Pam

I am sitting at my big computer this afternoon. I always seem to think better when I sit here overlooking the front yard. Sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I just let my mind wander for about fifty years down life’s highway. It’s amazing the things that I see. Some things I don’t like, but can’t change. The things I do like are the people that are ambling down that road. For the most part, they all wave at me and smile. One of those people is Pam. I haven’t seen Pam in years and years, but we used to be really good friends. Of course, appearance is once thing that always comes to mind. She had beautiful long red hair and she was tall. All my friends were tall, I was kind of the shortie and I wasn’t short by any means.
If I remember right, Pam had a sister and two brothers. I can remember Denise and both brothers. They were pills and loved to tease. I especially remember Pam’s mother. She did not have red hair. When I knew her she had salt and pepper hair and always had a quiet smile for me. Pam’s family belonged to a different church than I did. My mother was very happy to let me attend church with Pam’s family. A person would think that was odd as invested as Mother was in our church, but she said it was very important that we know about other churches so that we knew for certain that the church we were members of, was the right church for us.
I liked staying overnight with Pam, they could not eat meat for the most part according to the laws of their church. Instead of hamburgers they had vegetable burgers that were absolutely delicious. I can remember telling my mother about them and she said that our church believed the same way, but we did not follow the laws as well as Pam’s family.
Pam, Joan, and I were a threesome. We really didn’t get into too much trouble as a group, but Pam and Joan picked on me something fierce. Here’s a story they may have forgotten.
When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I started having what I called memory lapses. These only lasted a few seconds at the most. My friends noticed these from time to time. When these happened, I couldn’t hear them or react to their yelling at me etc. One day they were visiting and one of these “spells” happened; they hit me over the head with a frying pan. I did not react. They didn’t hit me hard so don’t think they hurt me, but it did get my attention when they told me what they had done. I told my mother and she took me to the doctor. I have a seizure disorder to this day that started when I was a teenager. I’m really glad they didn’t decide to use a two by four. I am also glad that they did decide to test me to see if I was telling them the truth. If they had not, my condition may have gone undiagnosed and could have ended up seriously injuring me or other people.
The picture that you see of Pam is in our driveway in Cherokee, Iowa. I think Pam was about sixteen years old here. You need to remember this driveway because several stories will relate to this drive.