When I grow up I want to be…. Monday Listicles..

Stasha is back this week with another top ten list of things. Kind of like the David Letterman of the blog world. Only she has better writers HA!!!

This week the topic is what we wanted to be when we were kids.. you know me I can’t just do the list.. really.. I have to go deeper.

1.  The next Patsy Cline. stop laughing I am serious. Yes the woman was dead before I was born, but I knew her. I can name you every song she ever sang off the first 3 notes of it alone. Stalk much lol. Anyway when I was around 6 or so my mom and aunt opened a small restaurant in our even smaller town. But it was a success because hey they could cook, and everyone knew them and liked having a great place to come out of the fields and eat. No, not children of the corn type out of the fields geesh. I was there every day and all weekend. I would pick up plates and talk to people and listen to the jukebox. I would learn nearly every song that was in it before the guy came back to change the records out to whatever was new in the Top 40 list. I remember him because he was missing part of his arm about 2 inches below his elbow, and he would tuck his clipboard with papers under that arm. He would come in and ask Mom  what new songs I had learned and began making a game of it. He would rattle off the number for the song to see if I really knew it. I usually did. I loved to sing, about as much as I loved animals. Elvis, Patsy, Dolly, Tanya you name them I memorized them. Complete with the Elvis leg thing and the lip curl.  Right across from this restaurant was the small fire house, where you could find Sleepy, Mousy and Bobby every day just sitting in the driveway of the firehouse under the branches of the big shade tree that had limbs that reached over the whole fire house and driveway for shade. Every day I would go over and get a quarter from Bobby to sing. Every day he would give me a peck on the cheek and tell me he would buy my records when I made it big and to not forget them. Every day I believed him. Sleepy was well, sleepy, he was always dozing off and anywhere, comfort was not an issue. Mousey was Sleepy’s brother and the sheriff. I could sit in his car and play with the CB or lights. Bobby was the former sheriff, now a policeman for the city. I can remember the smell of mom’s soup beans in the restaurant and Aunt Peg’s fried cornbread to go with it.  I wish I could go back for one day. Mom and Aunt Peg are gone, as are Sleepy and Mousey. The firehouse was rebuilt and the shade tree was taken down to make room for the newer, bigger place. A bench was erected for Sleepy because he was there every day, sleeping in the shade of that tree, or in the firehouse napping. I miss it all

2. Veterinarian . I have a love of animals. All of them. I am forever being the rescuer of unwanted animals. My dogs don’t bark unless they sense trouble. They talk to me in half howl half growl. My cats think they are dogs. I have taken them in when they were furless and every bone showing and turned them around in a week. My baby is my animal whisperer. Like me the most vicious animal will lay at his feet and simply lick him till he can’t breathe. Animals were the first things I revealed my secrets to, telling them of my uncles sexual abuse and his son following in his footsteps. They have been my confidantes for my entire life..

3. A mom. One who would fight tooth and nail for her child and never leave them in a situation of abuse, regardless of who the person was. My child comes first and I will slice you dead if you hurt one and go to prison gladly to ensure their safety. Period.

4. A princess who was kidnapped from somewhere far and foreign, with a family desperately searching for me. In the times when my mom was taking us out in the middle of the night to find my father and his latest fling in their motel. When I was continually abused by family members, but my mother dealing with her own turmoil and demons was unable to save me. When my mom and dad’s fights turned into battles and I came in to find her with him pinned to the wall with a knife to his throat, my arrival the only thing that stopped it. I would swear I was stolen and this was not my life. It couldn’t be my life.

5. A writer. Which I guess in a way is where I am now. I would spend hours in books like Little house on the Prairie and Encyclopedia Brown, Detective. I would spend hours in a chair reading them over and over. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, all would take me to other places, I could close my eyes and breathe the air of the place they were. I wanted that ability, to move people with my words. To show them an escape route from life and all the things that sometimes come with it.

6. Older. Being the baby by 11 years to my next oldest sisters I missed so much with my dad. The marriage well on the rocks before I was 6 or 7 they got things I did not. His presence at their graduations, weddings, fishing trips. By the time I was old enough to do all that he was gone, remarried and the animosity between him and mom so great that a visit with him meant a month of harassment for me from her. If I was older I would have been like my sisters and on my own and past the point of needing a father like that.

7. A doctor. Despite my fear of needles and pain. I am a helper by nature. It is what it is.

8 Therapist. Although some would say I am one now. An old soul my memaw would call it. The ability to read people and know what they need, where they are wounded and the words to heal them. It is one of my greatest gifts in my mind, whether it is a song or a piece I wrote to know it spoke to them means everything.

I got nothing else.. I know sad right.. So go check out everyone else’s list and link up..