By the time I graduated from high school at age eighteen, my sister Stephanie was already married, had two little boys and she and her husband were living over in Spokane. Stephanie was nothing short of a tramp all throughout high school and had gotten pregnant on her senior prom night. She is now twenty-six and expecting her third child. My brother Ryan enlisted in the army right after high school; after serving briefly in Afghanistan, he was redeployed to Germany where he still lives today with his wife and their two month old daughter. Mom and Daddy had worked so hard all of our lives to provide us with all the things that they didn't have and tirelessly labored to instill the value of a good education in all of us. Needless to say, they were more than a little disappointed when Stephanie and Ryan began making several of the same mistakes they had.
Now, I had always looked up to my two older siblings, particularly Stephanie. She was very smart and beautiful and she seemed to always have time for me and had all the answers to my questions. Ryan was my hero and he would always go out of his way to protect me. With Mom and Daddy working as much as they did, Stephanie and Ryan often took on the roles as parents to me and they too, like Mom and Daddy, saw something very different about me; not that it wasn't blatantly obvious, for I am clearly the runt of the litter. Just to illustrate, Daddy is 6'5", 252lbs of solid bone and muscle, and Mom is a formidable woman of 6'1". I'm not going to give her specific weight, for that, as Mom always taught us, is a carnal sin. Let's just say that my Mom is a beautiful woman, perfectly and sexily proportionate to her height with big beautiful 35 D-cups and all the voluptuous curves and contours of a hard working, blue collar goddess. Stephanie is a virtual clone of our mother, standing an even 6'0" with solid 34 D-cups (probably 36 now that they're filling with milk) and a body holding its own very well despite having two kids and currently being knocked up with her third. Ryan is my father all over again, standing just an inch shorter at 6'4" and weighing in at about 240lbs.
Then there is me! I'm barely 5'2" and weigh 100lbs soaking wet. I don't know if it's still considered a carnal sin for a woman to openly confess her own weight, but then again: Who gives a shit about a mere 100 fucking pounds? If it wasn't for the fact that I have my father's eyes and chin, my mother's gorgeous auburn hair and alabaster skin; not to mention the same blood type, you'd think I was adopted or that my mother had a one nightstand with the Butcher, the Baker or the Candlestick Maker. When people would see the five of us together, they couldn't get over how tiny I was compared to the family of Goliath's that surrounded me and I was given the so called loving nickname "David" by the extended family and close family friends. And while being the smallest and the youngest in the family had its disadvantages, it also afforded me seemingly extra special treatment, attention and love from the rest of the family and friends. This made Stephanie and Ryan jealous from time to time; especially Ryan, for he suffered big time from the middle child syndrome. But despite everything, I always knew that I was deeply loved and treasured by my family and they all knew that there was something very special about me from day one.
My teen years were difficult for I was not nearly as beautiful as Mom and Stephanie; at least, so I believed. I didn't date that much throughout high school, and even with Stephanie's reputation as a slut preceding me, guys just weren't interested. Of course after the Stephanie years, Ryan was like a faithful and overly protective guard dog when it came to me and guys might just have been afraid to approach me. Not that it mattered, for I wasn't nearly confident enough in myself or my looks to have any interest in them. You see, while Mom and Stephanie both flaunted eye popping, D-cup cleavage, I barely filled in B-cups. And while they both had narrow and mature faces with perfect noses and high cheek bones, my face would have been better suited on a baby faced twelve year old and even had the button nose to boot. The only things that I had going for me were my hair, my skin and my downstairs. As I said, I have my mother's gorgeous auburn hair that is full, shiny and flowing down to the middle of my back and I also inherited her heavenly soft and smooth alabaster skin. Then there are my legs; though they're short, they're perfectly curved, immaculately shaped and sexily defined with exquisite muscle. And if you think those sound good, you ought to see my ass; wrapped up in tight designer jeans, its lethal!
Another reason I'd didn't date much was because I was, for the most part, a nerd. I loved school, loved learning and loved books more than both the former. When I was a sophomore, I started working as a student aide in the library before, during and after school and that didn't exactly help in attracting guys. I was fascinated with mechanics and how things worked. Daddy and Ryan had taught me everything they knew about engines; cars, pickups, motorcycles and eighteen wheelers; everything from minor repairs, to overhauls to complete rebuilds. Then the older I got, the more I became drawn to engineering; the mechanics and genius that goes into the actual construction of massive engines; everything from eighteen wheelers to military and civilian aircraft and even the Space Shuttle. Working in the library, I began reading every book I could get my hands on about engineering and my interest was leaning more and more to aeronautics and the space program. I developed a passion for aerospace and astronomy. By the time I was a junior, Stephanie and Ryan had both moved out of the house; and even though Mom and Daddy had always hoped that all three of us would go to college, they were not really surprised when Stephanie and Ryan didn't. And despite their dreams for all of us to continue our education, the truth of the matter was that Mom and Daddy could only really afford to send one of us and I think they were secretly elated when it turned out to be me. I sent out applications to some of the biggest universities in the country that had accredited Aerospace and Engineering schools. I even applied to the Air Force Academy, though I knew that I would never pass the physical exams due to my poor eye sight and my history of asthma.
But then came the accident on the docks. It happened in the early summer between my junior and senior year. I won't go into the details, but to make a long and grizzly story short, all my hopes and dreams of going to college vanished in one fell swoop. Daddy was badly injured and was no longer able to work. Though he had medical insurance, it didn't cover everything and that combined with the everyday expenses of life sucked my college fund completely dry within six months and we were on welfare by years end. I was devastated.
In total despair for most of the summer and into the fall, I figured that I might as well go ahead and get pregnant just like Stephanie did. But thanks to Ryan's overprotection, my lack of self-confidence and my overall lack of interest in dating, I couldn't even do that. And thank God, because early in January of my senior year, Mrs. Fortune; the librarian at my high school, proved herself to be my guardian angel. One afternoon after school, she caught me curled up in a ball and sobbing like a baby in the back corner of the library. After snuggling me for awhile, I finally calmed down enough to speak and I ended up pouring my heart out to her. Within a few days, I got a phone call from the Dean of Admissions at the University of North Dakota. The man introduced himself as Thomas Fortune, Mrs. Fortune's brother-in-law. He told me that he had received a call from her a few days earlier regarding a very special student named Natalie Bennett who dreamed of one day becoming an Aerospace Engineer or even an astronaut. After hearing my situation, he had asked for my academic records to be faxed out immediately. Then after reviewing them for a couple of days and pulling a few small strings, he was now calling to offer me a full academic scholarship to the University of North Dakota. He went on to tell me that UND has produced some of NASA's greatest minds, for it housed one of the most highly accredited Schools of Aerospace Sciences in the country. I burst into tears and could hardly even speak as I saw all my dreams being miraculously resurrected right before my very eyes. Things like this don't happen! But some how it was! And to me of all people! The following August, I loaded up my beat up old Chevy Nova and headed east on Interstate 90 out of Seattle toward my very bright future, which now began in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
In North Dakota