Two months before my sixteenth birthday, my mother placed me in a juvenile delinquent home for girls who lived in a private house in the same neighborhood.
There were five other girls besides me, all of whom had questions about historical behavior or their parents simply didn’t want them.
A house made of cedar wood and giant Brown Recluse spiders in the rafters I found later to my horror. One crazy roommate I thought would be cute once put one of these creatures on my bed.
The first time I met the residents and the staff before I moved, my mother and I were given a two-story house that included six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a ree room, a dining area, a large backyard, a garage, small kitchen, and a living room. In girls decorate my hair and I tried to act tough like they were but inside I was scared and I didn’t belong in this place either. I recently sabotaged my second home placement with a couple in their 30s who couldn’t have kids but always wanted to adopt. I was alone in that at home two months when my mother made plan to have me in this facility after getting through the holidays with me in his house.
It was January 1982 and I and the blue note, tossed a suitcase, were moving to yet another institution – the Group Cobb-Douglas Girls Home in Douglasville, Georgia. I transferred to Lithia Springs High School; a huge school that they later said if it ever caught fire it would simply explode because of how it was built. The day I started there, a memorial service was being held for three students killed in a driving accident. Drunk and noble and one of the girls celebrating her 16th birthday.
It was bad enough that the name of the house group was written on the white van going around, which meant that every time we got on or off the bus, we were met with curious stares by the other kids. This place was in a fair system too, much like my other places, where you earned privileges and your character was promoted or leveled. A newbie like me started at the punishment level, not really a good morale, I thought. These are no privileges. The age bracket was 12-17, but even if you had your license, you couldn’t have a car there. Later that year, I pushed the envelope with my sister and I advocated with the staff so that I could work my first real job in Six Flags, with a ride-hailing service. The staff didn’t know what to think of me, the intellectual juvenile-delinquency who worked in the summer and took to work. lessons in Atlanta.
What is wrong with this picture?
I took the MARTA train twice a week to classes in the city, much to the chagrin of the staff in the group home, and although I couldn’t manage my way out of a paper bag, according to my teacher, the practice was fun and helped me forget where I lived. Of course, in my office in Six Flags I forgot more and more often I tried to push things even further, coming on late and staying working nights trying to close the public seats or to open them only to workers. One time I went to a movie midnight with a guy and thinking that a surrogate parent would be cool, I thought I would like it. It wouldn’t hurt if I stayed past curfew. I was wrong and I was given a level of punishment for this charade.
Another time I stayed at a co-worker’s house after work when I don’t have a ride home and spent the night there. I missed the first day of school and was once again troubled at home. In its fall I wanted to continue working there, but the staff would have no part. But I bailed anyway at the last minute and told my boss I couldn’t continue working there.
There were many odd girls in the group at home. Beatrix, a religious fanatic, was tall, shy, and had a speech impediment. She was not a juvenile delinquent; His parents just didn’t want it. He doesn’t agree with other girls, of course, and is always avoided, even by staff. Sandra was a blonde who wanted to be a hairdresser. She was kind of hard around the edges, light skinned, and big. Very large. It was also my roommate who once got into a stupid argument against me. Pam was tall, thin, frizzy hair and loved to smoke pot. She had also acquired hard drugs in the past and was quite popular with the other girls. Dionysius was a short and thin girl with a witty sarcasm. Not attractive, she wore a lot of makeup and loved to go around saying, “I hate you,” mercilessly whenever someone complained about something.
Rhonda had herpes, lived there with her younger sister Kim later, and had a troubled boyfriend. Tammy, my roommate, was shy, funny, odd, eccentric, and later tried to accuse the staff of being possessed by the devil. She was operated on and placed in a mental institution after a memorable night when the staff and girls were taken half to death. His sister Reba later came to live there as well, and had a big time drug problem. She and Tammy were close. Dina was a 13-year-old chubby whose parents later turned her in to the state in a sudden decision that devastated her, and she was later moved to a juvenile facility. Cindy, another resident, was perhaps my most hostile. She had white hair, given to African-American boys, and she was the most unsightly in the window game of the crowd. It was a very friendly home for the parents’ daughters, Janet and the two of them spent hours applying makeup doing hair and talking, listening to rap music. He wore skin tight jeans, heavy black eyeliner, and had a big smile that I still remember today. Rachel was 13 and knew a lot for her age. With one tell you could be innocent enough but you were taken away too young.
The plan is for me to be there for two years until I graduate from high school. I only wound up staying a year and a half and in that time I saw many girls come and go. I was known as a veteran because no one stayed more than a few months.
My saving grace was my sister Cindy, who visited, called, wrote letters, and got staff to visit her twice in Florida. Sometime during hello visiting the dorm in college I took some classes with her, one of which was Psychology. The professor introduced a group of houses and asked the class if anyone knew what they were. They all sat in silence and I saw my sister. I wasn’t going to raise my hand and say, “Yes, I’m quite familiar with them. I’m in one,” so I looked down at the floor, awkwardly. Cindy and I talked about it later and how weird that experience was. She even went to lessons with me once when she visited in the summer. She also picked me up with her boyfriend who visited her from college and we all want to go out to eat and see. movies frequently.
The group had two parents’ rooms in their home – one for the weekdays, one for the week. Nancy and Robert, weekenders, had a six-year-old red-haired, freckled son, John, who played softball. He was strong, and all the girls loved him like a little brother. Nancy chain-smoked, favorite girls who do things differently, and had a memorable smile. And her husband was quiet and just went away with all that he had said. Sandy and her husband, a couple of former hippies, were working the weekend shift. I did not get along with her husband at all. He liked to embarrass me in school by saying hi to me that at that time in my teenage mind I was able to say, “Hello, I’m the parent of your house”, because I didn’t want anyone to know. He also taught math, my worst subject. They had a baby girl bay and later one on the way. To this day cranberry juice and bagels and cream cheese remind me of Sandy and her husband. But her husband kept quiet and was the main one who observed the rules. If Sandy noticed something or found out about something she didn’t like, she would just tell him and he would take care of it.
The steward was a big African-American woman named Willie and she didn’t love me and although she loved my mother and my mother said she loved me. So he used to get mad at some girls when he would interrupt her cleaning by walking across that freshly strewn kitchen floor. He hated when they were lying on the boat with baby oil alone and he had hoarse rays and they liked it locked up from those times. Once in a while they would take the substitute parents home for the weekend when one of the other spouses was busy, but this was rare. On one of these lucky occasions we had two women, also hippies, who were thus placed and made dishes vegetarian All weekend we went to see “The World According to Garp” and to a health food store, the latter of which none of us had ever been. We didn’t know what to think of them, but we loved them.
We never saw each other again.
Between school, decorating groups (how much I hate it), individual projects, field trips to the movies, clubs, shopping; store, swimming, softball games, and various other events, I had a really good time at the bottom of the house playing Bumper in the pool, which we did a lot of time. There was a stereo, washers, dryers, wardrobes, bathrooms, furniture, and fridges with two adjacent living rooms. room area. Smoking wasn’t allowed in the rooms, but he always sneaked into the smokers’ rooms and did it anyway. If they have been caught, the punishment in the Level.
Next we took up cooking and grocery shopping was always a chore. Willie was not physically fit to unload the first ones when she had to carry everyone in bags up two or three flights of small stairs he bought Then we had to explain everything that took a little while.
Everyone ever fought on one TV. We had a living room so I could rarely watch anything I wanted.
The next facility was the planning staff. Debbie was a chipper who always had a smile on her face and would tell you anything you couldn’t complain about. Dale, the house manager, later worked with my sister and told her, “He could never figure out Terri. She was an intellectual delinquent.” Martha was a counselor I started seeing at 12. Donna was a receptionist with a wild streak who raised a little girl of her own.
Once the girls all went to Sex Whip before I started working there and it was tolerable. During this time I also worked for a game and became interested in drama as an aspiring actress, adding to my ambition to write one day. But I had no acting talent, and I was already deceiving myself. I also tried out for the majorettes, another dream of mine, but didn’t make the cut. The tryout song was “Alius Alius Biting the Dust”.
I never told my friends where I lived until I had one at all, but then I didn’t have many friends anyway but I cared about my teacher friends. I hired one counselor at school to visit my house frequently and hang out with her and the kids. She even went with her husband once to pick up their son at the airport. His son was in the international boys’ choir, practicing a private school, and he had a major part in ours. high school production of “Music Man” in which I played the townspeople.
During the spring of my sophomore year of high school I came to “park” with a guy I tried and kissed but that was it. After that I stayed in trouble a lot of late. I just want a normal teenage life really, but every time the bus cuts me off I’d rather walk down the block so the other kids wouldn’t see where I lived. Sandra, one of the residents, was laughing at me and telling me that the people on the bus knew about us and that they were wasting their time. Another time I tried to get out of the camp we were on, but they called me anyway and I had a miserable time. My stepfather is out of the bag cat when he finds the house called the parent’s house I asked. to ride there without their permission. I was just trying to lead a normal life again. I’m just like in Black Plague all the way camping by the staff and other girls doing a long weekend.
In the fall I tried my best to fit in with mini wings and baby-shoes”>bay doll shoes style but I could never pull off the look even though I was thin, what I saw was good in the magazine I never saw good in me in any way.
I became friends with a drill team member, Penny, whom I admired. It was brilliant, the result, very accurate, and popular. I don’t know why she was talking to me but she did. I called her once during the holidays and she told me that her life was not perfect because her father was cheating on her mom. That birthday, my first from the group at home, I got all tons of stuff and I went to visit my home. mom and step dad only in a few days. I hated coming back to home and it was so hard when it was time to come back. I started to see girls leave all the time after they worked their way up to the top level and I realized that no matter how hard I worked I was never going to leave because I signed a contract saying I wanted to stay for two years.
I began to feel, “What’s the point?” and that life was superfluous.
In January 1983 I marked my one year anniversary in the group at home, much to my dismay. Nothing could really scare me here except for a girl in the house named Cindy, who was going to go to the news later so I was so excited. When he left these, he was lifted like a weight. He was such a bully, a bully and he could give me a look that would kill me. Anything and everything ticked her off. A girls name Sharon boarded later that year. He had a juvenile record but we got to be good friends. She was dating a guy named David, whose mother later decided to adopt me and give me her son. Sharon, who was about 15, seemed nice enough, not that he was a juvenile delinquent, but he was always in trouble with the staff, which was not difficult to do.
At one point I found staff writing lies about me in their daily logs – all kinds not only about me but about others. I told lies, I told lies, and I made plans for the most unrighteous and bald lies about the ways in which they behaved as if they had been engaged. I was surprised, but then I was furious when he caught me and put me on the punishment level. No one believed the truth. I became even more bitter. In the process of living in my house I became completely closed unless I knew it. I became friends with a couple of pots at school and started running, which I did for six months and stopped with no problem. I’ve never been addicted, but thankfully I’m so naive that once a 12-year-old drug addict sold me Red Hots. and my friend would have told me that I had. We used to do drugs in the baths and we were so bold before the prince’s office.
In my time, the parents of the second old foster, Vites were trying to adopt a baby, they were alone. problems with the adoption agent, because when I lived there, they couldn’t handle me, so the agent’s staff wrote in their file that they couldn’t handle the kids. A former student of mine, Peggy, asked if I would write a letter to the agency, explaining that it was not. It was their fault that I had problems with them, and I was just acting rebellious and angry. I quickly agreed, wrote a letter, gave it to my mom and wished her the best. My mother never delivered the letter, because she was jealous of the Vine, although she did not want me in her house, so she took them away as a child for a long time. Peggy, thinking that she should not write a letter to begin with, was angry with me, and refused to speak to me again.
One fateful night in the group home, the other girls thought it would be funny to make Beatrice one of the girls, think she was In bed he gets wet in his sleep. and so they all mixed it in a glass, and poured it out in their bed, when they slept soundly. They told me to hold the blanket which I didn’t want to do. But they threatened me with physical force, so that I, as I did against my will, with much vexation and crime. I later told the parent’s house about it, after I had sent these girls away, about a year later, and the parent’s house made me call Beatrice, who now lived elsewhere, and tell me what I had done. As she said to the Saint: He had mercy on me, but he did not take away my guilt.
During the spring of 1983, I was skinny, wearing skin-tight pants, my shirt down, listening to the Def Leppard album “Photograph” and He had my room. I was moved by the fact that only a higher level of girls could do it, but it took forever. Then Sharon became my roommate and my life was never the same. She introduced me to her boyfriend’s mom, Jane McHatten, whom I loved from the beginning and whom I wanted to adopt. He would hug me and take me with his family to flea markets, to eat and visit. Her son was in the hospital with hernia surgery. She never liked Sharon apparently but she liked me from the start. His daughter Robin became pregnant at 18 and gave birth to his son while still unmarried. I loved this family and wanted to be a part of them. David, Mrs. McHatten’s son, was the boy’s mamma, and his mother doted on him. The family all gather in the living rooms and watch, pop popcorn, and just be like a normal family. I never wanted to leave but always to return home to this group.
Once upon a time my fate was set without command. Sharon, on the way from Excursions, sitting in the front row, sitting in the back, started whispering crazy stuff to me like group housing, government facilities, fire. I thought she was just kidding, or just high on some medicine, but then she said she had stolen gasoline cans and stuffed them behind the seats.
When we arrived at the house, all the intervening ones from the first train were alone, in a mysterious way.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“There’s only one way we’re going to get out of here,” he said, gesturing to the dog.
“Are you crazy?” I asked, now I am afraid of this young woman.
I backed up as I watched her pour a bunch of gasoline into the room.
“Yes, let him do this,” he said gently.
She did not fire the match. She just moved upstairs inside the house, leaving me to sniff the nest.
I told him that he would like to go to the parent’s house in the room, but I said everything and went to my room.
When they found out what he was doing and planning, he was arrested, of course, but he was dragged to the councilor’s office to ask where my father was sitting and I demanded to know my part in this decision. I told them that I knew nothing before the time, which is partly true; I didn’t know she was serious, I didn’t know she was pouring gasoline in the room, but she somehow got me involved and decided to take me with her. When the staff didn’t believe me, they kicked me out and I was going to live with my father, who sexually abused me for three weeks, until I escaped again with the help of my sister. Sharon was sent to juvenile court and her bonds with her boyfriend and her mom were cut, of course. I wanted to stay in touch with the family and Mrs. McHatten still wanted to adopt me, but my father would have no part of it. I was really sad about all of this and never seeing her family again.
I can still remember what she looked like and how she was to me, her infectious smile, how lucky I was to be able to spend time with her once, and how she hugged me, smiling back and forth.
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if that family had adopted me. Did I marry his son and have a bunch of kids? Or was his house just another stop in my young life like the others?
