"Let's Skip, it will be EPIC"

Today was a fabulous day.  Gorgeous.  Even if you love winter, today made you appreciate spring.  

I stopped for gas and because I'm old and have to pee every five miles, I went into the gas station and there they were...young boys...just out of school, top off the Jeep and they were gleeful.


One was on his phone (shocker) telling his buddy to meet them at the beach.  "Yep, bring your board.  Later."

And then he said it, "Let's skip school tomorrow, all of us, it will be epic."

As I stood there paying for my gas, waiting for the chip to transmit, my brain went to another place, another time, in slow motion.

We were three juniors and Mary Sue a senior..  We had "senioritis" when we were freshman.  So here was the plan:

1.  My mom was working the polls ALL day.  6a-7p.  Clear.
2.  Meet at the Clover Drive bus stop. Joan, Mary Sue and Stephanie  
3.  Walk to Kavolsick park and meet up with Barb S.
4.  Go to my house and gather drinks and food.  Make sure my personal phone was unplugged from the wall so the school could not call.  CRITICAL!
5.  Lay in sun from 9a-4pm.
6.  Girls go home and act like they were in school all day.

The purpose of this "skip" day was Joan and Mary Sue were in a wedding and needed sun.  "If you cannot tone it, tan it."  We needed sun.

And, equally as important, they were in charge of decorating the going away car with peach tissue flowers and we needed to sit in the sun and make about three hundred peach tissue paper flowers.

Perfect plan.  Perfect.  What could go wrong?

We got to my house and I ran upstairs and pulled the plug.  We were golden.

We started cooking some leftover spaghetti for a snack and planning our day.  It was THE fabulous day.  No humidity.  Perfect day.  We were going to have so much fun.

The windows were open and the breeze was blowing in when we heard the noise, not just any noise, THE noise.  The noise of my dad's tractor.  OMG, panic.  He was not supposed to be home all day.  And the noise was getting closer.  And so we did what four girls would do, we ran.  Upstairs.  Into closets.

What the hell was my dad doing home during the day.  Granted, it was only 7:45am but what was he doing?  

We were upstairs in the closet, losing it and then this happened....

My mammaw and my aunt showed up at our house.  Who knows why but they did.
We NEVER locked out doors and they just walked in to do who knows what.

And now, the work started.  Here we were, in my closet, losing it, I pee my pants and we have got to be quiet as mice because we were now surrounded by the two women who should have been FBI agents.

And they lingered.  And lingered.  And lingered.

We had to make a decision.  Do we stay or should we go now?  Do we risk getting caught or do we leave and salvage our plan?

And as we decided to leave, my mamaw and aunt left.  

Two down, one to go.  But my dad wasn't budging.

So we bolted.  Out the door and across the neighbor's yard and into the woods.

We met up and just looked at one another.  Now what?

No sun in the woods.

We had one option.  One.  

The dump.  Behind out development was a garbage/fill area.  We called it the dump.  Trash, brush, Playboy Magazines, a pond with tadpoles and frogs and stuff.  


The Dump was notorious for kids going down there without permission.  They went because there were Play Boy magazines.  Sex Ed with a pond with tadpoles.  Did it get better than this?



  No shade.  No chairs, no drinks, no bathrooms.  The Dump.  We were spending our day at the Dump .  Still a good plan.  We would get sun and get those damn flowers done for the wedding.  

And we did.

We sat, talked, laughed, peed behind trash, laughed, peeled layers of tissue and made flowers and laughed.  Did I mention that we laughed? 

But a funny thing happened that day, we got sun.  Tons of sun.  Blistering sun.  

And the peach flowers were done.

When I got home around four and locked in the mirror, the absolute horror hit me.  How was going to hide this sunburn?  I will just take a shower and go to be at 7pm so I won't see my mom and maybe it will fade by the time I get up.  Yep, that's it.

Except...my sunburn did not fade.  My mom, who very seldom got up with me during those years (so we both would start our days off well)  was up when I came downstairs.

I will never forget her asking "how did you get that sunburn?"

I lied.  "PE class, field hockey."


As I wrote this, I now realize my mom most likely knew.  And she spread the word.  Oh the power of the mom intuition and the mother network. 

It was EPIC and those tissue flowers, awesome.