Author’s Note – This is inspired by the movie Lady Bird. If you want to play along with the group, click here.

1.  What was moving out of your parents’ home like?

It was a mixture of exciting, bittersweet and scary. Exciting because I was a newlywed and thrilled to be starting my life with my husband, bittersweet because I was moving 800 miles away and wouldn’t have the chance to see my family as often, and scary because I’d never been 100% on my own before.

2.  What makes popular kids in high school popular and how were you like or unlike them?

To be honest, I never really knew what made the popular kids popular – I just know they were and I wasn’t. Some kids were well off, and others were cheerleaders or athletes, so most of the time there was some sort of status symbol attached to them. Others were the teachers’ pets’ but who knows if they were popular because of that or they were the pets because they were popular. All I know is I refused to sell out and bully people the popular kids disliked in order to be part of the “in crowd”. That made my social life difficult, but I’m a better person today because for having taken the moral high ground back then. That being said, I do have a  somewhat healthy sense of schadenfreude when I find out some of them didn’t quite have the storybook ending they thought they would.

3.  When you were in high school where in the neighborhood did schoolmates hang out?

The only real hangout my friends had was the Chesterfield Meadows McDonalds. It was the in thing to  get dinner and hang out there after football games and most of my friends in the band went there on Friday nights until the skinhead gangs started having weekly brawls behind the adjacent strip mall. Then none of us were allowed to go there anymore.

4.  What was learning to drive like?

My mother taught me to drive on her Oldsmobile Delta 88 in an empty parking lot, so when I had to take driver’s ed with a girl who had never driven (her dad owned a Mercedes and didn’t want her to ruin it) and was so short she had to sit on a phone book to see over the steering wheel, I was freaked out. When we went to the Public Safety Complex known as “Safety Town” I failed the driver’s test because I couldn’t back in a figure eight. To this day, I don’t even parallel park, so yeah that was a really important driving skill, wasn’t it?

5.  What were your most and least dificult subjects in high school?

Trigonometry was the most difficult class I took. Not only was it completely irrelevant to what I wanted to do with my life but math wasn’t my strongest suit, and my teacher sucked. We were all convinced she had class outlines on Post It notes on the ceiling because she never looked at us when she taught. My easiest classes were history, government and English because those were subjects I loved and enjoyed the most.

BONUS QUESTIONS I MISSED OVER THANKSGIVING!!!!

1.  What would you sarcastically like to thank your local government for?

Thank you, Amherst Board of Selectmen, for making Amherst a sanctuary town and putting the rights of non-citizens over Americans.

2. What would you sarcastically like to thank your body for?

Thank you, body, for aching when it’s cold and damp. It’s nice to know you think I’m 90 when I’m only 43.

3.  What would you sarcastically like to thank your neighbors for?

Thank you, neighbors, for sharing your  pot parties with us. Nothing says apartment togetherness like the green fog that wafts from your door to the basement on a weekly basis.

4.  What would you sarcastically like to thank the Internet for?

Thank you , Internet, for invading our lives and pandering to the absolute worst in American society. How did we ever hate each other without you?

5. What would you sarcastically like to thank November for?

Thank you, November, for going from warm to cold in twenty minutes. I’ve missed having to wear a suit of armor when I leave the house.