Thanks for the feedback on Maria's Misconception's Parts 1 and 2 (2014). For those of you wondering if I fell off the face of the earth, this story is over a year in the making, I started back in August of last year, but circumstances out of my control prevented me from finishing. A distressing set of events came about in the last few months of 2014.
In September, there was the explosive breakup of our next door neighbors, who just so happened to be my nephew, his girlfriend of five years and their children. This put an emotional strain on my wife and I, because we were very close to him and his young boys, looking upon them as if they were our own. Watching the little guys being yanked away from their father, seeing all of the fighting and turmoil my wife and I were unfortunate enough to witness, and having to deal with the police on several occasions. . . It just left me pissed off and emotionally drained.
Then, a short time later in December, after being ill for some time, my father-in-law, his health having taken a sudden turn for the worse, passed away. This put an additional emotional toll on the wife and myself.
To top it off, the day of his funeral, my computer's hard drive crashed. I took the time while it was down to just be lazy and started watching television again, something I've done very little of over the last several years. I became quite interested in the 'Investigation Discovery' channel, got my fill of 'The World's Dumbest' on TRU TV, and got involved in 'The Curse of Oak Island' on the History channel.
In February, I finally pressured my youngest son into taking a look at my computer, and his prognosis was that it was pretty much fucked. He gave me one of his older laptops so that I could still get online. I told him not to worry about getting into any hurry fixing it, I just wanted my photos and documents from the hard drive (if that was possible). Because of all that had happened in the last few months, I was in no mood to finish the story at the time anyway.
After my father-in-law's illness and death, there were a lot of repairs needed on he and my mother-in-law's home. I spent the spring and summer making those repairs and also built a large deck onto the house in the process, something they had planned before his illness. So I've been pretty much pre-occupied, not to mention what seems like the endless trouble still going on with my nephew (who stayed with us for a while after the break up) and his ex. When I felt like I wanted to write again, I was going to use their situation as the basis of a story, but I decided that I wanted to finish this story first.
I coaxed my son into trying to retrieve the photos and documents off of the old computer, then transfer them all onto the laptop I've been using, and he was able to do that for me. After all of this time, I'd almost forgotten the character's names and the direction in which I wanted to take this story. I reread it (the half that was finished) twice and decided to change up what the original ending was going to be, or at least what I could remember of it. A little mixup on my arthritis meds recently pretty much turned me into a zombie for a while and I'm still finding it hard to stay focused. I dedicated a few hours on this over about a two week period and became distracted by some more projects at my MIL's house again, plus some things needed here at my own home, so it's been slow going.
The story ended up quite a bit longer than what was originally intended, so I divided it up into 3 parts. I will turn on the comments and voting after the last chapter. There are some elements of real occurrences in this, as there are in most stories, but the story itself is fiction, as are some of the businesses and their locations. There are no sexual situations involving anyone under the age of 18 in this story.
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In all high schools, there always seems to be one of those girls. Cute face, nothing to stand out in a crowd, but still pretty enough to garner a second look occasionally. Trish Smith was one of those girls, at five seven, and only eighty pounds, she was built like a boy. She looked more like someone that had made a wrong turn in the hallway at the jr high and had wandered over into the wrong building.
If she would have been a little more outgoing, she may have been a more popular. She had all kinds of friends, problem was. . . they were all girls. Very shy and feeling extremely awkward because of her weight, or lack of it, to be more specific, she avoided almost all contact with anyone of the opposite sex. She'd also become an easy target for other teenage students, girls and boys alike, who constantly teased and tormented her for being so thin. A day didn't go by, that someone wouldn't call her, 'Stringbean, beanpole or jolly green giant'.
Although there had been crushes on a few boys, one in particular all through high school, she never dated at all.
During her freshman and sophomore years, Trish's blonde hair was short, a 'Pixie' cut, but by the time she graduated in 1981, her hair had grown to be just below her shoulders. Closer to ninety pounds now, her weight compared to her height still made her look a little gangly.
Not wanting to interrupt her studies, Trish waited until after graduation to look for employment, then a few days upon receiving her diploma, she started behind the counter at the local Dairy Queen. After working her first week, she realized that the same scraggly looking young man had been coming in and incessantly flirting with her everyday at lunch time. He was kind of rough looking, long, stringy black hair, a goatee and a tattoo of a skull on his upper right arm, he reminded her of a biker. Trish wasn't really attracted to him at all, but he was perssistant and that in itself made her curious to find out who he was and more about him.
Trish spoke to her friends, asked if they knew anything about him. They told her that he had been a year ahead of them all in high school, but she didn't remember him. They tried to warn her that he'd been hanging with some pretty unsavory characters over the last few years. The word from some pretty reliable sources was that Roger Murtaugh and his older brother, Joshua were druggies and had been seen hanging with several known prostitutes from Cincinnati. Trish's friends also told her that Roger was a high school drop out, and he didn't even have a driver's license or a car. They all thought he was trouble and advised her to steer clear of him.
Friday, after Trish finished up her first work week, she walked outside towards her car and found Roger there waiting. He introduced himself and asked if maybe she would like to see a movie with him. After going all through school without any male attention whatsoever, she was actually excited that there was a man that seemed to be interested in her. The warnings her friends had given her about him crossed her mind, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt anyway. She told him yes, that she would like to go out with him, and they set a time for their first date.