[Continued from "Alcohol (Part 1)."]

I drank for the first time when I was 14.  In the years between my father’s pass out parties and my 14th year, alcohol didn’t have much of a role in my life.  A good thing, I’m sure.  My father had stopped drinking; my father and mother had divorced; I lived with my mother who wasn’t much of a drinker (though there were incidents which I’m sure I will eventually address) until I was 11; and then I moved in with my father, step-mother, sister, step-sister, and step-brother.

I had gone from living as an only child with a single mother to having three siblings and two parents.  It was quite a change.  It was odd to go to school with – and be in the same grade as – my step-sister.  Us kids went through phases where two of us would gang up (pair up?) on one of the other kids.  My step-sister and I made fun of my sister – even though she was older – for various reasons usually having to do with the guys she was dating.  My step-sister and I also picked on my step-brother; he was the youngest after all.  Lest you think my step-sister and I were bullies, there were definitely times when we were picked on.  I think.  I definitely got into trouble for things I did to both my step-brother and step-sister.

One of the consequences of being the same age, and therefore same grade, as my step-sister, was that I felt competitive with her.  I don’t think she did; I think she mostly felt sorry for me.  She was very comfortable around boys; I blushed and stammered.  She was thin; I was fat.  She got away with picking on her brother; I got in trouble for the same thing.

The only area where she may have considered me the “winner” may have been in the breast area.  My breasts had begun developing quite early, which was as a result of my mother’s genes.  My step-mother thought I was just fat, but after an embarrassing mirror-facing feeling up with both my sister and step-sister looking on, she determined that my breasts contained breast tissue, not just fat.  Uh, thanks.

So when my step-sister and I were 11 in sixth grade, I had noticeable breasts and she was thin, like an 11-year-old child.  I wanted more than anything not to have breasts; she wanted more than anything to have breasts.  I had to wear a bra; she needn’t have bothered.

I also didn’t like the unwanted attention my breasts got.  Our sixth grade was part of a rural middle school that was really just a walkway away from the elementary school.  The entire campus contained kindergarten through eighth grade, and many of our classes were on the elementary school side of the campus.  I was in sixth grade even though I happened to change classes every period.  I had just moved from a school where the sixth grade was in elementary school, where I had one teacher the whole day.

The eighth graders noticed me.  One, a skanky white trash bitch, didn’t like my tail.  It was the 80s and I had short hair with a tail in the back, which I guess was too hip for the shitty town outside Redding in which we lived.  I tattled on her to the principal when she threatened me not in gym class, but where we changed for gym class, in a closet off the gymnasium.

Another eighth grader who noticed me was a guy who rode is dirt bike (cycle not motor) to school.  One day when I was waiting for the bus he said, “You have pretty big tits for a sixth grader.”  I’m not sure how I reacted, but I’m guessing it was with a very deep blush.

Through junior high I felt competitive with my step-sister, though I think I figured out how to play a different game on the same field:  She got in with the guys, I got in with the girls.  Together, we did our best to be considered “popular.”

By ninth grade we were at a big (by our standards) school that pooled several junior highs together.  That meant we went to school with people we had gone to junior high with, and also people from many other junior highs from around Redding.  That meant we were no longer big fishes in a little sea.

My step-sister did what she did best, get in good with the guys.  I did what I did best, befriend girls.  [Hilariously, I think this may be the complete opposite now.]

Heather was in a few of my classes.  She had the most beautiful hair that she also happened to style in the chicest way.  This was the late 1980s when there were a lot of poufy bangs.  Heather had no such thing; her hair was thick and beautiful and she styled it in a way that despite my best efforts I could not replicate.  She was so cool.

Heather invited me to her house to make chocolate chip cookies.  I remember that she had a kick-ass house that included a music room with a grand piano, and that her bedroom was large enough to hold the usual bedroom furniture and a love seat.  When we made the cookies, we used a Kitchen Aid mixer.  I fell in love with that mixer and bought one for myself less than ten years later.

Being friends with Heather meant I was also friends with her cool friends.  I was in!  We lived in Redding, where there was little to do.  Even if there was more to do, my parents weren’t too keen on letting me do it, but I was eager to do things with my own friends, without my step-sister going along.

Heather told me about Chuck E. Cheese’s teen night.  It was every Friday at the local children’s hang-out.  My parents always wanted to make sure I was supervised, and usually wanted to talk to the parents of at least one other kid with whom I was to hang.  I can’t recall if my dad talked to Heather’s mom the first time we did the Chuck E. Cheese’s teen night, but he let me go.

Heather, a few other girls, and I met up for dinner at Swenson’s (our dining choices were very limited in Redding).  It was just us girls; all of our parents had agreed to leave us unsupervised, or thought another parent was doing the supervising.

I swear.  True story.

[To be continued ….]

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