Yesterday, in honor of our nation’s Independence I decided to travel back in time. I don’t go back to Blaine, the suburb I grew up in, very often. Something about the area doesn’t feel right and it makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. Last night as Sister #4 and I were driving home along 169, I let out a huge sigh of relief as we crossed south of 394.

“Oh,” I said. “I feel much better.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Everything north of 394 feels like a different country,” I said. “It’s just weird, because I feel anxious when I’m up there. It’s like you have to run to get out or you’ll get stuck and never leave.”
“You’re just generalizing based on our weird family,” she said, referring to the gaggle of cousins and cousins’ kids who have never left Anoka country.
“Yes, to some degree. But then look at Jenni and Mark and Jeff. They’ve never even left their parents’ houses. It’s scary.”

We had spent the day at Jodi Hanson’s mom’s house eating brats and reminiscing about the old days. About how Jodi got grounded for scratching ‘I Love Tony Cobb’ into the bumper of her dad’s truck, or about how Amber Thom was nice to me at the bus stop. I relayed the story to my friends and family:

I was so nervous for the first day of seventh grade that I didn’t sleep well, and when I woke up I watched a school bus drive by our house. In a panic, I pulled my long hair into a tight ponytail, put on my first-day of school jeans, still stiff from the store, gathered up all seven notebooks and matching folders, and made a mad dash to the bus stop across the street from our house.

There were already four or five kids there, and I stood near them with my stomach full of butterflies and watched as Mike Swafford, a bully from down the street, threw his one notebook on the ground and started going on about how he was going to mark his place in line extra early. It was obvious he was making fun of me for some sort of breech of bus-waiting behavior, teasing me about how in elementary school we would lay down something in the yard to mark our spot in line.

Most of the other kids laughed at his theatrics and I stared at my too-white shoes already hating junior high. It was then that Amber Thom, the prettiest girl in our neighborhood, came up to me.

“You’re a little early,” she said.
I stared at her.
“This is the bus for the senior high.”

I don’t know if I started to cry or if I just looked like I was going to cry, because she got on her tippy toes and reached up to pat me on the top of my head, which was no easy feat since I was six-feet tall.

“It’s going to be okay.” She smiled at me. “Your bus doesn’t come until 7:30. Go home and loosen some of these.” She made a motion to the hair by my ears. “It will look better.”

At that point I had to stop, I was choking from the remembered embarrassment and the laughter as I relayed the story. Both of my sisters had tears streaming down their face they were laughing so hard.

“Oh my god.” Jodi howled with laugher. “You were so nerdy.”
I nodded at her, my mouthful of potato salad.
“Which makes it even more disturbing that you’re the only woman I’ve ever had lesbian dreams about.”