The 99 Cent store had our Figgy Newtons which came in many flavors. Some of my best memories with my little son made those challenging days exceptionally good indeed!
Picture by papa John Cornell. First Son JF 1992
After the Punk scene, the East coast, getting married again and having my first babe, I went to Los Angeles Valley College. I had a few courses under my belt. Yet Los Angeles Valley College had an opening for childcare. So, I enrolled. After this I transferred as a junior into CSUN.
Valley college was exceedingly difficult for me. I was older than most students and I found many of the professors my age or younger. Incognito and acting dumb to get a humanities degree was not worth it. Yet in time as I entered higher learning one must have all the accredited courses.
One course was a journalism course. Having a 21-year-old ask me if I could answer the phone and take notes boiled my blood or having a journalism professor reach into the bottom of her big bag to find my ungraded paper was a wonderment, where the torching of her body came to mind. I waited half the semester for a grade on that paper to pass her course.
Nevertheless, the worst was the power play by a twenty something photographer who thought he was the guy. He would stand behind me in class and smell my newly washed hair. It was long and red back then.
He said he liked what I wrote,
“But it does not go well with my image. I will have to take hers instead.”
As she sat in his lap. He looked up at me as if he thought I was going to take on this sex challenge.
I realized I was dealing with children and walked away. It was a strange juxtapose of power… once having my good share of power to having none.
As having a child. I thought I would be treated with due respect and honor. I loved every second of being a mother of two babes. Yet I was treated like the worst of the worst by most people. All this holy mother crap melted my being.
The only sacredness was how my babes and I loved each other.
Walking down Van Nuys Blvd. with my oldest in the front seat of a shopping cart made my days of cruising the same Blvd. as a teenager seem surreal.
