It only took a few weeks for me to get the first of what were many "drug education" classes. I should have listened to all the people that said BooBoo was bad news. He was okay for the first week. Then he got drunk on a regular basis. The first time he went to work with Larry and L.J. he came home shit faced and insisted that I must have had some one in the house. I was trying to be the nice housewife type and had a hot dinner on the table for him when he got home. I had my hair and makeup done. That was the thing that set him off. I must have made my self all dolled up for someone. He started hitting me. And it was on. The only fights I had ever been in were with my brother. He was swinging and so was I. I had to find a weapon. I couldn't win against BooBoo in a fist to fist fight. I grabbed the table leg that I didn't have any screws in and started swinging. I got him a few good times in the ribs and flew out the door to my neighbors house ( the same one Rodney had ran to when he had shot himself). I was covered in blood. My Eyebrow was split wide open and pouring blood. She called 911 again and helped to doctor my face. BooBoo came to the door and was very apologetic. Before the police had got there so I went outside to talk to him. And it was on again. We were beating the shit out of each other. Over the hood of a car went Jeff. To this day I still don't know how I did it but I picked him up and tossed him like a rag doll. He was arrested and held the mandatory 72 hours. He got out and we were in love again. Boy was I stupid. That was the first of many black eyes that I got from BooBoo.

So one day I am at Ron and Carol's trailer. Big surprise....it's what I did everyday. Rodney is in the hospital and I am feeling a little on the wild side. When up pulls Brother Larry's van. Out walks who I find out is Uncle L.J. He decides to stay and visit for a while. In Lumbee terms this means he is going to drink the free beer as long as he can. L.J. looks a little like Sam Elliott in the movie "Mask" (my all time favorite movie) God he is cute. Older but cute. I set my sights on sleeping with L.J. So we party for a little while then in comes Carol's little sister Cherie. She is laughing and telling Carol "Uncle BooBoo is coming and he says he is staying with you". Carol emphatically says no way. "BooBoo ain't staying here". Me bing so damn dumb volunteer my couch for this "Uncle BooBoo". He is family....gotta be okay.....right? WRONG!!!!! Don't remember much but alot of partying and then going home. BooBoo follows me home where I show him the couch and the bathroom and the go towards bed myself. BooBoo corners me in the hallway and says "You wanted to sleep with my brother and you slept with my nephew, can't you sleep with me?" So like a dummy I say okay and let him in my room. That was the start of the worst 6 years of my life.

I thought 3 lips ere better than 2
After being in my own apartment for about a week nd ah half, I was at Ronnie and Carol's house. was excited because her brother Rodney was being released from prison. I had never met anyone who had been incarcerated before. It was one of their things that was strange and unusual but would eventually become common place in my life. I met Rodney later that day along with his girlfriend Felicia. Later that night, I was walking home to my trailer and a man approached me. At first I was nervous, but then I realized it was Rodney. This put my mind at ease. I don't really remember much of the conversation. I just remember staring at him because I now noticed he had 3 lips. I also remember him saying, " Yeah I got a girlfriend but I would like to have a mistress too." I figured he couldn't be much harm he was Carol's brother. I guess I forgot he had just been released from prison. I later found out the reason he had 3 lips was because he had fallen as a child and split his lip crosswise. As it healed it formed almost a 3rd lip. We went back to my trailer and drank a few beers, fooled around a bit and had sex. This would be the first of 3 times. A few days later on a Wednesday he came over again. This time we on the couch and I was giving him a blow job. There was a knock on the door. Rodney put his finger across his three lips and told me just to be quiet. The knock came again only louder. The next knock was but Felica's voice screaming " I know you're in there Rodney. Open the Damn door." We ignored her and continued about our business. About an hour later came back. This time Rodney took off out the back door while I answered the door in a slumber and told her I went to bed early and seen Rodney. was skeptical but left. The next morning I woke to the sound of sirens. I quickly threw on some clothes and went outside to see what was going on. Cristy the girl next door told me some guy was all bloody stumbled into her house and collapsed on her kitchen floor. We soon found out it was Rodney. I ran down to Carol's to let her something was going on. We followed the ambulance to the local hospital where most of the family was already gathered around the hospital doors. There I met their parents, "Brother" Larry and "Sister" Wendy (called this because they were Christians. Dilly their brother and Cherie the little sister. Carol and Felicia went into the hospital to check on Rodney's's condition. This left me outside with total strangers. I stood near an ash tray and lit myself a cigarette. Soon " Brother" Larry comes walking over and says..."So you're Annette" I answered him and he said...." I hear you can polish on heck of a knob." It was then I figured out that "Brother" Larry was just a hiding in the church. When all was said and done I found out Rodney and Felicia had gotten into a huge because Rodney came home the night before with his boxers on inside out and backwards. To prove to Felicia how much he loved her he shot himself....In the shoulder...witha .22 riffle.

I thought he seemed like a ncie man
I can't remember the exact date, but it was sometime in 1992. After going thru all the carp with Sherry I decided I was going to get my own place. I talked to my cousin Ronnie who lived in a trailer park in Thomasville, NC. He got me in touch with the guy who owned the park. His name was Houston Roberts. He only had one tailer for rent. It was on the end and wasn't in the best condition. At this point I didn't have much of a choice. So we settled on a $150 security deposit and $70 a week. What a bargain right. It was supposedly furnished. I had a mattress and box spring and a built in dresser in my bedroom. I had a spare room with a mattress on the floor. My living room had an old green plaid couch, and a rust colored chair. In the middle of the room there was a coffee table made of that crappy particle board stuff. It had several permanent water rings where the "wood" had raised. The small kitchen had a table and 3 chairs. Of course only 3 of the legs were actually screwed on to the table. This would be a good thing. I didn't like the way the furniture was laid out in the living room so I decided to move the furniture around. Under the ugly green couch was an interesting find. A water bong made from mayonnaise jar and a socket. A pair of scissors and a dime bag of weed. My first bag that was all mine. I remember it was a Saturday morning. I was going to move the furniture the night before but I didn't have any electricity. I just didn't have the money to pay the deposit to get the lights turned on. Later I would find out only about 50 percent of the trailers in the park had electricity. So I went to Odd Lots and bought a bunch of candles. The tall tapered kind work best in Natural Light bottles. I don't know why. I just remember having drunk a 12 pack so I could illuminate the entire front room and kitchen in my house. One night there is a knock on my door. I . It is some old redneck guy. He must have weighed about 300 lbs. He had on an old stained up tshirt under his greasy overalls. On top of that was a torn up scrap I assumed was a flannel shirt. As I said Hello he said that God had sent him to me. I kinda laughed and said "oh really?" I stood in the door way and let him explain why he thought God had sent him to my trailer. He said that he knew I was a single woman living alone, that I didn't have any lights and that he could help me get things in life. At this point I should have ran scared but I thought I could handle it all. He asked me if there was anything he could get for me. That was an easy one to answer. A 12 pack of beer and a bag of weed would be just fine. He was gone about 30 minutes and came back with both the beer and the smoke. Hey I was game. He invited me back to his trailer on the other side of the park so I went. He really was a nice old man. When I got to his trailer I noticed that it was glowing full of little holes like those "Country" punch art kits. When I asked him about it he told me some story about how his son got into an with some guy and they came and shot up his house. HI and I talked well into the next morning. He wanted to know if I would come live with him and take care of him. No sex involved and he would buy me anything and everything I wanted. He even showed me his bank book with over $150,000 in it. It would have been nice, but I had just discovered my freedom and I guess I just wasn't ready to give it up. I went home about 9am and never saw that man again.

I thought I was street wise
What was I thinking isn't exactly the best thing to start this with. I was so young and stupid when I was younger. Never been kissed at 20.Yes. It isn't like the drew Barrymore movie. I didn't'y get to go back to high school and meet the perfect man. I got to get let loose in the world thinking I knew it all and that I was one tough bitch who no one would fuck with. Boy was I wrong. My first fight in North Carolina was with Sherry. It was 2 days after her and Dumb Ass Dad got married. I am not sure anymore why it happened but I am glad it did. D. A. D. was out back working on some old piece of crap. I had stayed at Sherry's sister's house the night they got married. I was still trying to be nice to her at this point. She started some big argument over some thing her white trash sister had supposedly said I said something ........I told you it would not be a real clear recollection. I just remember hearing her bullshit long enough and then she said..."If you feel froggy, JUMP".And I did. I leaped right up and sqwished the crap out of her windpipe with my thumb. She started swinging. We were rolling around the floor beating the crap out of each other and my D.A.D. comes running thru the door. Pulls me off the top of her and checks to make sure she was okay. I had not a mark on me but she had a black eye and a bloody nose. I stayed at my aunts house that night. The next day I stayed with my cousin Ronnie and his girlfriend Carol all day. Talking to them was my only "social" thing I had really done in High Point. We sat around all day. I met such an interesting flow of people true this day. See, Carol wasn't white like everyone I had know in my life. She was "LUMBEE". It took me a while to figure out that this is a tribe of Indians. Not the Indians you might think of from the movies, but real Indian people.One of the first of these I met was "Prayin' Ricky". There are so many people there with the same names you have to make new ones. If you asked someone if they know Ricky they want to know "Praying Ricky". He was the first one that introduced me into the big bad drug underground. We smoked my first joint. I then learned how "Prayin' Ricky got his name. He smoked alot. He drank alot. Then he would pass out sitting up with his hands folded in his lap and his head would nod. Just like those good Quiet church people pray. Anytime you saw Ricky he was smokin' or prayin. It didn't't matter where you saw him. If he had smoked with you he would pray sitting on your couch.

I thought I was Grown
I lived in my mothers house until I was 20 years old...minus a brief 8 month period I was in foster care. (Maybe I will start another blog about that)Then I decided that I wanted to be cool and reckless like my Dad. Where was a better place to do that? At my Dad's house. So I packed my bags or boxes as the case may be and followed my Aunt and Uncle who were visiting Connecticut back home to North Carolina. Dad and his girlfriend Sherry lived not far from them in High Point,the furniture capital of the world. "What was I thinking?" I, as most kids from broken homes thought my Dad was the coolest guy because he always made promises of grandeur. Boy was I fooled by this .....again. I drove my packed down 1983 Plymouth Reliant all the way stopping only to pee, get gas and Mt. Dew. NoDoz was my best friend on that trip. We pulled up in front of a nice little house. The yard was kinda messy but Dad is a shade tree mechanic. It is to be expected. What I didn't expect was what I saw when I got into the house. All my life my Dad was a fanatic about a clean house. The man used to steam clean his carpets every Saturday. When Sherry came to the door I was first amazed to find how young she was. Only twenty fucking three. As I walk into the door I see a large room with nothing in it but piles and piles of clothes,clean, dirty... I don't know but they were everywhere. Then Sherry introduced her kids to me. Tamara is 7, a pudgy thing with greasy stringy hair. Chris"BeBop" is 4. He is in a filthy red t-shirt and some cut off jeans. There was no way I could fore see the squaller that they could live in. After about a day and a half I found out a psycho this chick really was. On the way to the grocery store decided it was time to let me know the deep secrets of her pass. She had only been out of prison for about a year. She has a kid, Taylor (6 months) for my father.....oops ...you do the math. No it isn't my fathers kid. But to this day thats what they want to tell me. They met 10 months earlier. apparently she was in prison for so scheme where her and her mother stole a baby from the local hospital in High Point. She had been released because she just drove the get away car. Her mother was still in there. And Dad and Sherry were getting married in a few weeks. She decide she wanted Dad to treat her kids like they were his so we should all have the same rules. This crazy bitch thought I at 20 years old should have an 8:00 pm bed time like her kids did. Dumb ass Dad, brain washed by a younger woman agreed. I was 20, working a full time job at a that close until 10 then we had to clean up. How the hell am I suppose to be home in bed at a ridiculous 8 pm. This lead to several arguments. It got to the point Dad finally convinced her I had to be in by 11pm. Still a crazy thought. It got to the point she would lock me out at 11:01. And Dumb Ass Dad would let her. The first couple nights I went to my Aunts house. It was only about a week or two later I decided I would get my own place.

When Danielle told me what a Blog was I decide that was pretty cool and I wanted to do one. She has heard me tell a few of my Lumberton, North Carolina stories. Like others she said she found them CLEARLY very interesting . So this is a log of my memories from Lumberton. I promise they will all be true as I remember them,of course we must remember that this time was clouded by the haze of smoke coming from a crack pipe. Who knows it may even be a therapeutic kinda thing.

I guess I'm not as technical as I thought
Mood:  quizzical
SO I was at work tonight and a couple of people were talking about their "BLOG"s. Now I know I am a few years older then these people but I really didn't think I was that far out of the loop. I have no idea what a blog is. So I quietly ease over to Danielle and ask. Danielle is pretty cool. She is so super smart. Not the nerdy pocket protector kinda smart but the I am kinda cool, but feel nerdy so I think I will flirt and giggle so people might forget I am smart kinda smart. Last year we both started at the drive in where we work, I was a shy , stay at home mom that wanted to find something to do just to get outta the house. I used to have a (what my friends and family here think is) livin' on the edge fast lane kind of life.3 Years ago I gave that up, And decided to move home to rural Connecticut. Back to the "Leave It To Beaver" life. It is Danielle who has inspired me to start this Blog....after explaining to me what it was of course.