobs; thanks to the most prominent plastic surgeon in the Atlanta area, and a smile that four years in braces made breathtaking. She was around five-eleven but didn't weigh 120 pounds soaking wet. Bear was just what someone named Bear would be; six-three, two hundred and fifty pounds, longer brown hair in the back and a full beard, that's right at eighteen; a full beard. His eyes were so brown they were black. He had a scar above his right eye that was probably put there by some drunk down at Sheila Kay's, a bar that was on the outskirts of town and home to every piece of scum and white trash known throughout McIntosh county. He dipped and continuously had a pinch in between his gums. I don't ever remember a time when I didn't see him without carrying two beer cans with him, one was a spit can, the other was a beer, I personally never wanted to find out which was which.

Lilly and Curt were two peas in a pod totally made for each other. Both attractive, Lilly was petite, thin and curvy. She barely hit five-six. Her hair was beautiful; long, wavy brown with a hint of red that touched the middle of her back. She had the most alluring brown eyes you would ever come across in your life. Lilly had a great personality, outgoing and witty but, bless her heart, she had the attention span of a gnat to go along with her hyperactivity. If she wasn't doing, she was talking, if she wasn't talking, she was thinking of what she should be doing or talking about. Curtis was so crazy in love with her, he'd follow every moment of every activity right alongside of her.

Curt was blonde with gorgeous blue eyes. His hair was short, but having been a swimmer in school he was hairless. You could not find one single hair on his body; of what was covered up, we didn't want to ask because, ewwwhhh, we didn't want to know. It would be like asking about your brother. He was built, but not as big as Bear. He was more on the skinny side. Standing six-one, he was tall and muscular.

Curtis was going to have problems when Lils left for school. She was accepted to Texas University where she was going to be living with her aunt and uncle off campus and Curtis was not going. He had been working with Bear as a pipefitter and was going to wait back in Georgia for her, of course, he would go and visit but he accepted her decision and stood behind her on it.

TJ and I, so everyone thought, were perfect together. To me, I always felt I was never good enough physically for him because no words could describe how beautiful he was.

Six-three, brown hair; longer in the back with blondish natural curls hanging on his neck from outside his backwards baseball cap. He had beautiful hazel eyes that had much more green then brown, and a little dimple right below his left eye that was so cute, I called it his angel kiss. His nose was crooked but that was from the seventh grade when he got into it with Skeeter Heinz. Skeeter ended up catching him off guard and socked him right in the nose. Personally, I always thought he got the better end of the deal because when Skeeter came out of that fight he looked horrible.

TJ was a country boy through and through. Worked summers and weekends at his granddaddy's farm fixing fences, rounding up horses and he knew how to fix anything mechanical that was considered to work on a farm. He amazed me; straight A student, fullback of the Richland High Eagles football team, they even retired his jersey at the end of this past season, so now number four wiould never be seen on another jersey again. He played that number his entire football career that started out when he was a kid; that was his number. He was offered a full football scholarship to Georgia State and I was so excited for him.

Here I was; five-nine, so-so body, I'm a curvy girl with a nice rack but more junk in my trunk and a pooch I just can't seem to lose no matter how much I exercise. Having straight brown hair with purchased highlights, I just feel plain…cute, but not Rachel pretty. I may not have been kissed by the glamor fairy but I definitely was tackled by the wisdom wizard. I applied to seven different colleges and was accepted to each and every one of them. Finally deciding that since Rachel was accepted as well, we would be attending the University of Florida. Getting an off campus apartment, we were ready to spread our wings and fly. We needed to get the hell out of Richland Georgia and explore.

Feeling warm hands come around from the back of me and touch my cheeks, breaking me from my thoughts, I looked up to see TJ's face approaching to kiss me. "Hey, Darlin." I heard before his lips touched mine. "Hey, Babe" I answered, wrapping my arms around his neck to deepen the sweet kiss to something more sensual. As he broke us apart, he pulled away slightly and whispered "why is it that you're sitting that sweet ass in this here chair instead of in that lake right there wrapped around me?"

I looked beside me at Rachel and Lilly who were trying desperately to hide their smiles. I, being embarrassed and rendered speechless mumbled "ummmm..."

He grabbed my hand to pull me up from my chair. Just as I start walking, I noticed him dip down and put his shoulder in my stomach and lift me up, carrying me the rest of the way down.

I screamed. "Trevor Jordan McHale, put me down!"

All I heard was laughter. Somewhere behind me, I heard Lilly stating that I was in some deep shit. Once we were in the water Trevor slowly lowered me down as my legs wrapped around his waist. He laid a sweet tender kiss on the inside of my neck.

"I am lovin' the new suit, babe."

Timidly, I looked down at my chest and felt TJ's eyes scrutinizing every inch of me "Oh yeah? It's pink and silver; my favorite colors."

He knew compliments made me blush and he always thought it was cute when I did. I knew he always went out of his way to pay me kudos. "Ellie-Bean, I know what your favorite colors are". He waded out further as my legs stayed securely around his waist and he affectionately rubbed his fingers up and down my sides and across my ribs.

"TJ sweetie, we're eighteen now, you can quit calling me Ellie-bean." He had given me that nickname when I was eleven, I seemed to have went through a Jelly Belly craze. I thought the name was sweet at first but being older now, I thought it was well-worn.

"I don't care if your eighteen or ninety-eight, Ellie-Bean! I will always call you that." Leaning back so I could take a good long look at him, I glared and a small smile broke out on his face.