Cheater, cheater…
It’s funny yet sobering to go back and reexamine turning points in my life.
I’ve been doing that as I work on the story of my family. As it turns out, my memories of my younger years are not entirely accurate. I remember things one way and official records say otherwise.
For instance, I thought of myself as having been a great student in my freshman year of high school; that it was only as a sophomore that I started to go astray. My transcripts prove otherwise. At best, as a freshman I was a B student. Things really fell apart during the second semester of my sophomore year. Those grades recorded an overwhelmed, troubled girl who felt trapped in the chaos of our family of fourteen crammed into a single-wide mobile home.
Sophomore year, when I still used the name my parents gave me.
Those transcripts reflect a life already veering off script. Those records end when I dropped out and ran away from home at age fifteen.
I got my GED (General Education Diploma) a few years later. I went on to college, a career in television news and station management, and ultimately became the published author of mysteries, a lifelong dream.
Those transcripts captured a moment. They did not capture the rest of the story.
And that may be why I write the kind of fiction I do — stories about women who carry guilt, secrets, and unfinished chapters… and who discover that the truth is bigger than the record.
In Parallel Peril, Vicky Robeson is searching for her long-lost sister — and confronting the past she thinks defines her. She learns what I’ve learned:
The past shapes us. It doesn’t own us.
If you are holding onto something from your past — a failure, a detour, a dropout year — if you’re holding onto an old transcript — literal or emotional — I hope you’ll remember that you still get to write what happens next.
Transcripts are snapshots. Not verdicts. Your early chapters are not your final draft.
They capture who we were in a moment — not who we are capable of becoming.
While on the subject of early drafts, here’s an excerpt from the first draft of my current work in progress. I think it gives an idea of what I was like in seventh grade. This chapter picks up after our converted school bus broke down in South Carolina.
Life Revisited
After Christmas, Mom gave birth to her twelfth child. Us older kids started school. My new school in Columbia, South Carolina was big and confusing. There were so many kids! And the other seventh graders seemed much older than me. On my first day I had a paper with room numbers and class names, but I thought my desk was my desk, so when everyone got up to go to another class I left my books on the shelf under the seat. I didn’t understand that I would be going from one classroom to another. We didn’t do that at All Souls Catholic School. My books were gone when I came back so I had to go to the office to get them back.
I felt stupid.
I didn’t know anybody or how to do anything at that big new school. I missed my friend Vicky from my old school. At least there I knew the other kids and how we were supposed to do things. I wondered what my old class was doing now.
It was awful getting ready for P.E. class the first time, too. All the girls changed into their gym clothes in a big locker room, right in front of each other. They were all talking and laughing. They just took off their school clothes and some walked around almost naked before they put on their gym clothes. We didn’t do that in my old school. I didn’t want anyone to see my body, so I went into the bathroom stall to change into the blue P.E. uniform we had to wear.
There was a boy named Peter in one of my classes. He had bright blue eyes and curly blond hair. After a few days he started being really nice. Boys usually ignored me—which was fine by me—so he made me nervous. No one else talked to me but he always smiled and said hello. He sat near me in class. After a while I figured out it was because I got good grades and usually knew the answers and he wanted to copy my work. But I didn’t mind. He smiled at me.
I let him copy me.
But one day we had a test, and I just didn’t know anything about the subject. I’m not sure whether I hadn’t been there the day it was taught, or I hadn’t paid attention, or just didn’t think it was important, but I had no idea what the answer was.
I pointed to the multiple-choice question and asked Peter with my eyes if he knew it. He pointed to the answer.
A couple of days later the teacher gave us back the tests and scolded the whole class for missing so many answers. Then he said—I hated it when teachers said things like this, bringing attention to me— “And I know there was a lot of cheating going on. Lynn Barrs is probably the only one in here who didn’t need to cheat.”
My ‘friend’ Peter piped up, “She did too cheat! She asked me what gonads are.”
The teacher took one look at me and saw the truth and just shook his head. My education about such things up to that point mostly involved me looking up words in the dictionary.
I don’t know how I missed that one. I don’t think I looked a single person in the eye the rest of that school year.
BTW, in case you also missed that definition:
Merriam - Webster Dictionary
https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › gonad
go·nad ˈgō-ˌnad. : a reproductive gland (such as an ovary or testis) that produces gametes. gonadal. gō-ˈna-dᵊl. adjective. Read more