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| A Story As a child I loved school, I would have gone every day if I could. However as a child I was unable to attend High School because back then you had to buy all your books and school supplies and we simply did not have the money. So I got married at 16 and had 3 children by the time I was 21. At age 27, I decided to go back to school. The first year went fine, I did two years in one. I worked in a party store six days a week from 6 am till 3 pm. My husband, William got the girls up and off to school before he left for work. I got home when they did and got dinner ready so I could be in class from 7:30 till 11:30. I did this 5 days a week then only had to work on Sat. Sunday was my day off. By the middle of the second year, I had enough credits to graduate by the end of the year. Then things started going kinda crazy at home. First our furnace went and while we were looking for a new one, we received notice that urban renewal was coming through and since our house was an older one and too far back on the lot we would have to sell it to this government group. It would be torn down. Silly to put money into a house that we had 6 months to vacate. Later we went through this big fight with the government agency. It seems we were victims of a scam when we bought our house. It was appraised at 10 thousand more than it was worth and the appraiser was getting kickbacks from the real estate agency. The government was now forcing us to sell it for 6 thousand less than we still owed on it. We went to an attorney. We were advised to move out and let the bank repo our home. That hurt! Sure didn't do our credit any good either. But back to my story. It was in dead of winter in Michigan and we had to have heat. We rented an apt in a very rough neighborhood in Highland Park Mi. We only expected to be there for a couple of months and we drove the kids back and forth to their school. I hired a baby sitter for after school and on weekends, So basically we were just sleeping there. In the beginning I drove myself to school but then William decided to keep the car and take the kids to a friends house while I was in school. At first it was a night or two a week, then every night. Now I trusted my husband and our friends had 3 children same age as ours. What I didn't know was that her husband had gone on the night shift. One day my daughter told me she did not want to go there any more because they had to stay in the play room while Daddy and Sue watched tv in the living room. When I asked my husband about it he got mad said I was being silly. I told him I would drive myself to school and he could stay home with the kids. He went down and removed something from the car so that when I started to leave it would not start. I was so mad I left walking! It was very dark. Lots of old empty buildings along the walk and about 3 miles from the school. He got the car started and the kids inside and started after me. I had already walked a mile. He was driving along begging me to get in the car and I was ignoring him. Then my girls started crying begging me to get in. Finally I did and I took them home, went on to school and he never went back to the friends house again unless I was there. I never told him but I was totally terrified walking along that empty dead street. I was just too stubborn to turn back. Besides he had no business spending the evenings with another woman, even if it was only as friends. Oh, by the way, She was a blond! LOL! I graduated that May at the top of my class. My whole family was there cheering for me. |