The 10 Things

Dorothy Allison

10 Things I Have Done...

1.  Had my hand kissed by Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina.

2.  Been shot at by the irate owner of a barn, which my husband and I were scouring for dirty antiques, trinkets, mostly, thinking the barn was long-abandoned by humans and by time.  I was four months pregnant at the time.

3.  Baked a birthday cake for one of my sons, using the last of everything I had in my cupboards (we were very poor then) and having the cake turn out tasting like it was a million years old, like it had been found in a mummy case.  I cried all day and all night because none of us could bear to eat it, hungry as we were, as much as we wanted to.  For we had needed that cake.

4.  Saw a young boy fill a paper sack with water, into which he put a live fish he had just caught.  He carried the fish in the sack so gingerly and with a big smile on his face.  It said so much to me about faith.  I have always wanted to put this image in a story.

5.  Changed places with my husband in a Chevette (with a stick shift) upon seeing police lights behind us beckoning us to pull over.  My husband, who was driving, did not have a drivers license (long story).  We slid across simultaneously.  If the cop noticed, he never said anything.  He was pulling us over because the bumper was missing from our car.

6.  Had a highway patrolman drive me to my then teaching job at Heidelberg College 25 miles away because he pulled me over for a broken headlight and discovered my drivers license was expired by one day.  He said I wouldn't be allowed to move the car.  He said if a call came in on his radio, I would have to exit the car, no matter where we were.  He asked me what I taught, and when I said, "English," he said, "In school I hated English."  Later, I had a professor drive me to my car and he showed me how to travel back roads to gethome.  I traveled those same back roads for about three weeks with my expired license because I was working so much that I didn't have time to renew my license.  It was an 80 mile round-trip between Heidelberg and home.

7.  Slept in the back of a Ryder Truck somewhere in Tennessee.  My husband and I had loaded the bed last; we backed the truck up into some trees at a State Park.  We were moving to Ohio so I could study  writing.  The breeze was cool, it was a clear, beautiful night, and pine cones hit the truck all night, keeping me awake.  It is amazing the dangers you imagine in the dark, in the back of a Ryder truck, in a strange place.  We held each other; we made love.  The next morning we bathed in the lake.

PS--What was not in the Ryder: all the paintings I did as an art student, because they were all quite large and we had no room for them where we were going.  What was in the Ryder:  my memory of how my paintings looked in the big dumpster, how I thought of all the hours I had spent painting them, how it was better this way.

8.  Was in the front row of people, just five feet or so away from President Clinton when he came through Bowling Green on the Presidential train, and I waited excitedly as my son, Brian went into the train to talk to the President.  Brian had won a poster contest and the prize was to meet Clinton.

9.  Had my lifejacket accidently fastened to a sailboat I was on.  So when I was told to change sides, I couldn't, and the boat capsized, and the person I was with saved my life.

10.  For some reason, early in our marriage, bet my husband I could eat 10 Taco Bell tacos.  I lost.  I could only eat 7.