I’m convinced the worst trauma my siblings and I endured was on those long and bumpy bus rides to and from school every day. My mother’s neglect or my step-father’s indifference really didn’t come close to the insults we experienced on the poorly supervised bus. Our bus driver… Read full post »

Let me start first with I'm sorry. Let me follow it up by saying I love you. Now if you're thinking this sounds like I'm trying to get back a long, lost love, well it kind of is. I haven't posted on Open Salon in over a year. You’re asking yourself,/… Read full post »

                  Bullying has always been a serious problem. In recent decades psychologists have written hundreds of books on the subject, offering hundreds of methods for dealing with the problem. I’m almost… Read full post »

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            There is something I wanted so badly as a child but never had: an imaginary friend. I was absolutely fascinated with the premise of having this friend who could be eight feet t/… Read full post »

       Children are nothing if they are not literal. My mom once told our neighbor Donald, “See you later.” When we returned home after their long conversation, I all of a sudden began questioning my m… Read full post »

On Sunday nights, Katie, my sister, loved to watch the TV movie of the week. This particular Sunday she was especially excited because the movie was about a girl that faked a pregnancy so that her boyfriend would stay with her. The girl cut out circular shapes of a quilted… Read full post »

My family’s motto was strangely very similar to that one of Las Vegas: What happens in our family stays in our family. My mother said this dozens of times throughout the years urging us to not go around spreading our secrets to the small population in which we lived. However, looking/… Read full post »

Recently I was pulled away from Open Salon for several weeks. Read to the end to find out why. 

            I’ve never been one to believe in destiny. I do believe that everything happens for a reason, that time isn’t li… Read full post »

As a child I loathed the process of losing a tooth. Nothing seemed more unnatural than my own tooth trying to disconnect and wiggle itself out of my mouth. Some people deny hair loss, wrinkles, or growing old. I denied the experience of tooth loss.  When a tooth would jiggle/… Read full post »

  

It was dark when we got home that autumn night. The rain had just begun to pour as we rounded the last stretch of road before our house. Katie, my sister, had the shivering animal bundled up in her shirt and as we ran the little dog whimpered… Read full post »

           There is one thing I know now, which for years I was completely uncertain about: I am my mother’s child. From an early age I had this ever growing suspicion that I had either been adopted from an orphanage or kidnapped away from the y… Read full post »

I was out of breath by the time I reached our front door. Thankfully my pursuers hadn’t dared to set foot on our property, but I ran at full speed down our driveway anyway and didn’t rest until I was safely locked indoors. Heaving with exhaustion and fear, my hands… Read full post »

The last line from The Great Gatsby has always stuck with me, “So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Heavy stuff now, but when I was 15 and read it for the first time I thought, poor Gatsby, how sad that he lost… Read full post »

The other day I was having a conversation with this weirdo, who you will learn has the reasoning skills of a flip flop and a personality to match. Being the thoughtful person that I am I probed a little to find a topic of interest for us to/… Read full post »

As a child I was utterly convinced that one day I’d be abandoned in some grocery store, thereby having to fend for myself for the rest of my life. I was just sure that if I let my mother out of my sight then she’d make a dash for the car,… Read full post »