Foot Races and First Kisses

Sep 30, 2016 | Dancing Skeletons | 4 comments

Our house was dominated by girls. Six out of the nine of us were girls. And I was born right smack between two brothers. Caren and Cami would spend hours laughing and giggling and referring to inside jokes. They shared the same clothes and went to the same events...

It’s Against the Law to Marry Your Cousin

Sep 16, 2016 | Dancing Skeletons | 4 comments

Tyler Bay was not my first crush. Not if you count the first boy who spoke to me in kindergarten. He had my undying devotion for about 30 seconds. But even before that, there was a brief infatuation with a cousin who came to visit from out of state. We went over to...

“Oooo! Tyler Baaaay!”

Sep 9, 2016 | Dancing Skeletons | 9 comments

(*Name changed) I loved school. My family only knew about kids at school if I talked about them. And kids at school only knew about my family if I talked about them. It was like creating two separate worlds and I could decide how much these worlds collided. I also...

The Day I Learned My Family Was Big

Sep 2, 2016 | Dancing Skeletons | 11 comments

Clarissa Reeves approached me in line at the monkey bars. She was not like the delicate blonde girls in our second grade class. Freckles spattered the bridge of her nose just like mine. Her hair was much longer than my own frizzy curls, and just a shade darker. Her...

Competition

Mar 23, 2016 | Dancing Skeletons | 1 comment

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”  –George Bernard Shaw Our friends recently had a litter of puppies. The runt was several pounds smaller than her thriving littermates. She struggled and fought several times each day...